as rice and millet, and those for pasture. In the distribution of these lands, that is, in fixing their situation nearer to the villages in proportion as one is rich, or more remote in proportion as another is poor, no such distinction prevails. Each family has occupied that, which it thought would answer its purpose best, or that which it pitched upon the first. There are no disputes with respect to land. If a man has not enough, he may take more, and as much more as he pleases. There are millions of acres unappropriated and unsettled, so that he has only to chuse a spot, which is not occupied by another.

The land, however, which is possessed in these countries, is not possessed by individuals, but by whole families. All the relations in a village, fathers, mothers, brothers, sons, cousins, hold one spot, which serves them all, and which is as much as they can cultivate among them, or is adequate to their wants. The figure of this spot is round. If it be laid out in indigo, cotton, or millet, it is enclosed with thorns, lest the deer or other wild game, getting into it, should destroy the crop. These thorns are often such as the men have cut down and afterwards worked into a fence, or such as in the clearing of new land, they have left standing in such parts as they determined should be the boundary of their lands. Thus are their lands like the places of their habitation. They are encircled by a fence; they assume a round appearance like the spot upon which the houses stand, and are possessed by whole families.

It may not be improper to observe here, that the portion of land, which I have described to have been enclosed and occupied by a family, is allotted but to one sort of produce. The same family, which wants millet for cuscus* or bread, wants cotton for clothes; but in this case they never divide the same enclosure for the production of the two. The indigo plantations are separate from the cotton, and the cotton again from the millet. The indigo are the nearest in general to the town, the cotton next, and the millet the most remote, so that there is neither a mixture of two sorts of produce in one enclosure, nor are enclosures of different sorts of produce interspersed. Hence one family may have three separate enclosures belonging to it according to its industry or its wants.

Millet, reduced to a fine powder by a pestle and mortar, is called cuscus, When so powdered it is fit for immediate use, But the natives mix with it powdered leaves of the bahobab tree, when they wish it to be preserved, either for aking journies, or making excursions.

With respect to tobacco, they use but little of it, and there are no enclosures for that; and with respect to the cultivation of indigo, one exception is to be made to the preceding account, which is, that the Serreres do not cultivate it at all.

As to the lands for pasture, they are not enclosed like the rest, but are all open. There are some inhabitants of the villages, who have cattle, the use of which is rather for the milk than for the meat, for in these countries meat is seldom eaten except on the feasts of Mahomet. The King has many cows, the Gueraff some, and the rich such as they have inherited or acquired by trade. All these, however, feed in one herd. They are tended by two or three men, and as many boys: These take charge of them as well in the night as in the day, for which purpose they sleep in small huts or cabins erected upon the lands where the cattle feed. The occupation of herdsmen is here followed as a trade.

In speaking of property it will be necessary to make a distinction here, which otherwise may not be thought to subsist. The lands or houses, which have been described to be within an enclosure, do not belong to any one individual, as I have stated before, but to all the members conjointly of the family which occupies them. This, however, is not the case with property of another kind. Perhaps an industrious man, by applying himself to some commercial pursuit, becomes possessed of cattle. Perhaps another with great care and trouble has formed a palmery, with a view of supplying the market with palm-wine. Such cattle then, and such palmery, belong exclusively to those who acquired them. These and other similar sorts of property, are distinct from the first. They are wholly at the disposal of the proprietor during life; but at his death they descend to the next heirs. The property, which a father (for instance) has of this kind, is divided equally when he dies, among his legitimate children. But here I must observe, that all the children which a man has are not deemed legitimate. It is possible he may have ten wives, and children by each of these. But as only three of these wives are deemed legitimate, so legitimate children may be the offspring of three, but never of more than of three different wives.

Such then is the arrangement, as it is found to take place, of the villages, houses, and lands of the inhabitants of Cayor, Sin and Sallum. To these houses and villages so occupied; to these lands so laid out and possessed; and to the simplicity of

life so necessarily following such an arrangement, these inhabitants are so extremely attached, as to consider it the greatest evil in life to leave them. This is particularly obvious after any serious pillage made for procuring their persons, which may have obliged them to betake themselves to the woods; for in these woods they have been known to wait with patience for years, till they have thought the danger over, and then to seek their ancient habitations again. As one proof among many others the following may suffice. Mr. de Villeneuve in his journey over land from Cape Verd to the island of Fort St. Louis, which the reader will find described in the map, met with two villages, Tiockmat and Little Boro, which had been deserted by the inhabitants in consequence of the pillage having been executed upon them. On passing by the former he observed several of the natives at work, as if employing themselves in repairing the ancient huts. This occasioned him to stop and converse with them; during which he found that these were the ancient inhabitants of Tiockmat, from whence they had been driven by the pillage; that after having lived for many moons in the forests they had resolved upon coming out and re-establishing themselves on their native spot, and that they were then repairing their old habitations with a view of occupying them again. This was the substance of their conversation with Mr. de Villeneuve; and it was a fact well known in the country, that Tiockmat had been pillaged by Damèl, or the King of Cayor, full five years before this event of the re-establishment of the natives, as then resolved on and taking place.

I come now to a new topic, which will comprehend the different occupations of the people under our consideration, or the various ways in which they employ themselves in the course of the year.

These occupations may be divided into stationary and itinerant. The first stationary employment, according to my acceptation of the word, is agriculture. If the natives wish to clear new land, or such as has lain fallow (for they never cultivate the same land but once in three years) they resort toge ther to the spot. There are two instruments which they use on these occasions. The first of them is an axe, with which they chop the larger trunks of underwood.* This axe differs from our own inasmuch as the wood passes through the iron

* There are thousands of acres of champaign land in this country, which have only a sort of underwood upon them. These the natives select when they want new land, for, to clear the forests for this purpose would be an endless task.

with us, while in this the iron passes through the wood. The other is a kind of garden spud, with a fork at the handle. This is applied to the roots; i. e. the end, which is of iron, cuts them through, and they are carried away by the fork at the other end. These instruments are made by the natives out of the bar iron which they buy of the European traders. I may observe here, that the clearing of land is an occupation belonging solely to the men.

With these instruments then the natives prepare their lands. This preparation takes place before the rainy season, which begins in June and ends in October. On the first of July, or thereabouts, they commence with their millet. Of this there are two species, the small and the great. They put in the former first. To plant this a man uses a sort of spade, which differs from our own as far as the iron work is of a semi-circular instead of an oblong form. The shape of the iron indeed resembles that of the moon in its first quarter. In the concave part of this spade the handle is fixed, and the convex is applied to the cutting of the earth. His first process is to dig with this instrument a hole in the ground. Having made this he advances about fifteen inches, and digs another. In this way he continues in a straight line till he comes to the end of his enclosure. Having made one straight line of holes at the distance from each other just described, he makes another parallel to the former, and so on till he has opened the whole of his land. While he is engaged in this work a woman follows him, and puts seeds into each of the holes which he has made, covering them afterwards with earth.

The seed, thus lodged in each of the holes, is suffered to remain without interruption for three weeks, when the person who has sown it visits it again. He finds in his absence that between these holes a number of weeds and roots have shot up. These he clears away with the forked garden spud as before described. Having done this, he makes new holes between each of those which he made in the beginning of July. A woman follows him as before, and puts in the large millet. At the latter end of September or beginning of October the small millet sown in the first of these holes is ready. The men cut it, and the women and children carry it away. In three weeks afterwards, or at the latter end of October, the large millet sown in the last is ready also, and it is cut and taken away as before. Thus they have two crops in the year.

When the millet is thus gathered, it is carried to a place fixed upon at a small distance from the village, where all the

millet belonging to the inhabitants is kept, as was mentioned before. Each family has a large basket made of twigs, of a conical form, about five feet high, with a top to it, which takes off, in which the millet is deposited. Here each family places its own crop, so that the millet of the whole village is kept together. Though it be sometimes at a distance from the villages and among the woods, and there be no one to guard it, it is generally in perfect security from theft.

The description of people, who work in the manner mentioned, are the proprietors of the lands. Each family works for its own sustenance and support. Amidst the labourers a slave is sometimes found, but not often, because, as I have said before, the slaves in this country do not bear the proportion of more than one to fifteen hundred, if compared with the free men.

The millet then takes up the time of the natives from July to the latter end of October or the beginning of November. In December they gather their crop of cotton, and their indigo in May.

ALFRED.

[To be continued.]

Additional Remarks intended to further the Purpose of Civilization in Africa.

ALTHOUGH I should regret to see the pages of the "Philanthropist" much occupied by controversy, yet the collation of opinions, that are delivered in a friendly and temperate manner, may have the effect of agreeably eliciting truth on a variety of important subjects, and, accordingly, of promoting the useful and benevolent purpose of this work: a work into which I wish never to see introduced any thing like asperity or personal rancour, or even the playfulness of wit, if it is of a nature to give pain to any individual.

I have no apprehension that the pen of William Roscoe, with whom I am in some sort at issue on the subject animadverted upon by him, in an article inserted in the last number of the Philanthropist," needs any cautionary hint of this kind; it is meant as a general remark. He possesses a mind