Chap. LIII. RUINS.— THE KOMA'dUGU. 
25 
with a considerable number of learned and intelligent 
men gathering round their sovereign, and a priest 
writing down the history of the glorious achievements 
of his master, and thus securing them from oblivion. 
Pity that he was not aware that his work might fall 
into the hands of people from quite another part of 
the world, and of so different a stage of civilization, 
language, and learning! else he would certainly not 
have failed to have given to posterity a more distinct 
cine to the chronology of the history of his native 
country. 
It is remarkable that the area of the town, although 
thickly overgrown with rank grass, is quite bare of 
trees, while the wall is closely hemmed in by a dense 
forest ; and when I entered the ruins, I found them 
to be the haunt of a couple of tall ostriches, the only 
present possessors of this once animated ground: but 
on the south-west corner, at some distance from the 
wall, there was a small hamlet. 
The way in which the komadugu, assisted pro- 
bably by artificial means, spreads over this whole 
region is very remarkable. The passage of the 
country at the present season of the year, covered as 
it is with the thickest forest, was extremely difficult, 
and we had to make a very large circuit in order to 
reach the village of Zengiri, where the river could be 
most easily crossed. I myself went, on this occa- 
sion, as far south-west as Zaraima, a village lying on 
a steep bank near a very strong bend or elbow of the 
river, which, a little above, seems to be formed by the 
