cinity of the Serreres of Cayor, and are dragged from thence, as the former, to the shore.

Those in use about Sallum are about forty feet long, and are made by natives up the Gambia, who bring them down partly by land and partly by water. Of all these boatmakers it may be observed, that they follow this their occupation only in the dry season; for in the rainy they cultivate their lands; so that, like the fishermen before mentioned, they are employed for the year round.

Among other stationary occupations may be reckoned that of making salt. In the countries to which this account extends, there are not more than three or four villages from whence the inhabitants are supplied with this article. At the village of Bieurt, opposite to Gandiole at the mouth of the river Senegal, the natives make it and supply all Cayor and the Moors. On the banks of the river Silif, which runs into the river Palmarin in the dominions of Barbasin, there are three villages, among which is Sangay, where the inhabitants are occupied in the same manner. There are not less than five or six hundred persons, men and women together, who are thus employed in the latter. These three villages supply the rest of the tract under our consideration, namely, Sin and Sallum.

I come now to what may be called their itinerant employments. One of these is that of working in gold. People, free men, who exercise the profession of goldsmiths, are found in the courts of the kings, where they principally get their bread. When the kings have done with them (for they seldom employ them the whole year round) they go about the villages, and work for such as can afford to pay them. They make rings, necklaces, and trinkets of various shapes and patterns. Their work is very neat, and often as well executed as among the artists of Europe in the same line. Their profession, however, is a totally distinct one; for they neither cultivate land, nor meddle with any other trade.

A second itinerant occupation is that of smiths. Two or three people of this description are to be found in almost every village. They work on the bar iron which they buy of the Europeans. Of this they make instruments of husban dry, such as hocs, spuds, spades, and the heads of lances and spears. They make also ornaments out of the copper, which they receive in the course of trade, for those who

choose to employ them. They stay perhaps a year or two at a village, and then go to another. They have no land, for they have no time to cultivate it, being generally in constant employ.

A third itinerant employment, which is followed as a trade, is that of dyeing. The secret of dyeing is in these countries in the possession of the women alone, nor is it in every village that it is known. There are only a few villages in which these dyers are to be found. They go of course about the country from village to village, and perform the different commissions which the inhabitants of these may have for them in that line.

The fourth, fifth, and sixth itinerant employments are not separately pursued by individuals, like the former, but undertaken and held together, so that he who professes any one of them, professes all of them jointly as a trade. The natives, who are brought up to these joint employments, are called Guerriots in their own tongue. The first of their occupations is that of becoming drum-beaters and comedians to the King. They may be considered in some respects as a sort of strolling players. When the kings do not employ them in this line, they try to gain their subsistence from the people. To amuse the latter they beat their drums, rehearse the feats of their ancestors, call them brave fellows, talk nonsense, and in short do what is done by the same description of persons in Europe. When, however, neither the kings nor the people have any employment for them in this line, they support themselves by their two other occupations. The first of these is that of working in cotton. For this purpose they always travel with their looms, which are short, light, and portable. A common loom of this sort does not take up a square foot in space, and with all its apparatus does not weigh above five pounds. The art of making cloth is almost wholly in the hands of these Guerriots, who execute their work so well, that no European can do it better. In short, no better cloth can be made any where. The only way in

which it differs from or is inferior to our own is in the breadth of it. The loom being only a foot wide, the cloth which is made by means of it can only be a foot broad. When, however, they have worked a piece to its proper length, they lay it by, and begin a second, and so on a third, and a fourth, and a fifth, till they have obtained as many as when joined together will make the breadth required. These they sew neatly together, and then their work is considered

to be done. The second of their occupations is that of tanning and working in leather. Of this they make scabbards for knives, daggers, and swords, small saddles, pouches, grisgris or ornaments which the natives wear as charms or protections against injury or mischief, sandals, necklaces, and other articles. Many of these are worked and put together in a superior manner. Some of these they gloss and polish: others they ornament by imprinting, that is, by impressing small patterns upon them and to others they give a gay appearance by staining the leather of different colours. Following then these employments, they travel from village to village. Their countrymen, however, have some superstitious notions about them, and will not always suffer them, when they die, to be buried near the same spot with themselves.

A seventh itinerant occupation is that of conjurers. They who follow this art ramble up and down like the Guerriots, seldom, if ever, staying more than six or seven days in a place. On coming into a village they are frequently sent for to amuse the Gueraff, as well as the King if he should be resident in it. If, besides playing before these, they can get into the house of a man of condition to show their tricks, so much the better, for they are better paid. If not, they get as many of the people together as they can. They then exhibit their art. It consists of slight of hand with balls, knives, and such other things as are best adapted to their design. Two only of these conjurers travel and exhibit their profession together. When the exhibition is over a collection is made, at which time the spectators contribute cloth, millet, and other articles, in return for the diversion afforded them.

It is from these conjurers that the notion of witchcraft, or that there are persons in every village capable of being accessory to the death of others by secret means, (as explained, Philanthropist, No. iv. p. 283, 284.) may be considered to be kept up for the people behold these conjurers with surprise; they consider them as doing supernatural things; and they see no reason why they should not be capable of communicating their art. Hence they believe, where persons die suddenly, or in a manner for which they cannot account, that they have wizards in their villages. This belief, where such circumstances have taken place, has been occasionally a source of great misery to them, for they have been the first to be accused of witchcraft, after which they have been sold for slaves. Such instances, however, though they

have happened. have been but rare; for there is not, generally speaking, the same inducement to accuse these as other people, most of them being crooked, lame, blind of an eye, or such as have some bodily defect, and therefore not so saleable. It is the practice in these parts to destine those who are born with bodily imperfections, for conjurers.

Among the itinerant employments, which are found in the countries now under our consideration, there are some, in which the natives themselves have no concerns either as manufacturers or merchants, but which are in the hands of what we may call foreigners, that is, of those Africans who are the subjects of the different states which surround them. One of these is that of travelling and selling wooden utensils of various sorts. In the empire of Oualoff, which joins the three countries, and which is marked in the map, (see Philanthropist, No. iii.) there are certain people who inhabit the forests, and who are known there by the name of Laobès. These Laobes are great manufacturers of wood. They employ themselves in their own country in making pestles and mortars for pounding millet into flour or cuscus, and every other sort of wooden instrument which is in use either in Cayor, Sin, or Sallum; so that almost every wooden utensil to be seen there has been made by them. When they have finished a quantity they send them away, as our own manufacturers do crates of wooden or of earthen ware, under the care of their own people. These have often the patience to carry them in large bundles upon their heads, and to travel with them in this manner for many days. When they bave disposed of them they return into the woods of Oualoff, carrying back the money to their partners or employers; that is, such commodities as they have received in exchange.

These then are some of the occupations, both stationary and itinerant, which are found to obtain in the countries of Cayor, Sin, and Sallum. By means of these each is enabled to gratify his respective wants. The Guerriot, for instance, having a loom and knowing how to use it, can always make his own clothes; but having no land he is obliged to derive his subsistence from others. A part of this he gets from his occupation as drum-beater and comedian to the King; for another part of it he applies to the husbandman, who gives bim a quantity of millet for working his produce-cotton into cloth. The husbandman is thus supplied with raiment suffi cient for himself, and with an overplus for trade; but as he, the husbandman, must have fish (for this is considered a

necessary part of his sustenance) he has recourse in his turn to the inhabitant of the shore. The inhabitant of the shore, besides following the occupation of a fisherman, cultivates, as has been stated before, his own millet; but he has often no time for the planting of cotton for his clothes. For a part of his fish, then, he receives a part of the overplus of the husbandman's cloth just mentioned. The smith, on the other hand, having no land, and but one occupation, must be in want of millet, fish, and cloth. These he gets from the former three in exchange for his iron instruments in husbandry and for his spears. Thus an exchange takes place of the different articles of produce and manufacture, to the mutual accommodation of each other.

By these means, that is, by means of barter, a great deal of business is transacted, both in the vicinity of the shore and in the interior parts. There is frequent communication between the neighbouring villages for this purpose, each offering for sale that which he possesses, to obtain that which he thinks he wants. In Sallum many articles of merchandize are carried up and down the country in boats, a part of the river Palmarin and the river Sallum affording such a conveyance. In Sin, where the other part of the river Palmarin and the river Silif are found, they are carried up and down in the same manner, but above the fountains of these, upon asses. In Cayor, where there is but little water, they are conveyed upon asses also, till you come near upon Bieurt, where small oxen are in use. Numbers however of the natives, indeed the great bulk of them (for there are not many who have asses or oxen of their own), travel with their bundles of merchandize upon their heads; and their perseverance on these occasions is astonishing; for they not only disregard the weight of them, but with this weight, enormous as it frequently is, they will travel six French leagues in the course of a single day.

With respect to any foreign trade, that is, the export over sea of their produce and manufactures, no such commerce has been yet known to them. Whatever they have raised from their own soil, they have raised in a quantity sufficient only for their own use; the overplus of every man's industry above his own wants being, as we have just seen, sold to another who was engaged in a different pursuit. A few elephants' teeth, and skins, and perhaps a little rice and some vegetables, have been given to those European ships which have visited their coasts, as in part payment for the commodities brought to them. For the rest of those commodities payment has been made in the bodies of their countrymen; that is, by selling them into