chap, xxv AFRICAN ELEPHANTS 127
Shupanga.
The people of this Province find much gold dust in several rivers which
join the Sena ; but this gold is inferior to the other kind, and it is
also taken to Shupanga and Sofala. The country is very healthy, and the
inhabitants live as long as those of Europe. In certain years Cafres
arrive there from much farther than the Province of Moukaran, and even
from the neighbourhood of the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese know of
the country and its name, but have not induced the Cafres to reveal
more than that their country, called Sabia,1 is governed by
a King, and that they generally spend four months on the road to
Sofala. The gold which they bring is excellent, and is in nuggets, like
that of Mono-motapa ; they say that they find it on high mountains,
where they only have to excavate the ground for it to the depth of 10
or 12 feet. They also bring an abundance of elephants' tusks, and say
that there are so many elephants in the country that they are to be
seen in troops in the fields, and that all the palisades of the
fortresses and parks are made of elephants' tusks ; this I have also
observed elsewhere.2 The ordinary food of these Cafres is the flesh of this animal, and four of them, with their assegais,3
which are a kind of short pike are able to bring an elephant to the
ground and kill it. All the water in their country is very bad, which
is the reason why they have swollen legs, and it is a marvel when any
one escapes this disease.
Above
Sofala there is a country commanded by a King called the King of Baroe.
In some part of his country there grows a root which is an inch thick,
and of a yellow colour. It cures all kinds of fever by causing vomiting
; but as very little of it is found the King forbids, under severe
penalty, any of it to be carried out of his Kingdom. While Dom Philippe
de Mascarenhas was Viceroy of Goa the King of
1 Sabia, Sir H. H. Johnston writes: ' is almost certainly the basin of the upper Sabi'.
* See vol. i, p. 221.
3
Ageagayes in the original, for assegais, the well-known hurling spears
used in Africa. The word is from the Berber zaghaya, with the Arabic
article prefixed. It occurs commonly in travellers' accounts of other
countries besides those included in Africa. (See Yule, Hobson-Jobson, p. 38.)
