GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 383 
Crimes anv Punisuments.—The only capital crimes 
are stated to be those of poisoning and adultery, the latter of 
which is singular enough, considering in what little estima- 
tion women are held. Murder and theft are punished by re- 
taliation and restitution, or‘selling the criminal into slavery. 
The Gangam and his Kissey are the grand jury who find 
the bill, but the accused undergoes a trial by ordeal before 
the elders of the community. He is made to chew a cer- 
tain poisonous bark; if guilty, he keeps it in his stomach 
and it occasions his death; if innocent, he throws it up 
again and he is acquitted of the charge; and thus the 
guilt or innocence of a man is made to depend on the 
strength of his stomach. ‘The practice of poisoning is so 
common, that the master of a slave always makes him 
taste his cooked victuals before he ventures to eat of them 
himself. 
Disrasres anp Remepres.—The natives in general ap- 
peared to be healthy ; the diseases under which they mostly 
laboured, were of the cutaneous kind, few being free from 
the itch, and scrofula; leprosy, and elephantiasis were ob- 
served, and some few cases of fever and fluxes occurred. 
They appeared to be subject also to indolent tumors, and 
most of them were observed to have large navels. Among 
the people of the neighbouring towns who came down to 
Inga to see the white men that were stationed there, a 
Mafook brought with him his daughter, a girl of about 
twelve years of age, whose skin was perfectly white, but 
of a pale sickly colour, though the father said she was 
