334 PERSECUTION OF THE AUTHOR. 
troublesome. My sore foot was the object of their ridicule, 
and the difficulty I experienced in walking excited their im- 
moderate laughter. Such are the beings among whom I was 
obliged to live. Their treatment of me arose not so much 
from any bad feeling as from stupidity and ignorance, for they 
are little better than savages. When I occasionally asked 
such of the women as most tormented me for water, they 
would hasten to fetch it for me. The men were not more 
hospitable than the women. If they did not amuse theai- 
selves at my expense they reproached me for giving them 
nothing. I told them that I had a long journey to perform 
before I could reach Mecca, and that the little stock of mer- 
chandise which I had would, perhaps, be insufficient to pay 
my expenses thither, in which case I should be unable to pro- 
ceed. They did not appear to be moved by these represen- 
tations, but, pointing to my woollen wrapper and my leather 
bag, they said — ^'Look there, you have a wrapper and a bag 
full of stuff and different merchandise. The Arab does not 
give us any thing ; he is not good''— (Mi casa fani aheyan 
nanfoulo ahe, Larah featemo — oco amagn4,) They enter- 
tain extravagant ideas of the wealth of the whites, and even 
of the Arabs, whom they rank in the same class \ and hence 
they conclude that a white man travelling through their 
country ought to make them liberal presents. I saw a Man- 
dingo of the village, who had been several times at Gambia 
and at Albreda. He spoke of a Mr. Waterman, a merchant 
at Gambia, and of M. Jaffrot, of Albreda. He complained 
bitterly of the want of generosity shewn by the whites, who, 
he said, had large warehouses full of merchandise and yet 
gave away very little. This negro excited the curiosity of his 
countrymen, who assembled round him to hear him describe 
the wonders which he had seen on the coast. To convey to 
his hearers an idea of the large size of the houses of the 
whites, he compared them to ten or twelve mosques like that 
of Kankan, which, as I have already mentioned is a square 
