visit, and observing that I had not found a lodging, invited me to take part of his supper, which he had brought to the door of his h u t ; for, being a guest himself, he could not, without his landlord's consent, invite me to come in. After this, I slept upon some wet grass in the corner of a court. My horse fared still worse than myself; the corn I had purchased being all expended, and I could not procure a supply. Aug. so. I passed the town of Jaba, and stopped a few minutes at a village called Somino, where I begged and obtained some coarse food, which the natives prepare from the husks of corn, and call Boo. About two o’elock I came to the village of Sooha, and endeavoured to purchase some corn from the Dooty, who was sitting by the gate ; but without success. I then requested a little food by way of charity, but was told he had none to spare. Whilst I was examining the countenance of this inhospitable old man, and endeavouring to find out the cause of the sullen discontent, which was visible in his eye, he called to a slave who was working in the corn-field at a little distance, and ordered him to bring his hoe along with him. The Dooty then told him to dig a hole in the ground ; pointing to a spot at no great distance. The slave, with his hoe, began to dig a pit in the earth ; and the Dooty, who appeared to be a man of a very fretful disposition, kept muttering and talking to himself until the pit was almost finished, when he- repeatedly pronounced the words dankatoo (good for nothing) ; jankra lemen (a real plague) ; which expressions I thought could be applied to nobody but myself; and as the pit had very much the appearance of a grave, I thought it prudent to mount my horse, and was about to decamp, when the slave, who had before gone into the village, to my surprise, returned with the corpse of a boy about nine or ten years of age, quite naked. The Negro carried the body by a leg and an arm; and threw it into the pit with a savage indifference, which I had never before seen. As he covered the body with earth, the Dooty often expressed himself, mpbula attiniata (money lo s t) ; whence I concluded that.the boy had been one of his slaves. Departing from this shocking scene, I. travelled by the side of the river until sunset, when I came to Koolikorro ; a considerable town, and a great market for salt. Here I took up my lodging at the house of a-Bambarran, who had formerly been the slave of a Moor, and in that character had travelled to Aroan, Towdinni, and many other places in the Great Desert; but turning Mussulman, and his master dying at Jenn6, he obtained his freedom, and settled at this place, where he carries on a considerable trade in salt, cotton-cloth, &c. His knowledge of the world had not lessened that superstitious confidence in saphies and charms, which he had imbibed in his earlier years ; for when he heard that. i> was a Christian, he immediately thought of procuring a saphie ; and for this purpose brought out his walba, or writing board; assuring me, that he would dress me a supper of rice, if I would write him a saphie to protect him from wicked men. The proposal was of too great consequence to me to be refused; I therefore wrote the board full, from top to bottom, on both sides; and my landlord, to be certain of having the whole force of the charm, washed the writing from the board into a calabash with a little water, and having said a H h e
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