The Women Of Jenna Employ Themselves Generally Either In Spinning Cotton, Or Preparing Indian Corn For Food.

Much of the former material grows in the vicinity of the town, but the cultivation of the plant is not carried on with that spirit which it deserves.

Silk, which is brought over land from Tripoli, the inhabitants sometimes interweave in their cotton garments, but such being very expensive, are only worn by the higher class of people. They have abundance of sheep, bullocks, pigs, goats, and poultry, but they prefer vegetable food to animal; their diet, indeed, is what we should term poor and watery, consisting chiefly of preparations of the yam and Indian corn, notwithstanding which a stronger or more athletic race of people is nowhere to be met with. Burdens with them, as with the natives of many parts of the continent, are invariably carried on the head, which, it is more than likely, occasions that dignified uprightness of form, and stateliness of walk, so often spoken of by those acquainted with the pleasing peculiarities, of the African female. The weight of a feather is borne on the head in preference to its being carried in the hand; and it not infrequently requires the united strength of three men to lift a calabash of goods from the ground to the shoulder of one, and then, and not till then, does the amazing strength of the African appear. The greater part of the inhabitants of Jenna have the hair of their head and their eyebrows shaven.

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