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It was decided that Laing should be authorized to penetrate into Soolimana by the most convenient route for future communications. Laing left Sierra Leone on the 16th April, 1824, and rowed up the Rokelle river to Rokon, the chief town of Timmannee. His interview with the King of Rokon was extremely amusing.
McCormack does not fell any timber in the island; he merely uses his location here as a depôt for the wood which is brought down the rivers Rokelle and Porto Logo from the upper countries. For this trade he contracts with the natives inhabiting the lands lying near the shores of the rivers, and the wood is floated down on rafts to Tombo, where ships come to take in their cargoes.
Laing afterwards visited the source of the Tongolelle, a tributary of the Rokelle, and then left Kooranko to enter Soolimana. Kooranko, into which our traveller did not penetrate beyond the frontier, is of vast extent and divided into a great number of small states. The inhabitants resemble the Mandingoes in language and costume, but they are neither so well looking nor so intelligent.
The major had not, however, left Falaba two hours before the permission was rescinded, and he had to give up an enterprise which had justly appeared to him of great importance. A few days later he obtained leave to visit the source of the Rokelle or Sale Kongo, a river of which nothing was known before his time beyond Rokon.
The chief halting-places on the route taken by the major were: Toma, where a white man had never before been seen; Balandeko, Roketchnick, which he ascertained to be situated in N. lat. 8 degrees 30 minutes, and W. long. 12 degrees 11 minutes; Mabimg, beyond a very broad stream flowing north of the Rokelle; and Ma-Yosso, the chief frontier town of Timmannee.
From the summit of a lofty rock, Laing saw Mount Loma, the highest of the chain of which it forms part. "The point," says the traveller, "from which the Niger issues, was now shown to me, and appeared to be at the same level on which I stood, viz., 1600 feet above the level of the Atlantic; the source of the Rokelle, which I had already measured, being 1470 feet.
At the same time the course was traced and the source discovered of the Rokelle, whilst for the first time definite information was obtained as to the sources of the Niger, for although our traveller had not actually visited them, he had gone near enough to determine their position approximately. The results obtained by Laing on this journey, only fired his ambition for further discoveries.
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