If His Country Had Been
At Peace, He Said, I Might Have Remained With Him Until A More Favourable
Opportunity
Offered; but as matters stood at present, he did not wish me
to continue in Kaarta, for fear some accident
Should befal me, in which
case my countrymen might say that he had murdered a white man. He would
therefore advise me to return into Kasson, and remain there until the war
should terminate, which would probably happen in the course of three or
four months; after which, if he was alive, he said, he would be glad to
see me, and if he was dead, his sons would take care of me.
This advice was certainly well meant on the part of the king; and perhaps
I was to blame in not following it; but I reflected that the hot months
were approaching; and I dreaded the thoughts of spending the rainy season
in the interior of Africa. These considerations, and the aversion I felt
at the idea of returning without having made a greater progress in
discovery, made me determine to go forwards; and though the king could
not give me a guide to Bambarra, I begged that he would allow a man to
accompany me as near the frontiers of his kingdom as was consistent with
safety. Finding that I was determined to proceed, the king told me that
one route still remained, but that, he said, was by no means free from
danger; which was to go from Kaarta into the Moorish kingdom of Ludamar,
from whence I might pass, by a circuitous route, into Bambarra.
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