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She had put off her outer costume of white linen and stood dressed for the house, the seraglio. Upon her head was a chachia, a little velvet cap, embroidered with seed-pearls. Her bust was clothed with a rlila, or bolero of brocaded silk, beneath which was a vest of muslin, heavy with gold buttons. About her slim waist was a fouta, or scarf of striped silk.
The terrible almamy began by extorting a great number of presents, and then refused to allow the English to visit Bakel on the Senegal. They might, he said, go through his states, those of Kaarta, to Clego, or they might take the Fouta Toro route. Both these alternatives were equally impossible, as in either case the caravan would have to travel among fanatic tribes.
On the 22nd March, 1827, Caillié left Freetown for Kakondy, a village on the Rio Nuñez, where he employed his leisure in collecting information respecting the Landamas and the Nalous, both subject to the Foulahs of Fouta Djallon, but not Mohammedans, and, as a necessary result, both much given to spirituous liquors.
He died in Russian territory of a fever, and when the Chinese demanded of their neighbors that his body should be surrendered they refused, on the ground that enmity should cease with death; but Fouta was able to report to his sovereign that he had seen with his own eyes the mortal remains of the Eleuth chief who had first been the humble friend and then the bitter foe of the Manchu ruler.
Before we enter Kankan with the French explorer, it will be well to sum up what he says of the Foulahs of Fouta. They are mostly tall, well-made men, with chestnut-brown complexions, curly hair, lofty foreheads, aquiline noses, features in fact very like those of Europeans. They are bigoted Mohammedans, and hate Christians.
They have no king, no religion but a barbarous idolatry, and are governed by the oldest man in their village, an arrangement which answers very well. On the 19th April, 1827, Caillié with but one bearer and a guide, at last started for Timbuctoo. He speaks favourably of the Foulahs and the people of Fouta Djallon, whose rich and fertile country he crossed.
Woolli and the Gaboon were crossed, and the explorers penetrated into Bondou, which Mollien was to visit a few years later, a district inhabited by a people as fanatic and fierce as those of Fouta Djallon. Caillié knowing nothing of this disastrous beginning, and aware that Gray was glad to receive new recruits, left St. Louis with two negroes, and reached Goree.
At the same time the war-drum was beaten on every side. To fight was impossible; a palaver had to be held. In a word, the English had to own their powerlessness. The almamy dictated the conditions of peace, mulcted the whites of a few more presents, and ordered them to withdraw by way of Fouta Toro.
Fouta pursued Amursana with the energy of one who has to gain his spurs, and he almost succeeded in effecting his capture, but Amursana just made his escape in time across the frontier into Russian territory. But Keen Lung was not satisfied with this result, and he sent both to Fouta and Tchaohoei to rest satisfied with nothing short of the capture of Amursana.
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