TRAVELS IN THE 
cessive nights, they neglected to send us our accustomed meal, 
and though my boy went to a small Negro town near the camp, 
and begged with great diligence from hut to hut, he could only 
procure a few handfuls of ground nuts, which he readily shared 
with me. Hunger, at first, is certainly a very painful sensation ; 
but when it has continued for some time, this pain is succeeded 
by languor and debility; in which case, a draught of water, by 
keeping the stomach distended, will greatly exhilarate the spi- 
rits, and remove for a short time every sort of uneasiness. 
Johnson and Demba were very much dejected. They lay 
stretched upon the sand, in a sort of torpid slumber ; and even 
when the kouskous arrived, I found some difficulty in awaken- 
ing them. I felt no inclination to sleep, but was affected with 
a deep convulsive respiration, like constant sighing ; and, what 
alarmed me still more, a dimness of sight, and a tendency to 
faint when I attempted to sit up. These symptoms did not go 
olf until some time after I had received nourishment. 
We had been for some days in daily expectation of Ali's re- 
turn from Saheel (or the north country) with his wife Fatima. 
In the meanwhile Mansong, King of Bambarra, as I have 
related in Chapter VIII, had sent to Ali for a party of horse to 
assist in storming Gedingooma. With this demand Ali had not 
only refused to comply, but had treated the messengers with 
great haughtiness and contempt ; upon which Mansong gave 
up all thoughts of taking the town, and prepared to chastize Ali 
for his contumacy. 
Things were in this situation when, on the 29th of April, a 
messenger arrived at Benowm with the disagreeable intelligence 
