With So Strong A Party, He Was No Longer Dependent On The Protection Of The Petty Kings And Mansas, But

The Africans seeing him so well provided, thought he had now no claim on their hospitality; on the contrary, they

Seized every opportunity to obtain some of the valuable articles which they saw in his possession. Thefts were practised in the most audacious manner; the kings drove a hard bargain for presents; at one place, the women, with immense labour had emptied all the wells, that they might derive an advantage from selling the water. Submitting quietly to these little annoyances, Mr. Park proceeded along the Gambia till he saw it flowing from the south, between the hills of Foota Jalla and a high mountain called Mueianta. Turning his face almost due west, he passed the streams of the Ba Lee, the Ba Ting, and the Ba Woollima, the three principal tributaries of the Senegal. His change of direction led him through a tract much more pleasing, than that passed in his dreary return through the Jallonka wilderness. The villages, built in delightful mountain glens, and looking from their elevated precipices over a great extent of wooded plain, appeared romantic beyond any thing he had ever seen. The rocks near Sullo, assumed every possible diversity of form, towering like ruined castles, spires and pyramids. One mass of granite so strongly resembled the remains of a gothic abbey, with its niches: and ruined staircase, that it required some time to satisfy him of its being composed wholly of natural stone.

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