Chap. XXIV. WILD COUNTRY TO THE SOUTH. 
85 
also of the traffic on the path seemed to be not of a 
very peaceable kind ; for we met nothing but armed 
foot and horsemen hastening to Katsena on the news 
of the expedition in course of preparation by the 
people of Marddi. But further on, the aspect of the 
country became a little more peaceful ; and after a 
march of three miles we passed a well, where the 
women from a neighbouring village were offering for 
sale the common vegetables of the country, such as 
gow&za or yams, dankali or sweet potatoes, kuka, the 
leaves of the monkey bread-tree, dodowa or the vege- 
table cakes mentioned above, ground nuts, beans, and 
sour milk. Nevertheless the whole country, with its 
few fortified villages, its little cultivation, and the 
thick forests which separated the villages one from 
another, left the impression of a very unsettled and 
precarious existence. I observed that brushwood, 
where it is not interrupted by larger trees, is always 
a proof of cultivation having been carried on at no 
distant period. In the midst of a wild thicket, which 
deranged all my things, we met a long warlike-train 
of several hundred horsemen, who perhaps might 
have incommoded us on the narrow path, if the strange 
appearance of my luggage had not so frightened the 
horses, that they rather chose to carry their riders 
through the very thickest of the covert than to fall in 
with us. Dum-palms now began to appear; and beyond 
the considerable village Bay, cultivation became more 
extensive. Besides the fan-palm, the dumma and 
G 3 
