gold and silver, and make knifes, hatchets, reaping hooks, spades and
shares to cut iron, &c. &c. Their potters make neat tobacco pipes, and
pots to boil their food. Some authors say that weaving is their
principal trade; this is done by the women and girls, who spin and weave
very fine cotton cloth, which they dye blue or black.[A] F. Moor says,
the Jalofs particularly make great quantities of the cotton cloth; their
pieces are generally twenty-seven yards long, and about nine inches
broad, their looms being very narrow; these they sew neatly together, so
as to supply the use of broad cloth.

[Footnote A: F. Moor, 28.]

It was in these parts of Guinea, that M. Adanson, correspondent of the
Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, mentioned in some former
publications, was employed from the year 1749, to the year 1753, wholly
in making _natural_ and _philosophical_ observations on the country
about the rivers Senegal and Gambia. Speaking of the great heats in
Senegal, he says,[A] "It is to them that they are partly indebted for
the fertility of their lands; which is so great, that, with little
labour and care, there is no fruit nor grain but grow in great plenty."

[Footnote A: M. Adanson's voyage to Senegal, &c, page 308.]

Of the soil on the Gambia, he says,[A] "It is rich and deep, and
amazingly fertile; it produces spontaneously, and almost without
cultivation, all the necessaries of life, grain, fruit, herbs, and
roots. Every thing matures to perfection, and is excellent in its
kind."[B] One thing, which always surprized him, was the prodigious
rapidity with which the sap of trees repairs any loss they may happen to
sustain in that country: "And I was never," says he, "more astonished,