166 TRIBES BORDERING ON KORDOFAN, Their agricultural pursuits are very profitable to them, and require very little labour, as the soil is uncommonly fertile ; hence their occupations in the fields during the time of sowing and of the harvest are terminated in an incredibly short space of time, and they have nothing to do but to rake up the weeds with the hasseiaseh, in the intermediate space between the two former seasons. After the first fall of rain they hasten to the fields and plant the dockn ; this is done in the same manner as in Kordofan, and will be explained hereafter in the twelfth chapter. Tobacco is largely cultivated, for they are inordinately addicted to smoking. When the plant has arrived at its full growth the leaves are gathered and dried, and after having been subjected to a process of damping, are formed into the shaf)e of a cake. When the negroes are about to smoke they break off a piece of the size required, rub it to powder between their hands, and fill their pipes. Their tobacco is very potent, so that an European is, in fact, obliged to soak it in water for twenty-four hours before he can use it to render it more mild ; and even then he will find it too acrid, and it almost amounts to an impossibility to smoke two of their short pipes successively. They barter away this product. The whole of their husbandry is comprised in the cultivation of these two articles, and in the interval between the sowing season and the harvest their occupation consists merely in rearing cattle, in hunting, and throwing spears.