FILA-DOUGON. 
299 
surrounded with mud walls^ and kept very clean. His 
dwelling is as simple as that of any of his subjects; con- 
sisting only of a few round huts, with mud walls; on the 
outside of these walls, a few stakes are driven into the ground 
to support the timber work, which is like a pigeon house, 
and covered with straw ; the ground-plot of these huts may 
be fifty or fifty-five feet in circumference, and they are twelve 
or fourteen feet high. The environs of this little village are 
well cultivated, and abounding in pistachios, rice, yams, 
maize, and a thousand other useful productions. I saw, for 
the first time since I left the coast, a few specimens of the 
rhamnus lotus, mentioned by Mungo Park. The prince sent 
us a pretty good supper of rice, cooked with sour milk, and 
added a little salt, by way of a luxury ; we had rain all the 
evening, and the air was damp and cool. 
On the 22nd of July, about nine in the morning, we took 
leave of Baramisa, making him a present of a little gun- 
powder, and a few glass trinkets for his women. We travelled 
to the S. E. ; the soil, though full of small gravel, is well 
cultivated ; ces and nedes we saw in abundance. After we 
had proceeded about thirteen miles, we crossed a large 
stream, upon a tottering bridge ; the country is for the most 
part very open, and, from time to time, I saw a few small 
hills of porous red stone. We halted, at five in the afternoon, 
at Fila-Dougon, which is the last village of the Wassoulo 
territory, towards the east. The kind inhabitants gave us 
their own suppers, for we had eaten nothing that day. The 
Foulahs came in great numbers to see us ; I showed them 
my umbrella, which they thought little less than miraculous, 
not understanding how it was possible that I could open and 
shut it at pleasure. Our fore-court was not clear all the 
evening, and many of them even came late at night, with 
wisps of lighted straw, which amused me extremely ; they 
all exclaimed, with a smile when they saw me, How white 
