Religion, and Dress of that Nation_.

Leaving Cape Branco, and the Gulf of Arguin, we continued our course
along the coast to the river Senegal, which divides the desert and the
tawny Azanhaji from the fruitful lands of the Negroes. Five years before
I went on this voyage, this river was discovered by three caravels
belonging to Don Henry, which entered it, and their commanders settled
peace and trade with the Moors; since which time ships have been sent to
this place every year to trade with the natives[1]. The river Senegal is
of considerable size, being a mile wide at the mouth, and of sufficient
depth. A little farther on it has another entrance, and between the two,
there is an island which forms a cape, running into the sea, having sand-
banks at each mouth that extend a mile from the shore[2]. All ships that
frequent the Senegal ought carefully to observe the course of the tides,
the flux and reflux of which extend for seventy miles up the river, as I
was informed by certain Portuguese, who had been a great way up this
river with their caravels. From Cape Branco, which is 280 miles distant,
the whole coast is sandy till within twenty miles of the river. This is
called the coast of _Anterota_, and belongs entirely to the Azanhaji or
Tawny Moors. I was quite astonished to find so prodigious a difference in
so narrow a space, as appeared at the Senegal: For, on the south side of
the river, the inhabitants are all exceedingly black, tall, corpulent and
well proportioned, and the country all clothed in fine verdure, and full
of fruit trees; whereas, on the north side of the river, the men are
tawny, meagre, and of small stature, and the country all dry and barren.
This river, in the opinion of the learned, is a branch of the _Gihon_,
which flows from the Terrestrial Paradise, and was named the Niger by the
ancients, which flows through the whole of Ethiopia, and which, on
approaching the ocean to the west, divides into many other branches. The
_Nile_, which is another branch of the Gihon, falls into the
Mediterranean, after flowing through Egypt[3].

The first kingdom of the Negroes is on the banks of the Senegal, and its
inhabitants are called _Gilofi_ or Jalofs. All the country is low, not
only from the north to that river, but also beyond it, as far south as
Cape Verd, which is the highest land on all this coast, and is 400 miles
from Cape Branco. This kingdom of the Jalofs, on the Senegal, is bounded
on the east