a negro nation, who would not allow themselves to be seen. "The
reason," he adds, "why these negroes conceal themselves, is, that
they have lips of an unnatural size, hanging down halfway over their
breasts, and which they are obliged to rub with salt continually, to
keep them from putrefaction." Thus even the great salt trade of the
interior of Africa is not wholly untinged with fable.

The stream became at last so shallow, that Jobson could not ascend
any farther, and he began his voyage downwards on the 10th February,
intending to return at the season when the periodical rains filled
the channel. He was, however, never able to execute this purpose, as
he and the company became involved in a quarrel with the merchants,
whom he visits with his highest displeasure, representing them as
persons alive only to their own immediate interests, and utterly
regardless of any of those honourable motives with which all
commercial dealings ought to be characterised.

Jobson may be said to have been the first Englishman, who enjoyed the
opportunity of observing the manners and superstitions peculiar to
the interior of Africa, but that must be taken as only within the
narrow limits to which the discoveries at that period extended. He
found that the chiefs of the different nations were attended by bands
of musicians, to whom he gives the appellation of juddies or
fiddlers, and compares them to the Irish rhymsters, or, as we should
now compare them, to the Italian improvisatori. By some other authors
they are called jelle, or jillemen; the instruments on which they
perform being rudely made of wood, having a sonorous sound, on
account of its extreme hardness, and in some instances they exhibit
the knowledge of the power of an extended string, by fastening a
piece of the gut of an animal across a plane of wood, and beating on