mounted upon a stick two feet long, and placed obliquely in a round calabash of much larger dimensions than the other. A leather thong, stretched horizontally over the skin which covers the gourd, serves to fasten the lower end of the strings, or sometimes they are attached to a bit of wood placed across. At the edge of the calabash and under the last string is a piece of iron, flat and oval, about five inches long, and set round with small iron rings, which tinkle when the harp is played upon, and add to the effect. The musicians never fail to ask for presents from the princes whose praises they sing, and as they are seldom refused they have numerous flocks and good beasts of burden. Sometimes they make presents to the marabouts to conciliate their esteem; and the marabouts accept the gift and despise them nevertheless. During the month that I passed with the king, I never once saw him take any solid food, or drink any thing but milk. When I asked him why he took neither sangleh nor meat, he replied that he preferred milk to all other food. To distinguish themselves from the common people, the king and his nobles always drank camel’s milk, and said they preferred it; but I always suspected that their only motive was the difficulty of procuring it, which prevented the slaves from drinking it also; a sort of distinction of which they are jealous. I have seen the queen several times eat meat swimming in melted butter. In the rainy season the Moors seldom take any other food than milk, which they have in abundance at that period of the year. The rich sometimes kill a sheep, but not often. The king’s guéhué killed a sheep one day, and was roasting it on the embers while I was in his tent; presently as many as thirty Moors collected, having found out what was going on by the smell of the meat; and they watched like so many ravenous beasts for the moment when they could satisfy their voracious appetite. The guéhué hoped to have got rid of them by distributing some small pieces among them; but no sooner had he sat down to the feast with his wife, than the Moors fell upon it and carried it all off, tearing the scraps from one another’s hands and mouths; they even fought for the bones, and dispatched the poor guéhué’s sheep without giving him a taste. I could only compare them to dogs fighting for a piece of meat that one of them had stolen; and I, who had been invited to partake with the lawful proprietor, was not more fortunate than himself. This was a great disappointment to me, as I was very hungry. I was told that this scene could not have taken place except at a guéhué’s, and that they would not have dared to behave so to a person of more importance.