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Updated: June 18, 2025
During my stay at Kamalia I was present at four different feasts of this kind, and the ceremony was the same in each, whether the child belonged to a bushreen or a kafir.
This being done, the boy presses the paper to his forehead, and pronounces the word Amen; upon which the bushreens rise, shake him by the hand, and bestow upon him the title of bushreen. The parents then redeem their son, by giving his master the value of a slave; but if they cannot afford it, the boy continues the slave of the schoolmaster, until he ransoms himself by his own industry.
The case was this: A young man, a Kafir, of considerable affluence, who had recently married a young and handsome wife, applied to a very devout Bushreen, or Mussulman priest of his acquaintance, to procure him saphies for his protection during the approaching war.
Daisy, having consulted with his chief men about the best means of repelling so formidable an enemy, returned an answer of defiance, and made a Bushreen write in Arabic, upon a piece of thin board, a sort of proclamation, which was suspended to a tree in the public square; and a number of aged men were sent to different places to explain it to the common people.
In the mean time it was whispered that the Bushreen, who always performed his evening devotions at the door of the kafir's hut, was more intimate with the young wife, than was consistent with virtue, or the sanctity of his profession.
I did not meet with a man, whether a Bushreen or Kafir, who was not fully persuaded of the powerful efficacy of these amulets. The truth is, that all the natives of this part of Africa consider the art of writing as bordering on magic; and it is not in the doctrines of the prophet, but in the arts of the magician, that their confidence is placed.
As he had to be absent about his affairs for a month, Park was left during the time to the care of a good old Bushreen, who acted as schoolmaster to the younger people of Kamalia.
The same evening Madiboo, the bushreen, who had accompanied me from Pisania, went to pay a visit to his father and mother, who dwelt at a neighbouring town called Dramanet. He was joined by my other attendant, the blacksmith.
The schoolmaster who officiated as priest on these occasions, and who is necessarily a Bushreen, first said a long prayer over the dega; during which every person present took hold of the brim of the calabash with his right hand.
In the middle of December, Karfa, who proposed to complete his purchase of slaves, departed for Kancaba, a large town on the banks of the Niger, and a great slave market. It was his intention to return in a month, and during his absence left Mr. Park to the care of a good old bushreen, who was schoolmaster at Kamalia.
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