[Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa by David Livingstone]@TWC D-Link bookMissionary Travels and Researches in South Africa CHAPTER 20 24/39
Numbers of these have spread over the country, some have probably died out, and others failed to spread, like a lonely specimen which stands in what was the Botanic Garden of Loanda, and, though most useful in yielding a substitute for frankincense, is the only one of the kind in Africa. A circumstance which would facilitate the extensive propagation of the coffee on the proper clay soil is this: The seed, when buried beneath the soil, generally dies, while that which is sown broadcast, with no covering except the shade of the trees, vegetates readily.
The agent in sowing in this case is a bird, which eats the outer rind, and throws the kernel on the ground.
This plant can not bear the direct rays of the sun; consequently, when a number of the trees are discovered in the forest, all that is necessary is to clear away the brushwood, and leave as many of the tall forest-trees as will afford good shade to the coffee-plants below.
The fortunate discoverer has then a flourishing coffee plantation. This district, small though it be, having only a population of 13,822, of whom ten only are white, nevertheless yields an annual tribute to the government of thirteen hundred cotton cloths, each 5 feet by 18 or 20 inches, of their own growth and manufacture. Accompanied by the commandant of Cazengo, who was well acquainted with this part of the country, I proceeded in a canoe down the River Lucalla to Massangano.
This river is about 85 yards wide, and navigable for canoes from its confluence with the Coanza to about six miles above the point where it receives the Luinha.
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