There is a fruit called _Gola_, which grows in the interior. This fruit, which is inclosed in a shell, is hard, reddish, bitter, and about the size of a walnut, with many angles and corners. The negroes are much given to chew this fruit along with the bark of a certain tree. After one person has chewed it a while, he gives it to his neighbour, and so from one to another, chewing it long before they cast it away; but swallowing none of its substance. They attribute great virtues to this for the teeth and gums; and indeed the negroes have usually excellent teeth. This fruit passes also among them for money.[210] Higher within the land they cultivate cotton, which they call _innumma_, and of which they spin very good yarn with spindles, and afterwards very ingeniously weave into cloths, three quarters of a yard broad, to make their girdles or clouts formerly mentioned; and when sewed together it is made into jackets and breeches for their great men. By means of a wood called _cambe_, they dye their purses and mats of a red colour. [Footnote 210: In a side-note; Purchas calls this the fruit of the _carob tree_.--E.] The tree on which the _plantains_ grow is of considerable height, its body being about the thickness of a man's thigh. It seems to be an annual plant, and, in my opinion, ought rather to be reckoned among reeds than trees; for the stem is not of a woody substance, but is compacted of many leaves wrapped close upon each other, adorned with leaves from the very ground instead of boughs, which are mostly two yards long and a yard broad, having a very large rib in the middle. The fruit is a bunch of ten or twelve plantains, each a span long, and as thick as a man's wrist, somewhat crooked or bending inwards. These grow on a leafy stalk on the middle of the plant, being at first green, but grow yellow and tender as they ripen. When the rind is stripped off, the inner pulp is also yellowish and pleasant to the taste. Beneath the fruit hangs down, from the same stalk, a leafy sharp-pointed tuft, which seems to have been the flower. This fruit they call _bannana_, which they have in reasonable abundance. They are ripe in September and October. We carried some with us green to sea, which, were six weeks in ripening. Guinea pepper grows wild in the woods on a small plant like _privet_, having small slender leaves, the fruit being like our barberry in form and colour. It is green at first, turning red as it ripens. It does not grow in bunches like our barberry, but here and there two or three together about the stalk. They call it _bangue_. The _pene_, of which their bread is made, grows on a small tender herb resembling grass, the stalk being all full of small seeds, not inclosed in any bask. I think it is the same which the Turks call _cuscus_, and the Portuguese _yfunde_.