IBRAHIM, THE GUIDE. 
215 
been brought up among christians^ and had learned their 
manners. But they constantly renewed their entreaties, and, 
in the end, succeeded in getting what they wanted. During 
the whole period of my residence at Cambaya, I was teazed 
in this way by the inhabitants, who were not satisfied with 
obtaining my medicines for nothing, but also expected 
tobacco, scissors, and Guinea cloth, to make coussabes. 
Several children used to come into the yard and ask me to 
dress their sores. At length, after innumerable importunities 
of this kind, which 1 omit to mention, these Mandingoes, 
more selfish and ignorant than deliberately wicked, began to 
accommodate themselves to my character, and ceased to 
regard me as a white. In fact, they never could conceive it 
possible that a European should undertake so long a journey 
on foot, and alone, merely from philanthropic motives. As they 
live in a state of ignorance and simplicity, similar to that of 
our first parents, unacquainted with wealth and luxury, the 
existence of learned societies in Europe, formed for the pur- 
pose of meliorating their condition and extending to them 
the advantages of knowledge and all the benefits of civili- 
zation, is to them a thing quite incomprehensible. 
Ibrahim was not more sagacious than the other negroes. 
He did not solicit me directly, but pretended that he wished 
to purchase every thing ; he coveted in particular, my bag- 
gage. He had brought a quantity of Guinea cloth and to- 
bacco from Kakondy, but that did not prevent him from 
continually proposing to buy what I had. He alleged that 
my Guinea cloth was finer than his, and that the flavour of 
my tobacco was superior, though they were both of precisely 
the same quality. Sometimes he hinted to me that he 
Avas without trowsers, or that his coussabe was quite worn 
out ; and in this way he suggested the necessity of pur- 
chasing what he wanted from me, in the hope that I should 
make him a present of it. While we were at Popoco, he 
