Wassoulo is a country inhabited by idolatrous Foulahs, who are herdsmen and agriculturists; they rear a great number of horned cattle, and some sheep, and goats. I have seen among them horses of a small breed, and incapable of supporting much fatigue. They have also poultry, on which they set a high value, and which can only be bought for gunpowder, tobacco, salt, or glass-wares. They take especial care of their young fowls, collecting them every night in a sort of round basket, and carrying them into their huts to protect them from cold, and soon after sun-rise every morning, they are again set at liberty to run about round the house; they are seldom fed with grain of any kind, but live upon insects, herbs, and the grains of rice or millet, which fly out of the mortars while pounding. The men take care of the poultry, and bring out of the fields heaps of earth swarming with termites, which the fowls immediately devour. All the inhabitants have dogs to protect their houses; but I did not see dogs’ flesh eaten in Wassoulo, as in some parts of Bambara.
The country is generally open, and diversified by a few hills; the soil very fertile, and partly composed of a rich black mould mixed with gravel: the country is watered by the Sarano, and by many large streams, which fertilise the soil; it brings forth in abundance every thing which is necessary for man in an unsophisticated state. The inhabitants are gentle, humane, and very hospitable, curious to excess, but much less teazing than the Mandingoes. Their food is very simple; they eat, like the people of Kankan, rice, tau, foigné, without pounding; to these they add a sauce made of leaves of different herbs, or of roasted pistachio-nuts. They seldom use salt, which is a great luxury, and eat meat only on feast-days; in their sauces they mix (besides gombo) the leaf of the baobab, dried and pounded; they also eat the fruit of this tree, which they steep in water or milk, and which, like nédé, is very sweet and nutritious.
The women manufacture earthen pots for their housekeeping; for this purpose they use a grey clay, which they find on the banks of the streams; they knead it, and clear it of all extraneous matter, and when of the proper consistence, it is easily worked: having brought it into the right form, they polish it by degrees with their hands, and the vessels, when finished, are placed in the shade to dry slowly, for the heat of the sun would crack them; when half dry, they are again polished with a piece of wood made for the purpose; in this way they become quite shining, and are again set to dry. Before they are completely hardened, they are exposed to a gentle sun, and eight or ten days afterwards they are piled one upon another, between two layers of millet-straw, which is set on fire to complete the baking. Vessels which are thus made come out quite glazed and of a greyish colour; they are usually round, with a little rim round the top, and no handle; they very much resemble what are made all through Fouta-Dhialon and Kankan. The amiable inhabitants of this happy country live as if they were all of one family. Each hamlet is composed of twelve or fourteen huts, or even fewer, surrounded by a clumsy and tasteless wooden palisade. In the centre of this little group of huts is a court, into which they all open; the cattle are shut up in this court at night; but the calves have a separate enclosure; it is the business of the women to milk the cows. There are usually two outer doors to this court, at each of which is a forked piece of wood, which you are sometimes obliged to stride over, as it is not always very easy to squeeze past it, and I have found it very troublesome, on various occasions, in my Arabian costume. These forks are thus placed to prevent the cattle from straying at night, and there is another entrance without this kind of barricade through which they are brought in and out.
The women, who are employed in cooking, perform their operations in the open air. The inhabitants are in general very dirty and ill-clothed; their costume resembles that of the natives of Toron; and, like them, they use tobacco and snuff. They plait their hair in tresses, wear ear-rings of small beads and necklaces, and iron bracelets on their legs and arms, like the women. They are Foulahs, but do not speak the Foulah language. Their complexion, which is lighter than that of the Mandingoes, is of a darker hue than the negroes of Fouta-Dhialon. I tried to discover whether they had any religion of their own; whether they worshipped fetishes, or the sun, moon or stars; but I could never perceive any religious ceremony amongst them, and I suspect that they are careless on the subject, and trouble themselves very little with theology: if they had any specific belief of their own, instead of encouraging Musulmans and grigris, they would scorn them, and adhere to the superstition of their country. Small hamlets are to be seen at short distances from one another all over the country. The inhabitants grow a great quantity of cotton, of which they manufacture cloth, and sell it to dealers, who carry it to Kankan. The looms which they use for weaving cloth are like ours, but smaller; the breadths are not more than five inches wide; the slays are of reed, and they have a shuttle like ours with small bobbins, which they fasten to the shuttle with a thin bit of wire, or a small piece of reed; they do not weave fast. The women sit in their courts, and spin cotton; as they do not understand carding, their thread is coarse and uneven; they use the same kind of spindle which is employed by the negresses of the Senegal.
They have in the country smiths, who make poniards, iron bracelets, and agricultural implements; these last consist chiefly of a hoe eight or ten inches long, and five broad; I did not observe any other. With this instrument they make trenches, clear away the weeds, and cultivate the ground as well as we can in Europe. They have a small axe to cut down the trees which grow in their fields, and they take care to destroy the roots, which I had not seen practised since I left the coast. The inhabitants of Wassoulo carry on little traffic, and never travel; their idolatry indeed would expose them to the most dreadful slavery if they did. Gentle and humane, they give a friendly reception to all the strangers who come among them. They grow a great quantity of tobacco; when it has run to seed, they gather the leaves, dry them in the sun, and reduce part of them to snuff, of which they consume a great quantity; the rest is reserved for smoking. They have a pair of large tongs, like a smith’s a foot long, to light their pipes with. The young men shave their heads, like the Mahometans. Most of them are very expert in the management of the bow and arrow, and I have seen them amuse themselves with shooting at a mark in a tree. The children, who are all naked, are early addicted to bodily exercises. These people have a habit of making incisions in their faces, and filing their teeth; they have several wives, like all other idolaters, who are most submissive to their husbands; a woman always drops on one knee when she hands any thing to her husband, and the same ceremony is observed to strangers of distinction. I never saw any kind of illness in the country; they are all robust and healthy. Though vegetable butter abounds amongst them they make little use of it; they prefer animal butter for culinary purposes, and reserve the vegetable for pains and wounds: they also grease their hair with it, and rub it over their bodies, which gives them a rank smell. They form a great contrast to the inhabitants of Kankan in the article of cleanliness; for they are altogether filthy and disgusting, and never wash their clothes, which are always of a black or yellow colour. They wear on their heads a cap eighteen inches in height, the top of which is very narrow, and hangs down on the back or shoulder; I could hardly guess the original colour, so completely was it always disfigured with dirt and butter; when it drops off in rags they provide themselves with a new one. The women have no other covering than a pagne, which they wrap round their loins; on their heads they wear a strip of the manufacture of the country, which serves as a head-dress. I never saw any of them smoke, but they take a great deal of snuff, and also rub it on the inside and out of their gums.
On the 23rd of July, at seven in the morning, we took leave of our hosts, who had given us a very good supper of rice the evening before. We directed our course E.S.E. and passed a little village, the name of which I have forgotten. At one of the cabins I asked for a little water to quench my thirst; a female slave brought me some in a calabash: she knelt down as she presented it to me. We heard distant thunder, but had no rain. We continued our progress to the S.E. for eight miles, and passed Banankodo, a large village of the Foulou, containing four or five hundred inhabitants; it is shaded by large bombaces and baobab trees. The country over which we travelled was under water, and the plain quite open: it was about noon, when, after having gone three miles more, we halted at Yonmouso, a little hamlet similar to those of the Wassoulos. Arafanba fired his piece in token of rejoicing on our arrival at this little village, where he had friends, with whom we went to seek a lodging, and they forthwith prepared a hut for us, in which we passed the night. I had met on the road a Poulh of Foulou, accompanied by his wife, who carried upon her head a breakfast of foigné and milk: as this man had questioned my guide respecting me, and was doubtless interested about me, I accepted with pleasure the breakfast which he offered to me. I wished to pay him in glass-wares, but he persisted in refusing all compensation. When I arrived at Yonmouso this man brought several of his companions to see me: he said nothing concerning his generous hospitality to me—a reserve that I admired greatly in a negro. He asked to see my umbrella; I hastened to gratify him, and it excited, as before, the admiration of all: to amuse them, I opened and shut it repeatedly. The hut was not cleared of people the whole evening; but their visits were very short, and their manners reserved: they also had recourse to wisps of lighted straw to see me the better, and liked the looks of me. Many gave me milk, and at the beginning of the night a pretty good supper of boiled yams pounded, with gombo sauce, which we seasoned with a little salt, and to which roasted pistachio-nuts were added.
The 24th of July we remained amongst these good people to rest from our fatigue. My guide gave five or six charges of powder for a kid: we ate part of it for our supper; and our host, to whom a small portion was given, presented us with some good sour milk and boiled rice for our breakfast the next morning. In the course of the day, we had a visit from a Poulh of the Fouta-Dhialon who was settled in this country. My guide presented him with a piece of kid, and I with a sheet of paper, for which he overwhelmed me with grateful acknowledgments. In the evening, many Foulahs from the neighbouring parts, attracted by the report that there was a white man in the place, paid me a visit; they lighted straw, and were very much amused at the length of my nose. They all said that I was a fine fellow, and went away very well pleased. Our host supplied us with a supper of yams, to which we added a piece of kid.
On the 25th of July, in the morning, the Foulah to whom we had given a piece of kid, sent us a plentiful breakfast of rice, besides a fowl and some milk; after making our meal we took leave of our host; my guide made him a present of a few strings of beads, and two little bits of scarlet cloth an inch and a half square. It was eight o’clock when we set off. We directed our course to the S.S.E. and travelled twelve miles in that direction without stopping; the country is generally open, but abounding in nédés and cés; the soil full of small gravel, and, in many places, of volcanic stones. We crossed several streams with well wooded banks, near which were neat cottages of the Bambaras, who were peacefully cultivating their little fields of yams; the country is not so well peopled as that of Wassoulo. We halted towards two o’clock, at Manegnan, a village inhabited by Bambaras; it contains about eight or nine hundred inhabitants; the natives call this part of the country Foulou, and like the Wassoulos they speak the Mandingo language; I did not perceive that they had any particular dialect. They are idolaters, or rather, they are without any religion; their food and clothes are like those of the inhabitants of Wassoulo; and they are equally dirty. At the entrance of the village I passed the banankoro, where all who are disengaged meet together to smoke their pipes and converse; I saw a number of old men there. The banankoro is a large hut, covered with straw, and open all round; the roof is supported upon stakes driven in a circle, and at equal distances. Round logs of wood are placed on the ground near one another, to serve as seats; these logs are so ancient, that they have become highly polished by use.
On reaching our lodging, I was visited by many of the old men, who had seen me pass when they were assembled; some of them gave me colats and a fowl for supper; these negroes seemed to me as gentle and humane as the Foulahs of Wassoulo, whom they resemble extremely in their countenances, their apparel, their customs and habits of life. They were never weary of looking at me, and said that they had never seen a white man; for the Moors of this country do not travel. Part of the evening was stormy, which at first prevented the inhabitants from seeing me; but they made themselves amends after the rain was over, crowding round me till eight o’clock in the evening with the same eagerness and curiosity; they also lighted straw, and paid me the same compliments as the people of Yonmouso.
On the 26th of July, at seven in the morning, we gave a present to our host and prepared to set off. I perceived that the village was surrounded by a wall, and that the inhabitants cultivated tobacco round their houses, for their own use. I was followed by a crowd for about half an hour; we crossed an inundated plain of indigo, which grows spontaneously, and afterwards passed over a very tottering bridge; here the villagers left us. I saw some cultivated land, but not in such good order as what I had left behind me. The husbandmen bring their fowls with them into the fields, to eat up the insects. We continued our course to the S.E.; and travelled eleven miles briskly enough; the country around us was level, and better wooded than what we had crossed for the last few days. We arrived at Nougouda a walled village, inhabited by Bambaras; and stayed there some time to change porters; we also bought a little milk and dégué to refresh ourselves. We then continued for five miles more to the south; at a considerable distance to the S.W. ¼ S. of our route, I saw three very high mountains with flattened peaks; we travelled two miles to the S.S.E. over a woody country, covered with ferruginous stones, and not cultivated. About four in the afternoon, we reached Tangouroman, a walled village which contains about three or four hundred Bambara inhabitants; we were nearly tired out, for we had travelled at a great rate, because my guide wished to reach his own home before night. The village is shaded by fine bombaces and baobabs. The poor inhabitants were unable to provide us with a fowl, or even with milk, and they found it difficult to give us a supper; they brought us a dish of foigné, with a sauce of herbs, which they had prepared for themselves, and supped on a bit of boiled yam; after which frugal repast, they fell to dancing merrily and kept it up all night. I remarked in our host’s court, many little bundles of straw supported upon stakes or large stones, to keep it from the damp, which is excessive in this country; in these magazines they store their provision of rice, millet, pistachio-nuts, and yams, which are never plundered. I have not seen a single beggar between Kankan, or indeed Baléya, and this place. Arafanba went to sleep at Sambatikila; for my part, I was so fatigued with my day’s journey, that I staid where I was, with the saracolets and a Foulah of Fouta-Dhialon. Our host made a present of a fine Barbary duck to my guide, who was considered in this country as a marabout of importance; we should have liked very well to eat it for supper, for we could find nothing to buy, but he kept it for his own private use.