Life and Travels of Mungo Park

by Mungo Park

The country itself being an immense level, and very generally covered with woods, presents a tiresome, and gloomy uniformity to the eye; but although nature has denied to the inhabitants the beauties of romantic landscapes, she has bestowed on them, with a liberal hand, the more important blessings of fertility and abundance. A little attention to cultivation procures a sufficiency of corn; the fields afford a rich pasturage for cattle; and the natives are plentifully supplied with excellent fish, both from the Gambia river and the Walli creek.

The grains which are chiefly cultivated are Indian corn, (zea mays;) two kinds of holcus spicatus, called by the natives soono and sanio; holcus niger, and holcus bicolor; the former of which they have named bassi woolima, and the latter bassiqui. These, together with rice, are raised in considerable quantities; besides which, the inhabitants in the vicinity of the towns and villages have gardens which produce onions, calavances, yams, cassavi, ground-nuts, pompions, gourds, water melons, and some other esculent plants.

I observed, likewise, near the towns, small patches of cotton and indigo. The former of these articles supplies them with clothing, and with the latter, they dye their cloth of an excellent blue colour, in a manner that will hereafter be described.

In preparing their corn for food, the natives use a large wooden mortar called a paloon, in which they bruise the seed until it parts with the outer covering, or husk, which is then separated from the clean corn, by exposing it to the wind; nearly in the same manner as wheat is cleared from the chaff in England. The corn, thus freed from the husk, is returned to the mortar, and beaten into meal; which is dressed variously in different countries; but the most common preparation of it among the nations of the Gambia is a sort of pudding, which they call kouskous. It is made by first moistening the flour with water, and then stirring and shaking it about in a large calabash, or gourd, till it adheres together in small granules, resembling sago. It is then put into an earthen pot, whose bottom is perforated with a number of small holes; and this pot being placed upon another, the two vessels are luted together, either with a paste of meal and water, or with cow's dung, and placed upon the fire. In the lower vessel is commonly some animal food and water, the steam or vapour of which ascends through the perforations in the bottom of the upper vessel, and softens and prepares the kouskous, which is very much esteemed throughout all the countries that I visited. I am informed, that the same manner of preparing flour is very generally used on the Barbary coast, and that the dish so prepared is there called by the same name. It is therefore probable, that the Negroes borrowed the practice from the Moors.

For gratifying a taste for variety, another sort of pudding, called nealing, is sometimes prepared from the meal of corn; and they have also adopted two or three different modes of dressing their rice. Of vegetable food, therefore, the natives have no want, and although the common class of people are but sparingly supplied with animal food, yet this article is not wholly withheld from them.

Their domestic animals are nearly the same as in Europe. Swine are found in the woods, but their flesh is not esteemed; probably the marked abhorrence in which this animal is held by the votaries of Mahomet has spread itself among the Pagans. Poultry of all kinds (the turkey excepted) is every where to be had. The Guinea fowl and red partridge abound in the fields; and the woods furnish a small species of antelope, of which the venison is highly and deservedly prized.

Of the other wild animals in the Mandingo countries, the most common are the hyaena, the panther, and the elephant. Considering the use that is made of the latter in the East Indies, it may be thought extraordinary, that the natives of Africa have not, in any part of this immense continent, acquired the skill of taming this powerful and docile creature, and applying his strength and faculties to the service of man. When I told some of the natives that this was actually done in the countries of the East, my auditors laughed me to scorn, and exclaimed, Tobaubo fonnio! (a white man's lie.) The Negroes frequently find means to destroy the elephant by fire-arms; they hunt it principally for the sake of the teeth, which they transfer in barter to those who sell them again to the Europeans. The flesh they eat, and consider it as a great delicacy.

The usual beast of burthen in all the Negro territories is the ass. The application of animal labour to the purposes of agriculture is no where adopted; the plough, therefore, is wholly unknown. The chief implement used in husbandry is the hoe, which varies in form in different districts; and the labour is universally performed by slaves.

On the 6th of October the waters of the Gambia were at the greatest height, being fifteen feet above the high-water-mark of the tide; after which they began to subside; at first slowly, but afterwards very rapidly; sometimes sinking more than a foot in twenty-four hours; by the beginning of November the river had sunk to its former level, and the tide ebbed and flowed as usual. When the river had subsided, and the atmosphere grew dry, I recovered apace, and began to think of my departure; for this is reckoned the most proper season for travelling; the natives had completed their harvest, and provisions were every where cheap and plentiful.

Dr. Laidley was at this time employed in a trading voyage at Jonkakonda. I wrote to him to desire that he would use his interest with the slatees, or slave-merchants, to procure me the company and protection of the first coffle (or caravan) that might leave Gambia for the interior country; and in the meantime I requested him to purchase for me a horse and two asses. A few days afterwards the Doctor returned to Pisania, and informed me that a coffle would certainly go for the interior in the course of the dry season; but that as many of the merchants belonging to it had not yet completed their assortment of goods, he could not say at what time they would set out.