“Verbum sap,” I yelled, in despair.
“Ri-tiddi, to tolli, soh gamma,” they both shouted, and, bowing almost to the earth, extended their hands deferentially towards me.
I shook them with unction, and they both passed on, highly gratified with our interesting conversation, and pleased with the information that I had given them. Really the Mandingos are a most intelligent race, and how well these two understood what I had been telling them.
Riding on, I shortly arrived at a small village surrounded by a fence made of palm-sticks, and further fortified on the exterior by hedges of thorned acacia and prickly pear. This was the Mandingo town of Bakko, and here the individual in whose honour the stone advertisements of which I have spoken were erected was, during one of his numerous petty expeditions, defeated with considerable loss by the natives under Hadji Ismail, the black prophet. On that occasion a portion of the colonial force was cut off and annihilated, while the remainder fell back with considerable difficulty upon Bathurst, where, as the victorious Mandingos followed up their success, and received large accessions to their number from their warlike neighbours, the governor was obliged ingloriously to apply to the French to save him and the colony.
I dismounted here, and was immediately surrounded by a crowd of naked and grisgris-covered children, while three or four men lounging about suspended their yawning and regarded me with stoical indifference. I did not discharge my sentence at these, because I had learnt all the news from the two with whom I had already conversed; and, besides, I was rather fatigued with the previous conversation. After a few moments a negro, clothed in the remnants of European garments, and whom in consequence I inferred was not a Mohammedan, came up to me and said, “Good morning.” He asked me what was my name, address, and occupation, whether I was married or revelling in single bliss, if I had any rum with me, and why I had come to Bakko; and in return vouchsafed the information that he was a farmer. He said he would show me round the town if I liked, so I left my horse in charge of a Mandingo and went inside the fence.
The interior was a perfect labyrinth, and the houses similar to those in the town of Yahassu, on the Barra side of the river, but smaller and dirty. My guide pointed out to me several small edifices of palm-sticks and bamboo, like miniature houses, raised upon piles inside the village gate, and informed me that these were where the people kept their corn. The doors to these granaries were merely bolted, and a piece of paper, inscribed with a verse from the Koran in Arabic characters, was fastened to each as a protection from thieves. My cicerone said,
“These are very foolish people, sar.”
“Are they? How?”