302 
EARTHEN-WARE. 
cessary for man in an unsophisticated state. The inhabitants 
are gentle^ humane, and very hospitable, curious to excess, 
but much less teazing than the Mandingoes. Their food is 
very simple : they eat, like the people of Kankan, rice, tau, 
foigne, vt^ithout pounding ; to these they add a sauce made of 
leaves of different herbs, or of roasted pistachio-nuts. They 
seldom use salt, which is a great luxury, and eat meat only 
on feast-days 5 in their sauces they mix (besides gombo) the 
leaf of the baobab, dried and pounded ; they also eat the fruit 
of this tree, which they steep in water or milk, and which, like 
nede, is very sweet and nutritious. 
The women manufacture earthen pots for their house- 
keeping ; for this purpose they use a grey clay, which they 
find on the banks of the streams ; they knead it, and clear it 
of all extraneous matter, and when of the proper consistence, 
it is easily worked : having brought it into the right form, 
they polish it by degrees with their hands, and the vessels, 
when finished, are placed in the shade to dry slowly, for the 
heat of the sun would crack them ; when half dry, they are 
again polished with a piece of wood made for the purpose ; in 
this way they become quite shining, and are again set to dry. 
Before they are completely hardened, they are exposed to a 
gentle sun, and eight or ten days afterwards they are piled 
one upon another, between two layers of millet- straw, which 
is set on fire to complete the baking. Vessels which are thus 
made come out quite glazed and of a greyish colour ; they are 
usually round, with a little rim round the top, and no handle ; 
they very much resemble what are made all through Fouta- 
Dhialon and Kankan. The amiable inhabitants of this happy 
country live as if they were all of one family. Each hamlet 
is composed of twelve or fourteen huts, or even fewer, sur- 
rounded by a clumsy and tasteless wooden palisade. In the 
centre of this li:tle group of huts is a court, into which they 
all open ; the cattle are shut up in this court at night ; but 
the calves have a separate enclosure ; it is the business of the 
