armourers, smiths and
jewellers. Furnished with a leather bag which is provided with an iron
pipe, and filled with air, which they press and fill alternately, by
putting it under their thigh, which they keep in constant motion, singing
all the while; seated before a little hole dug in the sand, and under the
shade of some leaves of the date-tree laid upon their heads, they execute
on a little anvil, and with the help of a hammer, and some small iron awls,
not only all kinds of repairs necessary to fire-arms, sabres, &c. but
manufacture knives and daggers, and also make bracelets, earrings, and
necklaces of gold, which they have the art of drawing into very fine wire,
and forming into ornaments for women, in a manner which, though it wants
taste, makes us admire the skill of the workman, especially when we
consider the nature, and the small number of the tools which he employs.

The Moors, like the Mahometan negroes, are for the most part, provided with
a larger or smaller number of _gris-gris_, a kind of talisman consisting in
words, or verses copied from the Coran, to which they ascribe the power of
securing them against diseases, witchcraft and accidents, and which they
buy of their priests or Marabous. Some Spaniards from Teneriffe, who came
to Cape Verd, at the time that the French Expedition had taken refuge
there, struck us all, by their resemblance with these Africans. It was not
only by their brown complexions that they resembled them; but it was also
by their long rosaries, twisted in the some manner about their arms,
resembling, except the cross, those of the Moors, and by the great number
of Amulets, (_gris-gris_ of another kind) which they wear round their
necks, and by which they seemed to wish to rival the infidels in credulity.
There is then, in the South of Europe, as well as in the North of Africa, a
class of men, who would found their authority, upon ignorance, and derive
their authority from superstition.

[A12] XXII.--_On the Bark given to the Sick_.

The bark, which began to be administered at that time, had been damaged,
but an attempt was made to supply the want of it by the bark which the
negroes use to cure the dysentery, and which they bring from the environs
of Rufisque. This bark, of which they made a secret, seems to come from
some terebinthine plant, and perhaps, from the _monbins_, which are common
on this part of the coast. In the winter fevers which prevail at Goree,
Cape Verd, &c. two