Page:A voyage to Abyssinia (Salt).djvu/53

 wild luxuriance of primitive vegetation. Similar to Mesuril, though on a smaller scale, are built the villages of Mapeita, Cabaçeiro, and Soué Souâh, in the neighhour-hood of which plantations are laid out, like those I have before described belonging to Signor Montéro. A great part of the land still remains uncultivated, but it affords grazing to numerous herds of cattle, and sustenance to vast droves of swine, the breeding of which, from their being reared with little trouble, has been greatly encouraged by the inhabitants.

In our various excursions from Mesuril, we often stopped at the houses of the planters, to obtain refreshment, and we always found them, even when we were alone, civil and attentive, without requiring any payment for the articles which they furnished. The refreshments which they generally offered us consisted of fresh roasted manioca, and the liquor of the cocoa-nut; the former resembles in taste the flavour of a yam, and the latter, when the nut is about half ripe, affords a very cool and refreshing draught, particularly after the fatigue resulting from exercise in a hot climate. We saw only a few of their women, and, if those few may be considered as a fair sample of the ladies of the Settlement, I am afraid they do not possess many charms to suit an Englishman's taste, being in general thin, sallow, and much relaxed by the climate, with no small share of that inertness usually attendant upon a long residence, in countries situated under the tropics. They are very negligent in their persons, excepting on public occasions, and go without stockings, like the Dutch planters' wives in the interior of the Cape. They also resemble the latter in their taste for a pipe, which they smoke much at their ease; but are nevertheless lively, and have a fine flow of animated conversation.

The food on which the planters live is gross in the extreme, and to this in a great measure may be attributed the diseases which prevail. Great profusion of boiled meats, chiefly pork and beef, are laid on the table, and rude mis-shapen lumps of these are mixed together with vegetables on the same plate, without any of that attention to nicety, observable at the table even of the poorer classes in England; while all the other dishes are