mixture of Manding, Jolof, Foulha, and Moorish; it is a barba rous jargon, in which one is much astonished to discover several Portuguese words. The negroes of this part of Africa admit that it is a sort of country dialect difficult to be understood, and in which the Manding tongue can scarcely be recognised.

"The negroes of Bambouk are shamefully idle. Being contiguous to a black nation of the name of Kasson, which inhabit the banks of the Senegal, above the cataract of the rock Felow, they are perpetually at war with them.

"These savages unexpectedly arrive on the country of their enemy, when they burn the villages, steal the cattle, and carry off the women and children; and few years pass in which some of these invasions do not take place. It may be imagined that the Bamboukians, who are able to raise an army of ten thousand men, would be disgusted and indignant at the attacks and violence of their ferocious neighbours; but these pusillanimous people only adopt the weakest means of resistance against such repeated irruptions.

"A short time ago they formed the resolution of watching the motions of the Kassons, and of preventing them, in some degree, from continuing their audacity, by retreating, at the time of invasion, with their cattle, gold, families, and valuable effects, into the defiles of the mountains of Tabaoura, the access to which is both difficult and dangerous for those who are unacquainted with the country.

"The Kassons, who in these incursions seldom exceed the number of seven or eight hundred men, dare not venture into these defiles,

but confine themselves to ravaging and plundering all the property that could not be carried off: they also seize upon such women and children as were prevented from escaping by the effect of surprise.

"It is thus that the degenerate Mandings of Bambouk suffer themselves to be oppressed by a horde of savage and daring negroes, who, gaining fortitude from the cowardice, but particularly from the indolence of the Bamboukians, strike with dread a people who might easily destroy them, if idleness and gold had not corrupted their bodies, and enervated their minds.

"These negroes, established on a rich and fertile country, abandon themselves to the most extreme indolence; and as their country produces, to use the expression, without culture, every article necessary for an easy and agreeable life, but more particularly, as their territory affords, without labour, that corrupting metal called gold, they have no emulation, either for agriculture, for the first and most valuable of the arts, for industry, or for commerce.

OF THE BENTARA,

"In each village of Bambook there is a place of meeting that bears the name of Bentaba; it consists of a large hall, formed by stakes placed at the distance of ten or twelve feet from each other, and fifteen feet in height, which support a thatched roof. The size of the Bentaba is always such, that all the males of the village above the age of twelve, may stand under it together.

"In this place the councils are held, and all general affairs dis

cussed;

cussed; the chiefs and elders hear the complaints, and administer justice. It is here also, that from sunrise numbers of negroes meet, and pass whole days in smoking, playing, but particularly in conversing and reciting tales and histories; for the most absurd tales and fabricated histories form the greatest delight and amusement of these men, who arrive at old age without ever quitting a state of childhood.

"After sunset the women and young girls take their turn, and proceed to the Bentaba, where they devote themselves with ardour to the pleasure of dancing, a pleasure which consists in moving with a sort of transport, and adopting, in their violent motions, the most ridiculous and indecent attitudes. This amusement takes place amidst the tumultuous and deafening noise of men and women, with drums, instruments, and clapping of hands, by which they

beat time.

"The Mandings of Bambouk are addicted to polygamy, and take as many women as their situation will enable them to keep; for in a country which affords gold and all the necessaries of life in profusion, such an establishment does not require any great expense, and a woman may be procured for a very trivial price.

OF THE MARRIAGE CEREMONIES.

"The person who courts a young girl, solicits her consent, and demands her of her parents; but this demand is a mere matter of formality. When the lover and the girl are both of a sentiment, and matters are drawing towards a crisis, he makes a present to the parents of a few pounds

of salt, a little gold, and sometimes an ox or sheep: the present which he makes to the girl consists of from two to four pieces of cotton cloth, a few pair of Morocco sandals, or slippers, some glass ornaments, yellow amber, coral, cloves, some Dutch coins, and one or two baskets of millet: for this price he may obtain even the daughter of a chief or kingAmongst the lower classes, the presents are less valuable.

"When the presents have been accepted, the parents of the young woman conduct her to the house of her husband, attended by a numerous train of women, dancers, musicians, &c. who chaunt the virtue and beauty of the lady, and the power, riches, and generosity of her intended spouse.

"On the arrival of the young girl at the door of the house of him who is to receive her, she takes off her slippers, and receives from some of her attendants a little calabash full of water; she knocks at the door, and it is opened; she then finds her future husband surrounded by the elders of his family, and approaching towards him, she prostrates herself, and pours on his feet the water contained in the calabash; she afterwards wipes them with the lower part of her clothing.

"This act of submission is the only ceremony performed at marriages. After this, the husband installs his wife in a cottage on his land, which has been constructed and prepared expressly for her use, and where she finds every thing necessary for her private subsistence.

"It is the same in the country of Bambouk as in all the western countries of Africa which I have visited; the first woman espoused

by

by a black is to all intents and pur, poses his wife, and preserves a certain degree of superiority over all those whom he afterwards espouses. The first wife resides in the house of her husband, eats with him, but without ever sitting at the same table; she takes care of his slippers in the house, and is consulted and heard on all domestic affairs.

"The other women, who are the associates of the first wife, though they are also legitimately united, are nevertheless obliged to obscrve a certain deference towards the former: they are never suffered to enter the house of their Jord without being sent for, and they are obliged to leave their slippers at the door; they are, in fact, a sort of legitimate concuhines, who are visited by the husband in rotation, each of them a week at a time. Each of these women, during the period in question, is obliged to prepare the food for her master, which she causes to be sent to his residence; or if she is patronised by the principal wife, she carries it thither herself.

"Each wife enjoys her own private property, and the most la-borious is the richest. Those women who are most experienced in washing the gold, possess the greatest quantity of that metal; the richest of them, however, cannot allow herself more luxuries than the poorest, because the husband will not suffer it; hence the only use that the richer woman can make of her property is, to render her residence more commodious and agreeable, to keep her children in better order, and to regale her husband and friends.

"As the first wife has great influence, the concubines are interested in courting her favour, and

they endeavour to emulate each other in gaining her friendship by presents, by which means they render their own existence more agreeable.

ON THE GALLANTRY OF THE

BAMBOUK WOMEN.

"The Bamboukians are volup tuous, but not jealous: their women and girls are gallant, and surrender themselves for a trivial recompense to those who solicit them. No shame is attendant on the abandoned conduct of the girls; but the open adultery of a married woman casts a degree of ignominy on her husband.

"When the report of an adul terous intercourse is spread abroad, the husband is in some degree debased by it, unless he avenges himself, though his vengeance is not cruel. The insulted husband expels his wife, but keeps his children; he carries his complaint to the Bentaba, where he lays it before the chief and elders of the village. This tribunal condemns the seducer to pay the husband an ox, or some gold, and by the same decree, permits the husband to plunder his wife's gallant for the space of a month.

"This is the only punishment for adultery, which affixes no stigma on the women found guilty of the crime; they are expelled or repudiated, but they retain all the property they possessed, and often marry him who has seduced them, or some other husband more complaisant than the first.

"So much moderation in a. venging an outrage which generally irritates the vanity of man, proves that the Bamboukians are a corrupt people, and that their manners are dissolute; for it may

be

de Legaspi, who that year founded the city of Manilla, which has since been, and is at present the capital of the Spanish settlements in the Philippine Islands.

"In 1574 the pilot Juan Fernandez discovered two more islands in the neighbourhood of the American continent, which were named San Felix and San Ambor. They are described by the Spanish accounts to be small, uninhabited, and uninhabitable, being without fresh water; and that they were the resort of birds, sea-calves, and fish. Their latitude 25° 20′ south, and their distance to the west from Copiapo, 154 leagues.

The English at this time first began to project enterprises in the South Sea. England and Spain were not in a state of open war; but the circumstances and events of the reigns of Philip the Second and of queen Elizabeth were such as did not fail to produce a strong degree of animosity between the two nations, which neither would be at the pains to conceal. Acts of aggression were commit ted by individuals of both, and connived at, sometimes encouraged, by the sovereigns. During a great part of queen Elizabeth's reign, the two countries may be said to have been in a state of open (though not declared) enmity, and of private warfare.

With these dispositions, a number of English adventurers entered into schemes for enriching themselves at the expense of the Spanish settlements in America; in revenge, it is said, for injuries

done either to themselves, or to some of their countrymen, by the Spaniards in that part of the world. John Oxnam, or Oxenham, of Plymouth, was the first Englishman who extended these schemes to cruising against the Spaniards in the South Sea. He had accompanied captain (afterwards sir Francis) Drake, in 1572-3, on an expedition to the West Indies, in which that commander left his ship on the north side of Darien, and, being joined by the Indians who inhabited that part of the country, marched across the isthmus with the intention of intercepting the Spanish treasure that was expected to have been sent upon mules from Panama to Nombre de Dios. The drunkenness of one of the English seamen prevented this attempt from succeeding.

"In the account of captain Drake's journey across the isthmus there is the following pas sage: It gave a special encou ragement unto us all, that we understood there was a great tree about the midway, from whence we might at once discern the North Sea, from whence we came, and the South Sea, whither we were going.

"The fourth day following [this was the eighth day of their journey] we came to the height of the desired hill (lying east and west, like a ridge between the twe seas) about ten of the clock, where the chiefest of the Symerons* took our captain by the hand, and prayed him to follow him. Here