in Sackatoo, provisions were regularly sent me from the sultan’s table on pewter dishes, with the London stamp ; and one day I even had a piece of meat served up in a white wash-hand basin, of English manufacture. On my return home from Gomsoo’s, I found a message had been left for me to wait on the sultan, with which I complied immediately after breakfast. He received me in an inner apartment, attended only by a few slaves: after asking me how I did, and several other chit-chat questions, I was not a little surprised when he observed, without a single question being put by me on the subject, that if I wished to go to Nyffee, there were two roads leading to it—the one direct, but beset by enemies; the other safer, but more circuitous: that by either route I should be detained, during the rains, in a country at present in a state of open rebellion, and therefore that I ought to think seriously of these difficulties. I assured him I had already taken the matter into consideration, and that I was neither afraid of the dangers of the road nor of the rains. “ Think of it with prudence,” he replied, and we parted. From the tone and manner with which this was spoken, I felt a foreboding that my intended visit to Youri and Nyffee was at an end. I could not help suspecting the intrigues of the Arabs to be the cause ; as, they know well, if the native Africans were once acquainted with. English commerce by the way of the sea, their own lucrative inland trade would from that moment cease. I was much perplexed the whole day how to act, and went after sunset to consult Mohamed Gomsoo : I met him at the door of his house on his way to the sultan, and stopped him, to mention what had passed, and how unaccountably strange it appeared to me that the sultan, after having repeatedly assured me of being at liberty to visit every part of his dominions, should now, for the first time, seem inclined to withdraw that permission; adding, that before I came to Sackatoo, I never heard of a king making a promise one day, and breaking it the next. All this, I knew, would find its way to the sultan. Gomsoo told me I was quite mistaken ; for the sultan, the gadado, and all the principal people, entertained the highest opinion of me, and wished for nothing so much as to cultivate the friendship of the English nation. “ But it is necessary for me to visit those places, ’ I remarked, on leaving him; “ or how else .pan the English get here ?” As 1 anticipated, he repeated to the sultan every word I had said; for I was no sooner at home than I was sent for by the sultan, whom I found seated with Mahomed Gomsoo, and two others. He received me with great kindness, and Mahomed Gomsoo said he had made the sultan acquainted with our conversation. I thanked him, and expressed my earnest hope I had neither said nor done any thing to offend him. The sultan assured me that my conduct had always met with his approbation, and that, although he was freely disposed to show me all the country, still he wished to do so with safety to myself. An army, he added, was at this moment ravaging the country through which I had to pass, and, until he heard from it, it would be unsafe to go; but he expected farther information in three or four days. He drew on the sand the course of the river Quarra, which he also informed me entered the sea at F.undah. By his account the river ran parallel to the sea coast for several days’ journey, being in some places only a few hours’, in others a day’s journey, distant from it. Two or three years ago the sea, he said, closed up the mouth of the river, and its mouth was at present a day or two farther south; but, during the rains, when the river was high, it still ran into the sea by the old channel. He asked me if the King of England would send him a consul and a physician, to reside in Soudan, and merchants to trade with his people; and what I had seen among them, which I thought the English would buy ? Here again I enforced the discontinuance of the O slave trade on the coast, as the only effectual method of inducing the King of England to establish a consul and a physician at Sackatoo; and that, as the
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