anxiety towards another, which they believe will be better suited to their natures, but concerning which they are far from indulging vain and delusive conjectures. The Mandingoes seldom attain extreme old age. At forty most of them become grey-haired and covered with wrinkles, and but few of them survive the age of fifty-five or sixty. They calculate the years of their lives, as I have already observed, by the number of rainy seasons (there being but one such in the year), and distinguish each year by a particular name, founded on some remarkable occurrence which happened in that year. Thus they say the year of the _Farbanna_ war—the year of the _Kaarta war_—the year on which _Gadou was plundered_, etc., etc.; and I have no doubt that the year 1796 will in many places be distinguished by the name of _tobaubo tambi sang_ (the year the white man passed), as such an occurrence would naturally form an epoch in their traditional history. But notwithstanding that longevity is uncommon among them, it appeared to me that their diseases are but few in number. Their simple diet and active way of life preserve them from many of those disorders which embitter the days of luxury and idleness. Fevers and fluxes are the most common and the most fatal. For these they generally apply saphies to different parts of the body, and perform a great many other superstitious ceremonies—some of which are indeed well calculated to inspire the patient with the hope of recovery, and divert his mind from brooding over his own danger—but I have sometimes observed among them a more systematic mode of treatment. On the first attack of a fever, when the patient complains of cold, he is frequently placed in a sort of vapour-bath. This is done by spreading branches of the _nauclea orientalis_ upon hot wood embers, and laying the patient upon them, wrapped up in a large cotton cloth. Water is then sprinkled upon the branches, which, descending to the hot embers, soon covers the patient with a cloud of vapour, in which he is allowed to remain until the embers are almost extinguished. This practice commonly produces a profuse perspiration, and wonderfully relieves the sufferer. For the dysentery they use the bark of different trees reduced to powder and mixed with the patient’s food; but this practice is in general very unsuccessful.