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Mandingo priest, or gris gris merchant, that is, a seller of charms, which carried about a person, secure the wearer from any evils, such as poison, murder, witchcraft, etc.
I perceived with great satisfaction, too, that the maternal solicitude extended not only to the growth and security of the person, but also, in a certain degree, to the improvement of the mind of the infant; for one of the first lessons in which the Mandingo women instruct their children, is the practice of truth.
The old woman had scarcely left me, when I received information that a nephew of Demba Sego Jalla, the Mandingo King of Kasson, was coming to pay me a visit.
Laidley, being fortunately provided with a negro servant, who spoke both the English and Mandingo tongues; his name was Johnson: he was a native of that part of Africa, and having in his youth been conveyed to Jamaica as a slave, he had been made free, and taken to England by his master, where he had resided many years, and at length found his way back to his native country.
He here engaged a Mandingo priest named Isaaco, who was also a travelling merchant, to serve as a guide, and, on the 4th of May, all being ready, the caravan set forth from Pisania, whence nearly ten years before Park had commenced his adventurous journey into the interior. The arrangements for the march were well devised.
We lodged for the night at a small village called Medina, the sole property of a Mandingo merchant who, by a long intercourse with Europeans, has been induced to adopt some of their customs. His victuals were served up in pewter dishes, and even his houses were built after the fashion of the English houses on the Gambia. May 13.
'Strike me, cries a Mandingo to his enemy, 'but revile not my mother!" And the Krus and Fantis say the same. The peoples on the Zambezi and the great lakes cry in sudden fear or joy: "O, my mother!" "As the mist in the swamps," cries the Angola Negro, "so lives the love of father and mother."
These boys agreed for fifty kowries to transport me and my horse over the river, which was effected without much difficulty, and I arrived in the evening at Taffara, a walled town, and soon discovered that the language of the natives was improved from the corrupted dialect of Bambarra to the pure Mandingo.
These consisted principally of Boollam chiefs, who had seldom left their own country; and a few, notwithstanding their vicinity to a white colony, who had scarce ever seen a white man before. There were, also, not a few Mandingo chiefs, who had acquired property and influence in Boollam, and which was daily increasing.
Dr Laidley also provided him with a negro boy named Demba, a sprightly youth who spoke, besides Mandingo, the language of a large tribe in the interior.
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