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With regard to the Mandingoes, however, many particulars are yet to be related; some of which are necessarily interwoven into the narrative of my progress, and others will be given in a summary at the end of my work; together with all such observations as I have collected on the country and climate, which I could not with propriety insert in the regular detail of occurrences.
The traveller then entered the province of Bambarra, and quickly arrived at the pretty little village of Timeh, inhabited by Mohammedan Mandingoes, and bounded on the east by a chain of mountains about 350 fathoms high. When he entered this village, at the end of July, Caillié little dreamt of the long stay he would be compelled to make in it.
They are naturally of a mild and gentle disposition; but the uncharitable maxims of the Koran have made them less hospitable to strangers and more reserved in their behaviour than the Mandingoes. Leaving Bondou, the caravan entered the kingdom of Kajaaga. The inhabitants, whose complexion is jet-black, are called Serrawoollies.
This town, according to the report of the natives, was formerly inhabited only by a few Foulah shepherds, who lived in considerable affluence by means of the excellent meadows in the neighbourhood, in which they reared great herds of cattle. But their prosperity attracting the envy of some Mandingoes, the latter drove out the shepherds, and took possession of their lands.
I have seen ten of them standing together, the lowest not less than six feet two or three inches. The Foulahs, from the Ashantee country, are another race, they are powerful and muscular, ill-featured, badly disposed, and treacherous. The Mandingoes are a smaller race than the others, but they are well disposed and tractable.
The industry of the Foulahs, in the occupations of pasturage and agriculture, is everywhere remarkable. Even on the banks of the Gambia, the greater part of the corn is raised by them, and their herds and flocks are more numerous and in better condition than those of the Mandingoes; but in Bondou they are opulent in a high degree, and enjoy all the necessaries of life in the greatest profusion.
The Mandingoes, notwithstanding a shade of yellow in the complexion, are still negroes, that is, they are an aboriginal people, improved by contact with Islamism, and capable of self-development afterwards; but the Moors never ruled them, nor mingled with their blood. Their features are African, in the popular sense of that word, without one Semitic trace.
In the administration of justice, some classes of their criminals are sold into slavery, and occasionally a Mandingo would be kidnapped. But there are many Mandingoes who are still pagans, and know nothing of Arabic or commerce, yet who have the excellences of the dominant tribes: these were found in the gangs of the slave-merchant.
The natives of the countries bordering on the Gambia, though distributed into a great many distinct governments, may, I think, be divided into four great classes; the Feloops, the Jaloffs, the Foulahs, and the Mandingoes.
The general answer to all salutations is to repeat the kontong of the person who salutes, or else to repeat the salutation itself, first pronouncing the word marhaba, my friend. The account of the Mandingoes continued. Their notions in respect of the planetary bodies, and the figure of the earth. Their religious opinions, and belief in a future state. Their diseases and methods of treatment.
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