because, to preserve them all the year, they must be steeped in brine, and salt is scarce in this part of Africa. In general the sauces are strongly seasoned with allspice. At meal-times the guests assemble round the dish, and each in his turn takes a handful of yams, rolls it up in his hand, makes a hole in it with his thumb, and dips it into the sauce. When the rice is well cleaned and boiled in water, the cook adds to it a sauce made of pistachios and leaves of Guinea sorrel, but no salt. This article being expensive is used only at festivities, or on occasion of the visits of strangers of consequence. The people themselves are so accustomed to dispense with it, that they cannot feel the want of it as a great privation. Yet they invariably use a little salt whenever they eat meat, and I have heard them say that they would rather postpone their entertainments for a few days than go without salt. When they kill a kid or a sheep, they collect several of their neighbours, but they do not feast together. Each carries away his share to regale himself with his family at home. The inhabitants of Timé are Mandingoes, and they all make journeys to Jenné. I inquired of them the distance from one city to the other, to ascertain whether they agree on this point with the people of Sambatikila. They all assured me that I required two months to go, and two months to return; but that they could only make two journeys in the course of the year, because they were obliged to travel to Teuté and Cani, a fortnight’s journey to the south of Jenné, to purchase their colats. I also learned that the inhabitants of those villages themselves go very far to the south, to a place called Toman, to procure these colats. On their return they cover them with leaves, and then bury them under ground to preserve them. This fruit may be kept fresh for nine or ten months by taking the precaution to renew the leaves. The colat-tree flourishes in the south; it is very abundant in the Kissi, the Couranco, the Sangaran and the Kissi-kissi. It is a general article of trade in the interior; for the inhabitants, having no kind of fruits, highly esteem the colat, and, indeed, regard it as a sort of luxury. Old men who have lost their teeth reduce the colats to powder by means of a small grater, consisting merely of a bit of tin in which they make holes very close together. The Bambaras are very fond of the colats; but as they have not facility for going to the country where they grow, they purchase them with cotton and other produce of their agricultural industry.