The route from Goree to Senegal is in general woody, and the woods contain many banyan and latane or palm trees. The fruit of the former, and the wine of the latter, are too well known to need any description. There are also great numbers of a shrub, whose leaves resemble those of the pear-tree, and have an aromatic flavour combined with the smell of the myrtle: it communicates its delicious flavour to the flesh of the cattle, which feed on it in preference to any other vegetable. There is likewise a tree which is called the soap-tree: its fruit is of the size of a small walnut, and the negroes, who use it to wash the cotton cloths which they wear round their waists, beat it between two stones to separate the nut from the shells; and it is with the latter that they rub what they are about to wash. It dissolves easily, and completely cleanses the cotton, but burns the cloth: this circumstance, however, though serious to the wearers, is of great advantage to our commerce, which supplies them with such articles. In some parts they cultivate tobacco upon a large scale; for the negroes, though they only use it for smoking, consume vast quantities. They merely bruise it when ripe, and make it into bunches; and notwithstanding this slovenly way of preparing it, the flavour of it is tolerably good. In the journey to which I have alluded we meet with no dangerous animals, excepting serpents, which are both large and numerous, being sometimes from fifteen to twenty feet long, and a foot and a half in diameter. It is asserted that these are less dangerous than the small ones, which are but two inches thick, and four or five feet long: it is, however, remarkable that the human species are very seldom injured by these reptiles. To observe the _sang froid_ with which the negroes let the serpents enter the hovels to creep about, hunt the rats, and sometimes the fowls, without feeling the least alarm at their appearance, one would suppose that there was a reciprocal contract between them to live together in harmony. Nevertheless the negroes are sometimes bitten by these animals, on which occasions the remedy they apply is the actual cautery. When they happen to possess gunpowder, they cover the puncture with it and explode it, which produces a scar that draws out the venom. These accidents, however, are not frequent, and the negroes in general do not appear to apprehend them. The Cereses, on the contrary, dread the serpents, and keep them from their habitations as much as possible; indeed, they are continually at war with them, lay snares for them with much adroitness, and, on finding them, eat their flesh, which they think very good. The serpents have other and still more terrible enemies, which are the eagles that abound throughout the country: they are of the same species as those in Europe, but far superior in size and strength.