The peace offerings and presents from all those who have any business to transact with the king, or favour to ask from him, although not limited to any particular amount, do not compose the least valuable part of his income: slaves, horses, cattle, poultry, rice, corn, cotton cloths, gold, and indeed all the productions of the country, are incessantly presented as douceurs. The religion is Mahomedan, but its precepts are not so strictly attended to in Bondoo as in some of the other states of Western Africa. There are mosques of one kind or other in every town; some of them, however, are nothing more than small square spaces enclosed with stakes, and kept cleanly swept. Here, as in all the others, prayers are publicly said five times every day; the usual Mahomedan ceremonies of ablution, &c., are attended to. When praying, they strip off all implements of war, or receptacles of money, tobacco, or snuff, and make use of a string of beads or rosary, which they count frequently after each act of devotion. This consists in facing the east, and bowing the body several times, so as to allow the forehead to touch the ground, at the same time repeating some short prayers from the Koran, and frequently ejaculating the name of the Prophet in the most apparently devout manner. Had Almamy Amady, in embracing this religion, bad and unsound as it is, been actuated by any other principle than that of self-interest, and the desire of attaching to his cause the people of Foota Toro and Jallon, he might have (at least by personal example) inspired his subjects with a reverence for the divine character, and an inclination to please him, by a just and upright line of conduct, to both which they are entire strangers; evincing, in all their concerns, both among themselves and with their neighbours, a low deceitful cunning, which they endeavour to cloak by religious cant. In fact, I have never seen a people who have more of the outward show of religion with less of its inward influence. There are schools in almost every town, for the instruction of those youths who intend making the Mahomedan religion their profession, and in the principles and practice of which, and reading and writing Arabic from their sacred book, the Koran, they are solely instructed. Numbers and their uses are unknown; they can scarcely add two simple numbers together without having recourse to the usual African methods, namely, counting the fingers, or making strokes in the sand. The student or scholar is, in all cases, the servant of his teacher, who may employ him in any menial capacity whatever. They go about, when not at their lessons, begging, and sewing the country cloths together, for any who may want to employ them: the produce of those callings are brought to the master, who is always a priest, and appropriated to his use.