United States or Niue ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The bark of a fine tree found in abundance here, and called "motuia", is used by the Barotse for making fish-lines and nets, and the "molompi", so well adapted for paddles by its lightness and flexibility, was abundant. There were other trees quite new to my companions; many of them ran up to a height of fifty feet of one thickness, and without branches.
Here, it was the "banhinia," or iron wood; there, the "molompi," identical with the "pterocarpe," a solid and light wood, fit for making the spoons used in sugar manufactories or oars, from the trunk of which exuded an abundant resin; further on, "fusticks," or yellow wood, well supplied with coloring materials, and lignum-vitæs, measuring as much as twelve feet in diameter, but inferior in quality to the ordinary lignum-vitæs.
Beyond it we came among the upland vegetation rhododendrons, proteas, the masuko, and molompi. At the foot of the hill, Kasuko-suko, we found the River Bua running north to join the Kaombe. We had to go a mile out of our way for a ford; the stream is deep enough in parts for hippopotami.
The Makalaka, who are most expert in the management of their small, thin, light canoes, come gently toward them; the men stand upright in the canoe, though it is not more than fifteen or eighteen inches wide and about fifteen feet long; their paddles, ten feet in height, are of a kind of wood called molompi, very light, yet as elastic as ash.
Word Of The Day