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Here Clapperton tells us he saw several looms at work, as many as eight or nine in one house, a regular manufactory in fact. The people of Jenneh also make earthenware, but they prefer that which they get from Europe, often putting the foreign produce to uses for which it was never intended.
Caillié was detained at Timeh by the still unhealed wound in his foot, until the 10th November. At that date he proposed starting for Jenneh, but, to quote his own words, "I was now seized with violent pains in the jaws, warning me that I was attacked with scurvy, a terrible malady, all the horrors of which I was to realize.
The negroes were very averse to work, and it would be impossible to relate the numerous "palavers" and negotiations which had to be gone through, and the exactions which were submitted to, before porters could be obtained. The explorers succeeded, in spite of these difficulties, in reaching Jenneh, sixty miles from the coast.
The Bambarra women all wear a thin slip of wood imbedded in the lower lip, a strange fashion exactly similar to that noticed by Cook amongst the natives of the north-western coast of America. The Bambarras speak Mandingo, though they have a dialect of their own called Kissour, about which the traveller could obtain no trustworthy written information. Jenneh was formerly called "the golden land."
In spite of this great commercial movement, the prosperity of Jenneh was threatened. Sego Ahmadou, chief of the country, impelled by bigoted zeal, made fierce war upon the Bambarras of Sego, whom he wished to rally round the standard of the Prophet.
This struggle did a great deal of harm to the trade of Jenneh, for it interrupted intercourse with Yamina, Sansanding, Bamakou, and Boureh, which were the chief marts for its produce. The women of Jenneh would not be true to their sex if they did not show some marks of coquetry.
The precious metal is not, however, found there, but a good deal is imported by the Boureh merchants and the Mandingoes of Kong. Jenneh, two miles and a half in circumference, is surrounded by a mud wall ten feet high. The houses, built of bricks baked in the sun, are as large as those of European peasants. They have all terraces, but no outer windows. Numbers of foreigners frequent Jenneh.
Those who aim at fashion pass a ring or a glass ornament through the nostrils, whilst their poorer sisters content themselves with a bit of pink silk. During Caillié's long stay at Jenneh, he was loaded with kindness and attentions by the Moors, to whom he had told the fabulous tale about his birth in Egypt, and abduction by the army of occupation.
Instead of returning to Europe by way of the Great Desert, he was very anxious to go past Jenneh and Sego to the French settlements in Senegal, but at the first hint of his purpose to the Foulahs who crowded to stare at him, he was told that a Nazarene could not possibly be allowed to set foot in their country, and that if he dared attempt it they would make him repent it.
I will not again attempt a history of the disputed word which Barbot derives from Ginahoa, the first negro region visited by the Portuguese; others from Ghana, the modern Kano; from the Jenneh or Jinne of Mungo Park; from Jenna, a coast-town once of note, governed by an officer under the 'King' of Gambia-land, and, in fine, from the Italian Genoa. The s.s.
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