146 
MUNGO PARK'S 
As soon as I recovered, I set about exchanging some amber 
and coral for cowries, which are the current money of 
Bambarra. Cowries. 
Coral No. 4 each stone _ - 60 
Amber No. 5 - - - 60 
Blue agates per string - - 100 
With these three articles I bought about twenty thousand 
cowries. It is curious that in counting the cowries, they 
call eighty a hundred ; whilst in all other things they 
calculate by the common hundred. Sixty is called a 
Manding hundred. 
On the 6th Thomas Dyer (a private) died of the fever. 
I had to pay one thousand shells to Dooty Sokee, before 
he would allow me to bury him ; alleging that if the 
ground was not bought where he was buried, it would 
never grow good corn after. 
There is no wood proper for boat building in this neigh- 
bourhood ; the best wood is near Kankaree, on a large navi- 
gable branch of the Niger ; and almost all the Bambarra 
canoes come from thence ; many of them are mahogany. 
The travellers from Sego brought us every day some 
unfavourable news or other. At one time it was reported, 
and believed all over Marraboo, that Mansong had killed 
Isaaco with his own hand, and would do the same with all 
the whites who should come into Bambarra. Our fears 
