The nails and palms of the hands are stained red with henna[70],
cultivated there: the Arabs tatoo their hands and arms, but not the
people of Timbuctoo. These people are real negroes; they have a
slight mark on the face, sloping from the eye; the Foulans have a
horizontal mark; the Bambarrahees a wide gash from the forehead to
the chin. Tombs are raised over the dead; they are buried in a
winding-sheet and a coffin: the relations mourn over their graves,
and pronounce a panegyric on the dead. The men and women mix in
35 society, and visit together with the same freedom as in Europe.
They sleep on mattresses, with cotton sheets and a counterpane; the
married, in separate beds in the same room. They frequently bathe
the whole body, their smell would otherwise be offensive; they use
towels brought from India. At dinner they spread their mats and sit
as in Barbary. They smoke a great deal, but tobacco is dear; it is
the best article of trade. Poisoning is common; they get the poison
from the fangs of snakes, but, he says, most commonly from a part
of the body near the tail, by a kind of distillation. Physic, taken
immediately after the poison, may cure, but not always; if deferred
two or three days, the man must die: the poison is slow, wastes the
flesh, and produces a sallow, morbid appearance. It causes great
pain in the stomach, destroys the appetite, produces a consumption,
and kills in a longer or shorter time, according to the strength of
constitution. Some who have taken remedies, soon after the poison,
live 8 or 10 years; otherwise the poison kills in 4 or 5 days.
Physicians prescribe an emetic, the composition of which he does
not know.
[Footnote 70: A decoction of the herb henna produces a deep
orange die. It is used generally by the females on their hands
and feet: it allays the violence of perspiration in the part to
which it is applied, and imparts a coolness.]