"After A Conference And Palaver With Some Of The Native Chiefs, Amongst Whose Grotesque Forms And Equipments You Would Have Laughed To Have Seen Me Perched This Morning, Sipping Palm Wine; I Have Made Up My Mind To Take The Southern Bank Of This River, Through Fooladoo To Sego.

A messenger from the Almana of Bondou, who has undertaken to bring the gum trade here from the Senegal, is now at Bathurst, and the merchants are willing to assist in making up a coffila, which will enable us I trust to prosecute our journey in safety.

Though I shall not thus reach the main object of Funda so directly as if I had had the good fortune to overtake the Pluto, it would be scarcely possible for me to do this now before the rainy season; and though I shall be a few weeks later in reaching my destination, I shall have the satisfaction of tracing the whole river, and giving the position of all the remarkable places, which neither Caillie nor Lander were able to do. There is now no earthly chance of the observations made by Park seeing the light, for Mr. Ainslie showed me yesterday his last letter from Sansanding, which I perused with much interest. You are aware that nothing but the unfortunate occurrence of the Fellatas' conquests with the period of his expedition, and his being mistaken for one of their parties, occasioned its unhappy result; and by striking across the mountains, which we shall do at Baranco, about four hundred miles up, we shall have only twenty-four days' land journey to the mighty Niger, where he has scarcely command of water enough to float a canoe.

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