DAKAR — WHITTLESEY 385 



sunset. Ill the shade sensible temperature is much lower, except 

 during the rainy season. Then the nights also are stuffy, but for 

 8 months they are pleasant. 



ABORIGINAL LITE 



111 this rather unpropitious environment a small African popula- 

 tion has been sparsely scattered over the peninsula for untold genera- 

 tions. Presumably the prehistoric inhabitants gained their meager 

 living as did their descendants described by early European travelers — 

 from fishing, supplemented by such cultivation as the short wet 

 season made possible.^ Diggings show that water supply determined 

 their distribution. The springs at Harm and Rufisque seem to have 

 attracted the densest populations. There water seeps from sand 

 dunes; elsewhere wells must be dug. The Hann site had the further 

 advantage of a surf-free landing for fishing skiffs. 



When Europeans undertook settlement in the vicinity, they found 

 numerous hamlets fringing the coast and a smaller number on interior 

 sites at the base of lines of dunes. The people were tall, velvet-black 

 Negroes, a branch of the Wolof. Most of the coastal settlements 

 seem to have used brackish water from marshy backwaters, though 

 some had shallow pits in dunesides. Those cut off by sand or marsh 

 from arable land exchanged their fish for millet raised in interior 

 villages. Oil and wine came from the palms that straggled along the 

 backwaters. The brush and fallen trees furnished firewood. Wattle, 

 basketwork, and thatch were building materials for huts and gran- 

 aries. All these items except fish were getting scarce by the beginning 

 of the nineteenth century. Millet, planted on one-third of the land, 

 was reported to have been insufficient to support the inhabitants, 

 numbering 10 to 12 thousand.® 



Today all the villages are modified by the presence of the French- 

 African city of Dakar. Several have been engulfed in the metropolis, 

 to which one, in vanishing, gave its name. Perhaps the fishing 

 villages on the north coast remain much as they were before the 

 Europeans came. 



N'Gor is typical of these hamlets of native huts and granaries. It 

 stands on the crest of the continuous line of dunes that have piled 

 up to a height of 8 or 10 meters above the wide white beach (pi. 1, 

 upper left). Among the houses are tiny gardens of squashes and 

 beans, partly protected from drifting sand by mats held upright be- 

 tween stakes (pi. 1, lower left). Fresh water is drawn from wells 3 

 to 5 meters deep, dug in the front slope of the dunes and walled with 



5 Pierre Laforgue and Raymond Mauny, Contribution Jl la pr^liistoire du Cap-Vert 

 (Senegal), Bull. Com. fitudes Hist. et. Sci. Afrique Occidentale Frangaise, vol. 21, pp. 523- 

 548, 19.'',8. 

 ' Schmalz, quoted by Faure. op. cit., p. 34. In view of the extent of marsh and other 

 wasteland, the crop area was probably smaller ; but so was the poplation. The ratio given 

 may be correct. 



