CHARACTER OF THE MANDINGOES. 353 
an opportunity of studying their character for some time, 
I cannot say that 1 observed this difference in their affection. 
When they have any business to transact they follow in 
preference the advice of their father, and they would feel 
extreme reluctance to disobey him ; for the father is always 
the supreme head of the family. I shall cite, by way of 
example, Arafan- Abdalahi, a Mandingo of Kankan, a man of 
forty or forty-five, who relinquished the pleasure, and even 
the religious duty, of performing a pilgrimage to Mecca, 
that he might not displease his aged father whose consent 
he could not obtain. I did not observe that the Mandingoes 
quarrel often. It is dangerous to insult them and still more 
to offend their parents. They are however vindictive, in- 
quisitive, envious, liars, importunate, selfish, avaricious, 
ignorant and superstitious. They are not strictly speaking 
thieves since they do not steal from each other ; but their 
probity with respect to others is very equivocal and in par- 
ticular towards strangers, who would be very imprudent to 
shew them any thing that might tempt their cupidity, such 
as scissors, knives, glass trinkets, gun-powder, paper, &c. 
articles which are exceedingly rare and valuable in those 
countries. The Mandingoes do not trust any thing, even 
in the hands of their relations, without first counting or mea- 
suring it several times. In general they are distrustful 
and far from scrupulous about the means of obtaining what 
pleases them. During my stay at Time, 1 heard that a 
Bambara belonging to a distant village had killed one of his 
comrades, which occasioned much consternation in the 
neighbourhood, but I was never able to learn whether the 
murderer suffered any punishment for the offence. I can, 
however, affirm that such crimes are rare among the Bam- 
baras, and never committed by the Mandingoes. These 
latter despise the poor Bambaras, whom they look upon as 
infidels, but I had good reason to think that they are them- 
selves avaricious and inhospitable, and 1 firmly believe, that 
