BORANDOU. 
377 
this advice. I should have taken good care not to open it 
in their presence, for, notwithstanding my good opinion of 
the people of these parts, I had no inchnation to put their 
honesty to the test. 
On the isth of January, at six in the morning, we again 
set out, and travelled nine miles and a half northward. The 
soil still continued gravelly and the vegetation unvaried. 
About ten o'clock we arrived at Borandou, a village con- 
taining four or five hundred inhabitants. The huts are 
chiefly built of earth and have terraced roofs, which render 
them very inconvenient, because the smoke has no outlet 
but the door. The streets are dirty, narrow and crooked. 
There is a market twice a week for the strangers who hap- 
pen to be in the neighbourhood, and whenever caravans pass 
another market is opened for the sale of provisions. I ex- 
changed a few glass beads for some cowries, with which I pur- 
chased a little milk. This refreshed me, for it was long since 
I had tasted any. I saw some women in the streets carrying 
things to sell, which they cried, as in our European towns. 
I also observed that the Bambaras hang on the outside of 
their huts the heads of all the animals they eat; this is 
looked upon as a mark of grandeur. Every morning when 
they go to the fields they carry fire with them for roasting 
yams. They drink river water, and when they think they 
cannot obtain it, they bring water from the wells in cala- 
bashes. In the evening I was looking attentively at an old 
woman who had a piece of calabash in her lip, and 1 again 
reflected on the singularity of the custom 3 she and her 
companions laughed at my astonishment, and when 1 rose 
to go away she beckoned me to stop for a moment, and 
fetched me a yam of which she made me a present. 
The inhabitants of this village make earthen pots. 
Their wells are ten or twelve feet deep, and the ground in 
which -they are dug is gravelly. They contain good water, 
of a whitish colour. 
