50 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA. 
long Spears, bows and arrows, and occasionally a 
long gun. They are good marksmen with all 
these, and seldom throw away a shot ; but this 
arises more from the difficulty they find in ob- 
taining powder, ball, and small shot, than from 
any dislike to miss their mark. 
We also visited the town of Yanimaroo. It is 
beautifully situated at a short distance from the 
river-side, on an elevated spot, thinly sprinkled 
with large shady trees of the mahogany kind, 
and interspersed with evergreens and other 
shrubs, and a great number of that kind of palm 
from which is extracted the palm wine. 
The greater proportion of the inhabitants are 
pagans ; a few, however, profess the Mahome- 
dan religion, retaining many of their pagan su- 
perstitions. The latter are much respected, and 
enjoy a considerable degree of influence over 
their unenlightened brethren. The soil about 
Yanimaroo is a light yellow sand, mixed with 
stiff clay of the same colour, except where there 
are groves of palm trees, and then it is invariably 
a dark, rich, vegetable mould, mixed with a 
light red or white sand. 
There are, on the banks of the river, a little 
above Yanimaroo, a great number of the self- 
consuming tree. We never saw any of them on 
fire, nor yet smoking, but their appearance would 
lead a person to suppose they had been burnt. 
