The banana, planted with a careless hand, supplies the staff of
life, besides thatch, fuel, and fibre for nets and lines: when
they want cereals, maize, holcus, and panicum will grow almost
spontaneously. The various palm-trees give building materials,
oil, wine, and other requisites too numerous to mention. The
"five products of the cow" are ignored, as in the western
hemisphere of yore: one of the most useful, however, is produced
by the Nje or Njeve, a towering butyraceous tree, differing from
that which bears the Shea butternut. Its produce is sun-dried,
toasted over a fire, pounded and pressed in a bag between two
boards, when it is ready for use. The bush, cut at the end, is
fired before the beginning, of the rains, leaving the land ready
for yams and sweet potatoes almost without using the hoe. In the
middle dries, from June to September, the villagers sally forth
en masse for a battue of elephants, whose spoils bring various
luxuries from the coast. Lately, before my arrival, they had
turned out to gather the Aba, or wild mango, for Odika sauce; and
during this season they will do nothing else.
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