from Egypt to Western Africa. 11 
has often met traders from Houssa, carrying salt, or congwa, to 
Timbuctoo. Congwa is used for many purposes; it is mixed 
with their food, is taken as a medicine, and is sometimes pounded 
and put into snuff; it has a bitter taste, and I should suppose 
is more like alum than salt. From the scarcity of this 
useful article the natives are often compelled to use as a 
substitute the ash procured by burning branches of the 
pullom, or cotton-tree, Setafa was at Janné about a year 
ago, and staid two moons; he relates the following curious 
circumstance regarding the purchase and payment of articles 
there, which, if correct, will shew that credit is given to no great 
extent in Janné. In the centre of the town there is a large 
market-place, where all merchandise and produce is, and must 
be, exposed to sale, any article disposed of otherwise being liable 
to confiscation; should any individual purchase goods from 
another, and be permitted by the seller to walk away without 
paying for them, he can never be seized upon for the debt, unless 
again found in the market-place. 
In seven days from Janné, pursuing a south-westerly course, 
Mahomed Misrah reached Sego, the capital of the kingdom of 
Bambarrana, at which town I shall leave him to prosecute the 
remainder of his journey by himself, as this part of the country 
is already well known to us, through the medium of European 
travellers, and as it is to be presumed, that, before this time, 
an account, more circumstantial than any that has hitherto 
appeared, may have issued from the pen of Staff-surgeon Do- 
chard, who passed several years in the interior, and a consider- 
able length of time on the banks of the Niger; I nevertheless 
think it necessary to observe that I have in my possession the 
route of the Priest, as well as of many other natives, from Sego 
to the coast, and that although I am perfectly satisfied, from the 
agreement of the statements with other accounts, that the whole 
of Mahomed’s information, as far as regards his own personal 
obseryation, may be relied on, yet I do not perceive any thing 
of sufficient consequence in the remainder to interest those who 
have already perused the trayels of Mungo Park, Mollien, and 
others. 
