The Travellers, In Their Ill-Judged Confidence In His Friendship, Requested Him To Furnish A Boat, In Which They Might Descend The Niger.

He replied, they might have one for a hundred dollars, but being unable to command that sum they were finally obliged to apply to their friend, the king of Boossa, whom they had so unreasonably distrusted, and who cheerfully undertook to supply their wants.

The city of Yaoorie is of prodigious extent, and is supposed to be as populous as any other in the whole continent, or at least that part of it which is visited by the trading Arabs. Its wall is high and very excellent, though made of clay alone, and may be between twenty and thirty miles in circuit, and it has eight vast entrance gates or doors, which were well fortified after the manner of the country. The residence of the sultan, as well as the houses of many of the principal inhabitants of the city, are two stories in height, having thick and clumsy stairs of clay, leading to the upper apartments, which are rather lofty, and, together with rooms on the ground floor, have door-ways sufficiently large to enable a person to enter without putting himself to the inconvenience of stooping. The principal part of the houses is built in the circular or coozie fashion, but the inhabitants have a few square ones, and the sultan's are of no regular form whatever. It may be considered somewhat singular, that the majority of the natives of western and central, and it may be said, also of northern Africa, moisten the floors of their huts, and the inside of their walls with a solution of cow dung and water, two or three times a day, or as often as they can find the materials. Though disagreeable to the smell of an European, this keeps the interior of a dwelling as cool as it is dark.

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