ARTS, MANUFACTURE, &c. 
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manship. The needles and castanets will only give some idea of 
their progress. The iron stone is of a dark red colour, spotted 
with gray, and intermixed with what had all the appearance of 
lava, they cut bullets out of it for the army, when lead is scarce. 
I have brought some arrows of native iron. They have no idea of 
making a lock like the people of Houssa and Marrowa. 
They tan or dress leather in Ashantee, but they do this, and dye 
it, in a very superior manner in Houssa and Dagwumba ; see the 
sandals and cushion in the British Museum, the former varied and 
apparently stitched; doubting that there could be such stitching, I 
undid a part, and discovered that they perforated the surface, and 
then stuck in the fine shreds of leather. The curious will observe, 
that ihe patterns of the stool cushion are all produced by paring 
the surface. They make their soldiers belts and pouches out of 
elephant or pig skin, ornamented with red shells. (See drawing, 
No. 7.) 
Of their carpenter's work the stool is a fair specimen, being 
carved oul; of a solid piece of a wood called zesso, white, soft, and 
bearing a high polish ; it is first soaked in water. They sell such a 
stool for about three shillings, in Accra or Fantee it would fetch 
twenty. The umbrella is even more curious, the bird is cut almost 
equal to turning, and the whole is so supple that it may be turned 
inside out. This, only a child's umbrella, is a model of the large 
canopies I have described in the procession; I gave a piece of 
cloth value twenty shillings for it. The sanko or guitar is also 
neatly made, and the chasteness and Etruscan character of the 
carving is very surprising. The surface of the wood is first charred 
in the fire, and then carved deep enough to disclose the original 
white in the stripes or lines of the patterns. 
Numbers of workmen are employed in breaking, rounding, and 
boring the snail shells, as big as a turkey's egg generally, and 
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