cessive nights, they neglected to send us our accustomed meal, and though my boy went to a small Negro town near the camp, and begged with great diligence from hut to hut, he could only procure a few handfuls of ground nuts, which he readily shared with me. Hunger, at first, is certainly a very painful sensation; but when it has continued for some time, this pain is succeeded by languor and debility ; in which case, a draught of water, by keeping the stomach distended, will greatly exhilarate the spirits, and remove for a short time every sort of uneasiness. Johnson and Demba were very much dejected. They lay stretched upon the sand, in a sort of torpid slumber ; and even when the kouskous arrived, I found some difficulty in awakening them. I felt no inclination to sleep, but was affected with a deep convulsive respiration, like constant sighing ; and, what alarmed me still more, a dimness of sight, and a tendency to faint when I attempted to sit up. These symptoms did not go off until some time after I had received nourishment. W e had been for some days in daily expectation of A li’s return from Saheel (or the north country) with his wife Fatima. In the meanwhile Mansong, King of Bambarra, as I have related in Chapter VIII, had sent to Ali for a party of horse to assist in storming Gedingooma. With this demand Ali had not only refused to comply, but had treated the messengers with great haughtiness and contempt; upon which Mansong gave up all thoughts of taking the town, and prepared to chastize Ali for his contumacy. Things were in this situation when, on the 29th o f April, a messenger arrived at Benowm with the disagreeable intelligence that the Bambarra army was approaching thè frontiers of Lu- damar. This threw the whole country into confusion ; and in the afternoon Ali’s son with about twenty horsemen arrived at Benowm. He ordered all the cattle to be driven away immediately; all the tents to be struck, and the people to hold themselves in readiness to depart at daylight the next morning. April 30th. At daybreak the whole camp was in motion. The baggage was carried upon bullocks, the two tent poles being placed one on each side, and the different wooden articles, of the tent distributed in like manner ; the tent cloth was thrown over all, and upon this was commonly placed one or two women ; for the Moorish women are very bad walkers. The king’s favourite concubines rode upon camels, with a saddle of a particular construction, and a canopy to shelter them from the sun. We proceeded to the northward until noon, when the king’s son ordered the whole company, except two tents, to enter a thick low wood, which was upon our right. I was sent along with the two tents, and arrived in the evening at a Negro town called Farani : here we pitched the tents in an open place, at no great distance from the town. The hurry and confusion which attended this decampment, prevented the slaves from dressing the usual quantity of victuals; and lest their dry provisions should be exhausted before they reached their place o f destination, (for as yet none but Ali and the chief men knew whither we were going,) they thought proper to make me obsérve this day as a day of fasting. May 1st. As I had some reason to suspect that this day was also to be considered as a fast, I went in the morning to the
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