Baobab

“ After the suppers were cooked and eaten, and their limbs were somewhat rested, and earth had drawn its sable mantle, chequered with the diamonds of heaven, over its head, and the dark foliage of the baobab began to be peopled with formless shapes and shadows, and the fires burned bright, and cast their tongued flames with splutter, and hissing, and crackling, the dispositions of each began to be exhibited. They squatted around a blazing pile, listening to an exciting tale of adventure, or a funny story, which makes men’s sides almost explode with laughter. What can be more enjoyable? ”

“ I am astonished that the negroes have not paid to this tree the same honours that the Druids did to the oak; for to them the baobab is perhaps the most valuable of vegetables. Its leaves are used for leaven, its bark furnishes indistructible cordage; and the bees form their hives in the cavities of its trunk. The negroes, too, often shelter themselves from storms in its time-worn caverns. The baobab is indisputably the monarch of African trees, p. 41.—Travels in the interior of Africa, to the sources of the Senegal and Gambia, by G. Mollien. ”

“ The trunk of the baobab could no longer afford protection. In another minute it, too, would be enveloped in the red fire, and to stay by its side would be to perish in the flames. There was no alternative but to get to his feet and run for his life.
Not a moment was to be lost, and, slipping from under the tree, he started off at the top of his speed. The chances were in his favour for escaping unobserved by the rhinoceros. But fortune seemed decidedly against him. Before getting twenty paces from the tree, he saw that he was pursued. ”

“ Flowers and many beautiful trees rarely to be met with elsewhere, grow in great profusion; amongst them the grand old baobab, that has defied winds and storms. Palms grace the country with their presence; mapani, euphorbias, aloes, cacti of every variety and beauty, with crimson flowers, mahogany, ebony, mimosas, acacias, and the beautiful matchabela, the tints of which are of a lovely crimson when springing into leaf, and when they are fully blown turn to a rich green ”

“ In the bright morning, the youth arose, and shook himself, and looked round, and felt rather jolly than otherwise. Travellers say that the baobab, or mowana–tree, is the hardest of all things to kill, and will grow along the ground, when uprooted, and not allowed to grow upright. ”

“ They seldom use salt, which is a great luxury, and eat meat only on feast-days; in their sauces they mix (besides gombo) the leaf of the baobab, dried and pounded; they also eat the fruit of this tree, which they steep in water or milk, and which, like nédé, is very sweet and nutritious.
The women manufacture earthen pots for their house-keeping ”

“ From thence I pushed on, the grass being burnt up by the drought, and arrived at Gowkwe river, one of the tributaries of the Limpopo, as are all those I crossed from Mongwato. Two miles back from this, to the right of the road, is the first baobab tree, a young one, twenty-seven feet in circumference, with several large nests, each forming quite a town. The entire country is a thick wood, stretching in every direction hundreds of miles. ”

“ Hence the great difference presented by the forest vegetation along the right and left banks of the Buhr-el-Arab. On one side we find the baobab, with its huge inflated trunk, on the other the lulu, or butter-tree, in some places covering hundreds of square miles. The large apes never cross the frontier into Kordofan; nor does the elephant venture north of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, where the flocks and herds are also free from the ravages of the tsetse-fly. The southern region belongs to the Negro and his horned cattle, the northern to the horse and camel-breeding Arab. ”

“ This is the African baobab or Adansonia digitata, known in Hindustáni as goramli or white tamarind, whose great fruit is about the size of a cocoanut. Its monster baobabs are still a feature of Mándu. Some among them look old enough to have been yielding fruit 300 years ago. Finally Abul Fazl refers to Mándu as one of twenty-eight towns where Akbar’s copper coins were struck.102 About twenty years later (a.d. 1610) the historian Farishtah103 thus describes the hill. The fort of Mándu is a work of solid masonry deemed to be one of the strongest fortifications in that part of the world. ”

“ Among organic creations, this tree is undoubtedly, together with the Adansonia or baobab of Senegal, one of the oldest inhabitants of our globe. The baobabs are of still greater dimensions than the dragon-tree of Orotava. There are some which near the root measure 34 feet in diameter, though their total height is only from 50 to 60 feet. But we should observe, that the Adansonia, like the ochroma, and all the plants of the family of bombax, grow much more rapidly* than the dracaena, the vegetation of which is very slow. ”

“ The baobab is the great feature of Matindela Hill; there are a dozen of them on it, huge giants, which in their growth have knocked down large portions of the walls. Though probably these trees are not as old as report says, nevertheless their presence here proves that these ruins have been utterly abandoned for many centuries. It is another problem to prove how their thick roots find sustenance for so huge a vegetable growth, perched as they are on an almost soil-less granite rock. ”

“ There are in this island, principally on the east side, mangoes, palatuviers, a great quantity of gum trees, or mimosas, and magnificent Baobabs [62] .
Let us stop for a moment before this colossus, which, by the enormous diameter to which it attains, has acquired the title of the Elephant of the vegetable kingdom. The Baobab often serves the negroes for a dwelling, the construction of which costs no further trouble than cutting an opening in the side to serve as a door, and taking out the very soft pith which fills the inside of the trunk. ”

“ Why a dozen of them would make a forest!”
“Those are baobabs,” replied Dr. Ferguson. “See, there’s one with a trunk fully one hundred feet in circumference. It was, perhaps, at the foot of that very tree that Maizan, the French traveller, expired in 1845, for we are over the village of Deje-la-Mhora, to which he pushed on alone. He was seized by the chief of this region, fastened to the foot of a baobab, and the ferocious black then severed all his joints while the war-song of his tribe was chanted ”

“ The natives cut off and pound the bark, from which they thus obtain the fibres for making a strong and fine cord. Although the bark of many of the trees near their villages is completely torn off in a way that would destroy any other tree, the baobab does not suffer, but throws out a new bark as often as the old one is cut off. Trees are either exogenous—that is to say, grow by means of successive layers on the outside ”

“ At ten in the morning of the 28th February, we resumed our course N.N.W., and advanced four miles over a sandy and well cultivated soil, in which grow many large baobabs. We halted at Nomou, a village situated in a beautiful open plain, where I saw some fine plantations of cotton and tobacco; the latter had long pointed leaves, and, if properly prepared, it would, no doubt, be as good as ours. The people take great pains in cultivating it. They first sow the seed in beds, and when the plant has attained a certain growth, they transplant it ”

“ On the Tanga coast of East Africa mischievous sprites reside in great trees, especially in the fantastically shaped baobabs. Sometimes they appear in the shape of ugly black beings, but as a rule they enter unseen into people’s bodies, from which, after causing much sickness and misery, they have to be cast out by the sorcerer. ”

“ In the rainy season they are in full luxuriance, and are covered with cup-shaped flowers six inches in diameter. The trunks grow from 20 to 60 feet high, but are sometimes 100 feet in circuit at the ground. The baobabs, like most other trees, grow rapidly when young, but slowly when old. ”

“ Some had slaves to do this for them, and when they were so far blest, they carried the invariable whip, which they used unsparingly.
The chariots had now passed the fields and farm buildings, and were approaching the city.
Massive buildings and walls began to appear, with exquisite gardens and artificial terraces, from which wide steps led down to shady walks and fairy ponds. Vine tendrils hung over the walls, and formed delicious avenues. Ornamental trees and obelisks reared out of the under herbage. Mighty baobabs showed centuries of growth. Monkeys swung from branch to branch. ”

“ The banks of the Tacazzé are all covered, at the water's edge, with tamarisks; behind which grow high and straight trees, that seem to have gained additional strength from having often resisted the violence of the river. Few of these ever lose their leaves, but are either covered with fruit, flower, or foliage the whole year; indeed, abundantly with all three during the six months fair weather. The Bohabab, indeed, called, in the Amharic language, Dooma, loses ts leaf; it is the largest tree in Abyssinia; the trunk is never high ”

“ The Hababs, who had now to supply us, frightened by the presence of the hairy nephew of the Nab and the Bashi-hazouks, made themselves scarce, and it was only after much parley and the repeated assurance that every one would be paid, that the camels at last made their appearance. The Hababs are a large pastoral tribe, inhabiting the Ad Temariam, a hilly and well-watered district, about fifty miles north-west of Massowah, included between longitude 38.39 and latitude 16 to 16.30. They represent the finest type of the roving Bedouins ”

“ They are in political alliance with the Arab tribes, known in Wadai as Zoruk (dark) and Homr (red) . The Maba have a reputation for pride, valour, cruelty, drunkenness and barbaric splendour.
The capital, Abeshr, is in the N.E., in about 21° E., 13° 50′ N. Thence a caravan route crosses the Sahara via the Kufra oases to Benghazi in Barca. Another trade route goes east through Darfur to Khartum. The people possess large numbers of horses, cattle, sheep and goats. Maize, durra, cotton and indigo are cultivated, and cloth is woven. ”

“ Whole fleets of slave-ships have anchored off Boma, with their loads of rum, their buccaneer crews and blood-thirsty officers, intent on human booty. Happily, all is now changed and the Arab is the only recognized slave-stealer in Africa. Boma has several missions, and her traders are on good terms with the surrounding tribes. Her market is splendid, and here may be found34 in plenty, oranges, citrons, limes, papaws, pine-apples, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, onions, turnips, cabbage, beets, carrots and lettuce, besides the meat of bullocks, sheep, goats and fowls. ”

“ One historian declares that Beibars was sending ten thousand warriors to set up the Kalif in Bagdad, and giving him as aids the Prince of Mosul and his brothers, when one of these warned the Sultan that the Kalif if settled in Bagdad might take Egypt from him. We may well suppose that Beibars wished simply to establish his own power with firmness, and give himself freedom in Islam, and that he wished to be rid of the new Kalif so as to put in his place a man who could not be strong, and who would be obedient. ”

“ Mr. Skeat writes: "Although buluh is the standard Malay, and bambu apparently introduced, I think bambu is the form used in the low Javanese vernacular, which is quite a different language from high Javanese. Even in low Javanese, however, it may be a borrowed word. It looks curiously like a trade corruption of the common Malay word samambu, which means {54b}the well-known 'Malacca cane,' both the bamboo and the Malacca cane being articles of export. Klinkert says that the samambu is a kind of rattan, which was used as a walking-stick, and which was called the Malacca cane by the English. ”

“ In consequence of this the sides of the lake are thickly inhabited by numerous tribes of the true negro breed, amongst which the most conspicuous are the Wabembé cannibals, into whose territory no Arabs durst ever venture. Bombay, my interpreter, describes them as being very dreadful creatures, who are "always looking out for some of our sort." The port we finally arrived at is called Kawélé, a small village in the Ujiji district. Here we landed all our property, and took up our abode in a deserted house, which had been left to decay by some Arab merchants. ”

“ Bamako, capital of the French colony of Upper Senegal and Niger since 1904. It is an important trade-centre and the terminus of the Niger-Senegal railway. Pop. 8000.
Bamba, a district of the Congo, W. coast of Africa, lying to the south of the River Ambriz. It is thickly populated, and is rich in gold, silver, copper, salt, &c.
Bambar ́ra, a territory of Western Africa, on the Upper Niger, first visited by Mungo Park, now in the French portion of the Sudan. The country is generally very fertile, producing wheat, rice, maize, yams, &c. ”

“ His natural timidity, and the tincture of European ways of thought he had gained during his service in Calcutta, rendered him less subject than his Mohammedan companions to the fatalism which rules the oriental mind. To the Mohammedan what must be must be. Allah has appointed to every man his lot; man is but as a cork on the stream of fate. Not even when a low, half-strangled cry came to them across the water, out of the blackness that brooded upon the harbor, did any of the four give sign of excitement. The Babu started, and rose to his feet shivering ”