220 
RESIDENCE AT SOCCATOO AND MAGARIA. 
fine in their mortars, until it becomes like paste. It is then made 
into small circular cakes, which .are dried in the sun before they are 
put by for use. This, when prepared, looks like chocolate. To me 
it had always a very disagreeable smell ; but the taste was rather 
pleasant than otherwise when put on roast meat or fowls. Of this 
the people are very fond, and go so far as to eat it alone, and with- 
out being cooked. 
When they wish to plant indigo, the place chosen is one of a 
good strong clay or mould, and in a situation where there is 
moisture through the heat of the summer. After enclosing the 
ground, they clear it entirely of weeds, and burn them. The 
ground is well worked up by the hoe (they have no spade or pick- 
axe), and laid out in furrows, with a flat top, about a foot high, two 
broad, and six or seven inches between each furrow. The indigo 
seeds are then planted by the dibble, and just as the rains have 
begun : they cut it every year during the rainy season. A planta- 
tion will last four or five years without renewing the seeds. They 
crop it about three or four inches above the ground. The leaves 
are then stripped from the stems, and laid in a heap, exposed to 
the rains and weather for a month, until they ferment, when they 
are beaten in wooden troughs of a round form, and about two feet 
deep, and two feet in diameter; here they remain until dry, and 
are then considered as fit for use. One of these troughs of indigo, 
in the spring, costs three hundred cowries; in the summer, the 
price rises to six or seven hundred. 
The cotton is here planted in low situations, where the ground 
is partially covered with water during the rains, or else in a good 
clay that has moisture in it through the dry season. The ground, 
or plantation, is generally only surrounded by thorny branches 
stuck in the ground as a fence, then hoed well, and the clods, if 
any remain, broken. A hole is made with the hoe, and the seed is 
