The Negroes of Senegal dry the bark and the leaves in the shade, and then reduce them to a fine powder. This powder, which is of a green colour, they preserve in little linen or cotton bags and term it lillo. They use it at their meals and in their cookery-putting a pinch or two into their food, in the same manner as we do pepper and salt, not so much with an idea of giving a relish to the dish, as with a view to preserve their health, to keep up a perpetual and plentiful perspiration, and to temper the too great heat of their blood; purposes which, if we may credit the reports of several Europeans, it is admirably calculated for. There is an epidemic fever, which rages in parts of Africa generally during the months of September and October, when the rains having on a sudden ceased, the sun exhales the water left by them upon the ground, and fills the air with noxious vapours. During this critical season, a light decoction, prepared from the leaves of the Baobab tree, gathered the preceding year, and carefully dried in the shade, is reckoned a serviceable remedy.

Nor is the fruit less valuable than the leaves or bark. The pulp, in which the seeds are enveloped, forms a very grateful, cooling, and slightly acid food, and is often eaten as a treat by the natives; the richer sort amongst them mix sugar with it to correct its acidity. The woody bark of the fruit, and the fruit itself when spoiled, help to supply the Negroes with an excellent soap; which they procure by drawing a ley from its ashes, and by boiling it with rancid palm-oil.

In Abyssinia, the wild bees penetrate the trunks of the Baobab for the sake of lodging their honey within them. This honey is said to possess a very peculiar and delicious fragrance and a very agreeable flavour, on which account it is more esteemed and sought after than any other.

The trunks of such of these trees as are decayed, serve when hollowed out, as tombs and burial-places for the poets, musicians, and buffoons of the tribe. Characters of this description are in great esteem amongst the Negroes whilst living; they erroneously ascribe to them VOL. IV. 6

talents superior to the rest of their fellow-creatures; which peculiar gifts they are supposed to derive from a commerce with demons, sorcerers, and bad spirits. This causes them, during their life time, to be much respected and courted by their various and respective tribes; but their bodies, after death, are far from being treated with this respect; on the contrary, they are regarded with so great a horror, that they deny them the rites of burial-neither suffering them to be put beneath the ground, nor thrown into the sea or rivers, from a superstitious dread that the water thus dishonoured would refuse to nourish the fish, and that the earth would fail to produce its fruits. The bodies, then, in order to get rid of them in some manner without degrading either the sea or land, they enclose in the hollow trunks of the trees, where in the course of ages, they become quite dry and sapless, without actually rotting, and form in that manner a description of mummy without the help of embalmP H.

ment.

The above engraving for the sixteenth number of Harper's Family Library, represents the celebrated city of fimbuctoo according to the description of M. Caille, a Frenchman, who penetrated across the continent, from Sierra Leone to Morocco. After narrating several attempts of Caille to reach the interior, and his subsequent return to France, the work proceeds

"In 1824 M. Caille repaired again to the Senegal and resumed his schemes of discovery. With the aid of M. Roger, the governor, he passed nearly a year among the tribe of the Moors called Braknas, and conceived himself to have acquired such a knowledge of the manners and religion of that race as to fit him for travelling in

the character of a converted Mohammedan on a pilgrimage to Mecca. Having returned to St Louis, he solicited from two successive governors the sum of 600 francs, with which he undertook to reach Timbuctoo; but a deaf ear was turned to his application. He then repaired to Sierra Leone, and made the same request to General Turner and Sir Neil Campbell; but these officers could not be expected, without authority from home, to bestow such a sum on a foreigner possessing no very striking qualifications. They received him kindly, however, and gave him appointments, out of which he saved about 807.; when, stimulated by the prize of 1000 francs offered by the French Society of Geography to any individual who should succeed in reaching Timbuctoo, he formed the spirited resolution to undertake this arduous journey with only the resources which the above slender sum could command.

On the 19th April, 1827, M. Caille set out from Kakundy with a small caravan of Mandingoes. His route lay through the centre of the kingdom of Foota Jallo. This was a very elevated district, watered by the infant streams of the Senegal and Niger, which descend from a still higher region toward the south. It was a laborious route to travel, being steep, rocky, traversed by numerous ravines and torrents, and often obstructed by dense forests. It presented, however, many highly picturesque views; while the copious rivulets diffused a rich verdure over extensive tracts, on which the Foulahs fed numerous flocks, which, with a little rice they contrived to raise, sufficed for their subsistence. Fruits of various kinds, yams, and other vegetables are also cultivated with success. Their rude agriculture, however, is conducted chiefly by slaves, who are in general treated well, living in villages by themselves."

After spending nearly a year in passing through various districts, and having been also delayed five months by illness, he arrived at Jenne, a city of 8 or 10,00 inhabitants. The narrative goes on.

"On the 23d March, M. Caille left Jenne, near which he embarked on the Joliba, which was there half a mile

broad, in a vessel of sixty tons burden, but of very slight construction, and bound together with cords. Such barks, impelled without sails, and deeply laden, cannot proceed with safety when the waters are agitated by a brisk gale; therefore much time is consumed in the voyage. On the 2d April, the river opened into the great lake Dibbie, here called Debo, in sailing across which, notwithstanding its magnitude, land was lost sight of in no direction except the west, where the water appeared to extend indefinitely like an ocean.

After quitting this lake, the Niger flowed through a country thinly occupied by Foulah shepherds, and by some tents of the rude Tuaricks. On the 19th April, he arrived at Cabra, the port of Timbuctoo, consisting of a long row of houses composed of earth and straw, extending about half a mile on the bank of the river. The inhabitants, estimated at about 1200, are entirely employed in lading and unlading the numerous barks which touch at the quay.

In the evening of the 10th April, Caille, with some companions, rode from Cabra, and entered Timbuctoo. He describes himself as struck with an extraordinary and joyful emotion at the view of this mysterious city, so long the object of curiosity to the civilized nations of Europe. The scene, however, presented little of that grandeur and wealth with which the name has been associated. It comprised only a heap of ill-built earthen houses, all around which were spread immense plains of moving sand of a yellowish-white colour, and parched in the extreme. "The horizon is of a pale red-all is gloomy in nature, the deepest silence reigns, not the song of a single bird is heard; yet there was something imposing in the view of a great city thus raised amid sands and deserts by the mere power of commerce.

There are seven mosques at Timbuctoo, of which the principal one is very extensive, having three galleries 200 feet long, with a tower upwards of 50 feet high. The population is estimated at 10,000 or 12,000. The people are chiefly negroes of the Kissour tribe, but bigotted Mohammedans. Osman, the king, was an agree