together with gums of various kinds, and honey in abundance.  All our industry is exerted to improve those blessings of nature.  Agriculture is our chief employment; and every one, even the children and women, are engaged in it.  Thus we are all habituated to labour from our earliest years.  Every one contributes something to the common stock; and as we are unacquainted with idleness, we have no beggars.  The benefits of such a mode of living are obvious.  The West India planters prefer the slaves of Benin or Eboe to those of any other part of Guinea, for their hardiness, intelligence, integrity, and zeal.  Those benefits are felt by us in the general healthiness of the people, and in their vigour and activity; I might have added too in their comeliness.  Deformity is indeed unknown amongst us, I mean that of shape.  Numbers of the natives of Eboe now in London might be brought in support of this assertion:  for, in regard to complexion, ideas of beauty are wholly relative.  I remember while in Africa to have seen three negro children, who were tawny, and another quite white, who were universally regarded by myself, and the natives in general, as far as related to their complexions, as deformed.  Our women too were in my eyes at least uncommonly graceful, alert, and modest to a degree of bashfulness; nor do I remember to have ever heard of an instance of incontinence amongst them before marriage.  They are also remarkably cheerful.  Indeed cheerfulness and affability are two of the leading characteristics of our nation.

Our tillage is exercised in a large plain or common, some hours walk from our dwellings, and all the neighbours resort thither in a body.  They use no beasts of husbandry; and their only instruments are hoes, axes, shovels, and beaks, or pointed iron to dig with.  Sometimes we are visited by locusts, which come in large clouds, so as to darken the air, and destroy our harvest.  This however happens rarely, but when it does, a famine is produced by it.  I remember an instance or two wherein this happened.  This common is often the theatre of war; and therefore when our people go out to till their land, they not only go in a body, but generally take their arms with them for fear of a surprise; and when they apprehend an invasion they guard the avenues to their dwellings, by driving sticks into the ground, which are so sharp at one end as to pierce the foot, and are generally dipt in poison.  From what I can recollect of these battles, they appear to have been irruptions of one little state or district on the other, to obtain prisoners or booty.  Perhaps they were incited to this by those traders who brought the European goods I mentioned amongst us.  Such a mode of obtaining slaves in Africa is common; and I believe more are procured this way, and by kidnapping, than any other[E].  When a trader wants slaves, he applies to a chief for them, and tempts him with his wares.  It is not extraordinary, if on this occasion he yields to the temptation with as little firmness,