mel continued_.

On account of the great heats in the kingdom of Senegal, and all the
other countries of the Negroes on the coast, no wheat, rye, barley, or
spelt, can grow, neither are vines cultivated, as we knew experimentally
from a trial made with seeds from our ship: For wheat, and these other
articles of culture, require a temperate climate and frequent showers,
both of which are wanting here, where they have no rains during nine
months of the year, from October to June both included. But they have
large and small millet, beans, and the largest and finest kidney beans in
the world, as large as hazle nuts, longer than those of the Venetian
territory, and beautifully speckled with various colours as if painted.
Their beans are large, flat, and of a lively red colour, and they have
likewise white beans. They sow in July, at the beginning of the rains,
and reap in September, when they cease; thus they prepare the soil, sow
the seed, and get in the harvest, all in three months; but they are bad
husbandmen, and so exceedingly averse to labour, that they sow no more
than is barely sufficient to last them throughout the year, and never lay
up any store for sale. In cultivating the ground, four or five of them go
into a field with spades, with which they turn up the soil about four
inches deep; yet such is the fertility of the soil, that it makes ample
returns for this slight culture, without any farther trouble.

The liquors of the Negroes are water, milk, and palm wine, which they
call mighol, or migwol, which is taken from a tree of the palm tribe,
very numerous in this country, somewhat like the date tree, but not the
same, and which furnishes this liquor the whole year round. The trees are
tapped in two or three places near the root, and from these wounds a
brown juice runs out, as thin as skimmed milk, into calabasses that are
placed to receive the liquor, which drops but slowly, as one tree will
only fill two calabasses from morning till night. This migwol, or palm-
wine, is an exceedingly pleasant drink, which intoxicates like wine
unless mixed with water. Immediately after it is drawn from the tree it
is as sweet as any wine whatever; but the luscious taste goes off more
and more as it is kept, and at length it becomes sour. It drinks better
than at first after three or four days, as it depurates by keeping, and
is not so sweet. I have often drank of it, indeed every day that I
remained in the country, and liked