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The mansa continued smoking his pipe while he heard the relation, when, tossing up the sleeve of his coat with an indignant air, "Sit down," said he to Mr. Park, "you shall have every thing restored to you. I have sworn it."
It was estimated by the Arabs that his caravan included some sixty thousand people and some five hundred personal slaves. Mansa Musa took a number of Arabic scholars and skilled artisans back to West Africa with him. These scholars enhanced the university of Timbuktu which was already widely known as a center of Islamic studies.
Hereafter Africa for centuries was to appear before the world, not as the land of gold and ivory, of Mansa Musa and Meroe, but as a bound and captive slave, dumb and degraded. The natural desire to avoid a painful subject has led historians to gloss over the details of the slave trade and leave the impression that it was a local west-coast phenomenon and confined to a few years.
On his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1495 there was nothing of the barbaric splendor of Mansa Musa, but a brilliant group of scholars and holy men with a small escort of fifteen hundred soldiers and nine hundred thousand dollars in gold. He stopped and consulted with scholars and politicians and studied matters of taxation, weights and measures, trade, religious tolerance, and manners.
Although several of these kings made pilgrimages to Mecca, the most spectacular was the one by Mansa Musa in 1324. On his way there, he made a prolonged visit to Cairo. While there, both his generosity in giving lavish gifts of gold to its citizens and his extravagant spending poured so much gold into the Cairo market that it caused a general inflation.
The Mandinka people, who had been the middlemen in the gold trade and who had received protection from the king of Ghana, achieved their independence in 1230 A.D. They went on to use their position in the gold trade to build an empire of their own. The peak of their influence and power was achieved in the early fourteenth century under Mansa Kankan Musa who ruled Mali for a quarter of a century.
The chief man is here called the mansa, which usually signifies king; but it appear that the government of Manding is a sort of republic, as every town has a particular mansa, and the chief power of the state is lodged in an assembly of the whole body. Mr. Park related to the mansa the circumstance of the robbery, and his story was confirmed by the two shepherds.
From the Chandala springs a race called Swapaka whose occupation consists in keeping guard over the dead. The women of the Magadhi caste, by union with these four castes of wicked dispositions produce four others who live by practising deceit. These are Mansa, Swadukara, Kshaudra, and Saugandha. From the Vaideha springs up a cruel and sinful caste that lives by practising deception.
Park was conducted into a hut, where he was provided with food, and a crowd of people assembled, all of whom commiserated his misfortunes and vented imprecations against the Foulahs. As there was a great scarcity of provisions in the place, Park, after spending two days there, begged Mansa to allow him to depart.
The seegoo establishes itself very readily in swampy borders, and the white blossom spikes among the arrow-pointed leaves are quite as acceptable to the eye as any native species. The virtue of it as a febrifuge was taught to the mission fathers by the neophytes, and wise old dames of my acquaintance have worked astonishing cures with it and the succulent yerba mansa.
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