GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 363 



to have strings of beads round their necks and arms and 

 legs, and in default of these, strings of the cowrie shell, or 

 of the round seeds of various plants. 



Their canoes are generally hollowed out of the trunk of 

 the bombax or cotton tree, or of a species of ficus, the 

 common size being about twenty-four feet in length, and 

 from eighteen to twenty inches in Avidth ; and they are all 

 pushed forwards with long paddles, the men standing up- 

 right; they use neither sails, nor any substitute for them. 



A rude hoe of iron, stuck into a wooden handle, is the 

 implement used for agricultural purposes ; but the climate 

 is so fine, that, by merely scratching the surface of the 

 ground, they succeed in raising good crops. The great 

 scarcity of provisions, experienced by the party who pro- 

 ceeded up the river, was occasioned entirely by the long 

 drought, and that want of precaution in laying up a stock 

 against such a contingency, which, it would seem, is here 

 rather the effect of indolence and thoughtlessness, than 

 any distrust in the right and security of property ; which 

 indeed is so well understood, that almost all the disputes 

 among the natives arise from their tenacity in the division 

 of property, whether in land or stock. This participation is 

 frequently so minute, that, as Captain Tuckey observes, a 

 fowl or a pig may sometimes have three or four proprietors. 



POPULATJOX AND CONDITION OF THE PeOPLE. 



Though the population evidently increased, the farther 

 the party proceeded into the interior, the banks of 

 the river were but thinly inhabited in the very best and 



