MANNERS AND CUSTOMS. 
303 
women to milk the cows. There are usually two outer doors 
to this court, at each of which is a forked piece of wood, 
which you are sometimes obligeito stride over, as it is not 
always very easy to squeeze past it, and 1 have found it very 
troublesome, on various occasions, in my Arabian costume. 
These forks are thus placed to prevent the cattle from stray- 
ing at night, and there is another entrance without this kind 
of barricade through which they are brought in and out. 
The women, who are employed in cooking, perform their 
operations in the open air. The inhabitants are in general 
very dirty and ill-clothed ; their costume resembles that of 
the natives of Toron ; and, like them, they use tobacco and 
snuff. They plait their hair in tresses, wear ear-rings of 
small beads and necklaces, and iron bracelets on their legs 
and arms, like the women. They are Foulahs, but do not 
speak the Foulah language. Their complexion, which is 
lighter than that of the Mandingoes, is of a darker hue than 
the negroes of Fouta-Dhialon. I tried to discover whether 
they had any religion of their own ; whether they worshipped 
fetishes, or the sun, moon or stars ; but I could never per- 
ceive any religious ceremony amongst them, and I suspect 
that they are careless on the subject, and trouble themselves 
very little with theology : if they had any specific belief 
of their own, instead of encouraging Musulmans and grigris, 
they would scorn them, and adhere to the superstition of 
their country. Small hamlets are to be seen at short dis- 
tances from one another all over the country. The inha- 
bitants grow a great quantity of cotton, of which they manu- 
facture cloth, and sell it to dealers, who carry it to Kankan. 
The looms which they use for weaving cloth are like ours, 
but smaller; the breadths are not more than five inches 
wide ; the slays are of reed, and they have a shuttle like ours 
with small bobbins, which they fasten to the shuttle with a 
thin bit of wire, or a small piece of reed ; they do not weave 
fast. The women sit in their courts, and spin cotton ; as 
