After A Little Practice, I
Understood And Spoke It Without Difficulty.
We passed, in the course of the day, a great many villages, inhabited
chiefly by fishermen; and in the evening about five o'clock arrived at
Sansanding, a very large town, containing, as I was told, from eight to
ten thousand inhabitants.
This place is much resorted to by the Moors,
who bring salt from Beeroo, and beads and coral from the Mediterranean,
to exchange here for gold-dust and cotton-cloth. This cloth they sell to
great advantage in Beeroo, and other Moorish countries, where, on account
of the want of rain, no cotton is cultivated.
I desired my guide to conduct me to the house in which we were to lodge,
by the most private way possible. We accordingly rode along between the
town and the river, passing by a creek or harbour, in which I observed
twenty large canoes, most of them fully loaded, and covered with mats, to
prevent the rain from injuring the goods. As we proceeded, three other
canoes arrived, two with passengers, and one with goods. I was happy to
find that all the Negro inhabitants, took me for a Moor; under which
character I should probably have passed unmolested, had not a Moor, who
was sitting by the river side, discovered the mistake, and setting up a
loud exclamation, brought together a number of his countrymen.
When I arrived at the house of Counti Mamadi, the Dooty of the town, I
was surrounded with hundreds of people, speaking a variety of different
dialects, all equally unintelligible to me.
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