102 
THE MARABOUTS. 
treat their slaves with barbarity ; calling them by insulting 
names^ beating them, and requiring a great deal of service 
in return for very little food, and having no other garment 
than a sheep-skin. I sometimes protested against the cruelty 
with which these wretches were treated. " They are slaves, 
they are infidels,'' was the reply ; ^' you see that they never 
pray ; they know neither God nor the prophet." I have 
seen slaves however who prayed with the utmost regularity, 
and were no better treated for it ; neither did it save them 
from the degrading appellation of slaves. 
The office of the marabouts renders them more dissem- 
bling than the hassanes ; they are less cruel, and more hos- 
pitable ; but I have found repeatedly that they receive stran- 
gers unwillingly, rather from the fear of insult or pillage than 
from humanity. 
A European traveller who should not make up his mind 
to dissemble, as I did, if he were to escape the fanatic fury 
of the hassanes, would probably not be murdered by the 
marabouts ; but they would forbid him to enter their tents ; 
and they would afford him no sustenance ; or if they gave 
him a little milk to save him from dying of hunger, it would 
be in the hope of being well paid. If a christian were to 
fall into the hands of the hassanes or zenagues, there is no 
kind of torture to which he would not be exposed. 
The marabouts wander less from the banks of the river, 
than the hassanes ; they remove their camps less frequently, 
and never change their place except to seek pasturage. 
The zenagues, or tributaries, are the most wretched of 
the Moors ; they are the serfs of the hassanes, and every 
hassane has more or fewer under his command. They exact 
from them annual contributions, consisting in general of a 
mator (about a quarter of a barrel) of millet, a calabash of 
butter, a few sheep- skins, and a laize of stuff for a tent; 
or a cow and a calabash of butter from each. The tribu- 
taries pay with the utmost exactness ; but their unjust and 
