Here They Were Kept Three Or Four Days, For The Purpose, As It Afterwards Appeared, Of Being Sent Forward To Timbuctoo, Which Adams Concluded To Be The Residence Of The King Of The Country.

At Soudenny, the houses have only a ground floor, and are without furniture or utensils, except wooden bowls, and mats made of grass.

They never make fires in their houses. After remaining about four days at Soudenny, the prisoners were sent to Timbuctoo, under an escort of about sixty armed men, having about eighteen camels and dromedaries.

During the first ten days they proceeded eastward, at the rate of about fifteen to twenty miles a day, the prisoners and most of the negroes walking, the officers riding, two upon each camel or dromedary. As the prisoners were all impressed with the belief that they were going to execution, several of the Moors attempted to escape, and in consequence, after a short consultation, fourteen were put to death by being beheaded, at a small village at which they then arrived, and as a terror to the rest, the head of one of them was hung round the neck of a camel for three days, until it became so putrid, that they were obliged to remove it. 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.

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