90 ACCOUNT OF THE LAAUBES. 
unless they have committed some serious crime. They are 
well fed, and no labour is required of them but what they can 
perform with ease. The women pound grain, spin cotton, 
keep the hut in order,, and fetch water. The boys tend the 
flocks. The men cut wood, and only during- three months of 
the year are employed in the cultivation of the ground, which 
is not laborious. The soil is so light, that it is sufficient to 
turn it up with a spade, the end of which is very narrow ; 
the women alone are really engaged ail the year round in 
their domestic occupations. 
We find diffused among the Joloffs, a people whose manners 
resemble those of the gypsies, and who are known by the 
name of Laaubés. Leading a roving life, and without fixed 
habitations, their only employment is the manufacture of 
wooden vessels, mortars, and bedsteads : they move about 
from place to place, wherever they think it likely to find the 
means of gaining a subsistence. They choose a well-wooded 
spot, fell some trees, form huts with the branches, and work 
up the trunks. For this privilege they pay a kind of tax to 
the sovereign in whose states they settle. They are said to 
possess considerable wealth ; but their appearance would indi- 
cate abject poverty. They are in general ugly and very 
slovenly. 
The women, notwithstanding their almost frightful faces, 
are covered with amber and coral beads, presents with which 
they are loaded by the Joloffs, who are persuaded, that if 
