Some of these _guiriots_, or minstrels, travel about the country with their families, dancing and singing at every village where their services are required. The Africans are so partial to these wandering musicians, that they often make them quite rich by their liberality. The female singers are covered with various colored beads, and not unfrequently with ornaments of the precious metals. But though the _guiriots_ are always welcome at weddings and festivals, though their songs kindle the soldier’s courage as he goes to battle, and enliven the dreariness of journeys through the desert, yet they are regarded with even more contempt than falls upon similar classes in other parts of the world. Not even a slave would consent to marry into a family that had followed this profession; and when they die, their bodies are placed in hollow trees, from the idea that crops of millet would certainly fail if they were buried in the earth. The _guiriots_ dance in the same immodest style that characterizes the Asiatic performers. Their dances are always accompanied by drums and other musical instruments. Among the Wolofs none but public singers play on any instrument, it being considered disrespectable for others to practise this amusement. The African women are so passionately fond of dancing, that wherever the itinerant minstrels appear, they flock around them, and encourage them by songs, while they beat time by clapping their hands. Indeed with this mirth-loving race every thing furnishes occasion for festivity and frolic. Their marriages and funerals conclude with dances; all their festivals are commemorated with songs and dances; every moonlight night the men and women meet in great numbers to enjoy this favorite exercise; and if the moon be wanting, they dance by the light of large fires. The young girls often unite together to buy palm wine, and after an entertainment at the hut of one of their companions, they go together through the village, singing in chorus a variety of charming airs, marking time by clapping their hands; these strains, though simple, and often repeated, are by no means monotonous. The Fulah songs are said to have a melancholy sweetness which is exceedingly captivating; and some of the Wolof airs are gracefully pathetic, while the measures in which they are composed indicates skill in music somewhat remarkable in a people so little civilized. On the banks of rivers and on the sea-coast, the inhabitants of villages one or two miles distant may be heard singing the same song, and alternately answering each other. Drums are their most common musical instruments; beside which they have a guitar of three strings, made of half a calabash covered with leather; a species of castanets, made of small gourd shells, filled with pebbles, or Guinea peas, which the dancers shake in a lively manner; and an instrument resembling a spinnet, called the _balafo_, in which the notes are struck by small