At This Village, The Natives Wore Gold Rings In Their Ears, Sometimes Two Rings In Each Ear.

They had a hole through the cartilage of the nose, wide enough to admit a thick quill, in which Adams saw some of the natives wear a large ring of an oval shape, that hung down to the mouth.

They waited, only one day at this place, and then proceeded towards Timbuctoo. Shaping their course to the northward of east, and quickening their pace to the rate of twenty miles a day, they completed their journey in fifteen days.

Upon their arrival at Timbuctoo, the whole party were immediately taken before the king, who ordered the Moors into prison, but treated Adams and the Portuguese boy as curiosities; taking them to his house, they remained there during their residence at Timbuctoo.

For some time after their arrival, the queen and her female attendants used to sit and look at Adams and his companions for hours together. She treated them with great kindness, and at the first interview offered them some bread baked under ashes.

The king and queen, the former of whom was named Woollo, the latter Fatima, were very old grey-headed people. Fatima was like the majority of African beauties, extremely fat. Her dress was of blue nankeen, edged with gold lace round the bosom and on the shoulder, and having a belt or stripe of the same material, half-way down the dress, which came only a few inches down the knees. The dress of the other females of Timbuctoo, though less ornamented than that of the queen, was in the same sort of fashion, so that as they wore no close under garments, they might, when sitting on the ground, as far as decency was concerned, as well have had no covering at all. The queen's head dress consisted of a blue nankeen turban, but this was worn only upon occasions of ceremony, or when she walked out. Besides the turban, she had her hair stuck full of bone ornaments of a square shape, about the size of dice, extremely white; she had large gold hoop ear-rings, and many necklaces, some of them of gold, the others made of beads of various colours. She wore no shoes, and in consequence, her feet appeared to be as hard and dry "as the hoofs of an ass."

The king's house or palace, which is built of clay and grass, not whitewashed, consists of eight or ten small rooms on the ground floor, and is surrounded by a wall of the same materials, against part of which the house is built. The space within the wall is about half an acre. Whenever a trader arrives, he is required to bring his merchandize into this space, for the inspection of the king, for the purpose of duties being charged upon it. The king's attendants, who are with him during the whole of the day, generally consist of about thirty persons, several of whom are armed with daggers, and bows and arrows.

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