But
Their Prosperity Attracting The Envy Of Some Mandingoes, The Latter
Drove Out The Shepherds, And Took Possession Of Their Lands.
The present inhabitants, though they possess both cattle and corn in
abundance, are not over nice in articles of diet; rats, moles,
squirrels, snakes, locusts, are eaten without scruple by the highest
and lowest.
My people were one evening invited to a feast given by
some of the townsmen, where, after making a hearty meal of what they
thought fish and kouskous, one of them found a piece of hard skin in
the dish, and brought it along with him to show me what sort of fish
they had been eating. On examining the skin I found they had been
feasting on a large snake. Another custom still more extraordinary
is that no woman is allowed to eat an egg. This prohibition,
whether arising from ancient superstition or from the craftiness of
some old bushreen who loved eggs himself, is rigidly adhered to, and
nothing will more affront a woman of Teesee than to offer her an
egg. The custom is the more singular, as the men eat eggs without
scruple in the presence of their wives, and I never observed the
same prohibition in any other of the Mandingo countries.
The third day after his son's departure, Tiggity Sego held a palaver
on a very extraordinary occasion, which I attended; and the debates
on both sides of the question displayed much ingenuity. The case
was this:- A young man, a kafir of considerable affluence, who had
recently married a young and handsome wife, applied to a very devout
bushreen, or Mussalman priest, of his acquaintance, to procure him
saphies for his protection during the approaching war.
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