COWRIES— SOFAS. 
373 
coast. We proceeded E. N. E. over a very fertile soil, con- 
sisting of grey sand mixed with fine gravel. The country 
was woody ^ I observed some tamarind-trees and many ces. 
About nine in the morning, after travelling six miles and a 
half, we reached Niourot, a little village, where we could pur- 
chase nothing but with cowries, which are the current 
money among all the inhabitants of upper Bambara. They 
receive them from the European merchants who trade on the 
western coasts, and from the Moors on the shores of the Me- 
diterranean. The cowries are just beginning to be current 
in this part of the country. The price of a fowl is eighty 
cowries. In the language of the country kem4 signifies 
eighty, and to express a hundred the people say eighty and 
twenty, or kerne nimouya^ 
We were lodged in a very large hut where I saw, not 
without astonishment, two seats resembling sofas, each made 
out of the trunk of a tree. I regarded them as curiosities 
among a people who have no carpenter's tools. The legs, 
the arms, and the back, were all made out of one piece of 
wood, which was of a red colour and very hard. These sofas 
were really executed with some taste j they must have been 
a work of considerable time, but in those countries time is 
not so valuable as with us. The people have no other tools 
than small hatchets and poniards. 
I observed that our host kept about a dozen little dogs, 
which, when sufficiently fattened, were destined for food. 
He had also a number of chickens; he fed them with ter- 
mites, which his children brought from the fields. In general 
I did not see in this part of the country those great hills of the 
white ant (termites) which are found on the shores of the Se- 
negal, where they are sometimes eight or nine feet high; those 
which I saw here are not more than eighteen inches or two 
feet high. In this village all the heads of families have huts 
* See the Mandingo vocabulary. 
