404 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 42 



adjacent to the coal park, on level land between railroad and water 

 front. Small stone quarries and a brickkiln provide building material 

 as needed. 



Most of the manufacturing is handicraft. Dressmaking with the 

 aid of American sewing machines occupies hundreds of men (no 

 women) . Carpenters make furniture for local use out of the handsome 

 African cabinet woods. Marabouts contrive amulets. A few jewelers 

 still fashion the filagree ornaments prized by the women. Competi- 

 tion by machine-made goods from Europe has all but driven out the 

 weaving, dyeing, basketmaking, tanning, and steelwork that flourished 

 before the first World War, utilizing native materials to satisfy native 

 needs. Some 8,000 men gain a livelihood from manufacturing and 

 handicrafts. 



Race segregation and the clustering of business have set up a diurnal 

 rhythm of movement, on foot and in a fleet of nondescript motor 

 vehicles that ply as busses. Market folk bring in their produce before 

 dawn. In the cool of the early morning a tide of workmen and 

 domestics (all male) from African suburbs and villages farther afield 

 flows into the port, the factory district, the artisans' street, and the 

 European homes. Clerks in the offices scatter through the commercial 

 and official sections. All except the domestics return home about 

 6 p. m. Oiled macadam roads connecting all the villages, and the 

 28 kilometers of principal streets, facilitate this movement. Road 

 building has been costly, because of shifting sand and the lack of 

 laterite, handy road metal in many parts of tropical Africa. 



THE PORT 



Areal differentiation in the port is even more marked than in the 

 city. Except for its political function, Dakar is the creature of its 

 port. The chief commercial business combines importing and export- 

 ing with servicing ships that call; the marine arsenal, covering 16 

 hectares, is the largest factory in town. Both these functions greatly 

 expanded between the two World Wars. 



Direct meter-gauge rail connection 1,291 kilometers into the interior 

 was made in 1923. Since this date Dakar has handled nearly all the 

 varied imports of Senegal and the French Sudan. Exports have 

 increased, but less signally. Aside from peanuts, 78 to 80 percent 

 of the commerce of Senegal and the French Sudan passes through 

 Dakar. 



The dominant export crop of the hinterland is peanuts, grown in 

 the short rainy season and marketed from November until June. Dur- 

 ing the early months of each dry season, great heaps of bags and hills 

 of unbagged, unshelled nuts accumulate at the peanut ports (pi. 4, 

 lower right) , taxing their resources. The lesser crops come in at the 



