Circumcision is practised among men, and a certain infliction on women, not, however, from religious motives, but to guard against the consequences of a disease not uncommon among them. The infliction upon women is the result of infidelity, or a sacrifice of chastity to loose gratification. As a preliminary, they retire to the _bunda_, or penitentiary, and are there secluded from all sexual intercourse. When the season of penitence is over, the operation is performed by the rude application of two stones, fashioned and sharpened for the purpose; this obliterates all delinquincy, and on their return to the world they are considered as restored to virgin purity. Wars in Africa originate from a variety of causes; in forming a correct estimate of these, it is necessary to consider its localities and situation. The inhabitants of this quarter of the earth, more particularly those of the district now under consideration, compose numerous tribes and nations, whose various views and interests excite jealousies and contentions, which, aided by the passions peculiar to a barbarous people, inevitably produce hostilities, and the effusion of human blood. What we have hitherto known of this country undoubtedly proves that wars are carried on with the most sanguinary violence: their prisoners, by the customs of the country, are consigned to massacre, slavery, and sacrifice,[1] to gratify the avarice, vanity, and cruelty of their chiefs; one of these passions must be predominant, and therefore the question is, which of them is the least pregnant with evil? It cannot admit of a doubt that those who are victims to avarice meet a more mild and humane fate, in falling into the hands of Europeans, than the unhappy portion who are sacrificed to vanity and cruelty; and it is equally true, that since the interior nations have been enabled to exchange their slaves for European merchandize, the number of victims to the latter passion has decreased. I am far from being the advocate of slavery, but I am stating a fact, and leave it to the reader to form his own conclusions. Where confirmed habits and immemorial custom is to be supplanted, it is certainly requisite to be well acquainted with the nature and character of the natives, which I have not here introduced in an exaggerated shape, but infinitely within the bounds of their savage ferocity. From these sources alone have arisen the expedients attendant upon the slave trade; kidnapping and petty warfare form a very unimportant branch of the barbarism which governs the inhabitants of Africa, and their enslaved condition.