440 
MAN I AN AN. 
not stop liere, but proceeded five miles to the N. N. E. over a 
soil composed of hard sand, but less gravelly than it had been 
on the preceding days, and covered with mimosas, ces, nedes, 
and the rhamnus lotus. The road was thronged with people, 
travelling from village to village with various commodities, 
such as millet, cotton, dried fish, &c., and caravans of 
dealers in salt. 
At the village of Touma-dioman there are two large 
ponds of muddy water, to which both men and beasts went 
to slake their thirst. 
About one in the afternoon, we stopped at Manianau, a 
large vill|age, with a well furnished market, in which the 
dealers are sheltered from the heat of the sun by small 
straw huts. The ronnier grows abundantly in the neigh- 
bourhood of this village, there many tolas are settled : 
they are an artful, but industrious people, and devote them- 
selves to trade and the manufacture of cotton cloth. Ma- 
nianan is situated on an eminence, which is nearly surround- 
ed by large ditches formed by nature, which serve as for- 
tifications to the village. These ditches contain a great 
deal of water, which, though impure, is nevertheless drunk 
by the inhabitants. I saw several children in small canoes 
made of pieces of plank joined together, amusing themselves 
by paddling about in these ditches, on the edges of which 
the women of the village throw dirt and all sorts of filth. 
One of my fellow travellers bought an ass here, for which he 
paid eleven thousand cowries. 
We started from Manianan at eight in the morning of 
the 9th of March. On leaving the village on the north side, 
I saw several huts built like those of the Foulah shep- 
herds, and in the surrounding fields there were cattle, goats, 
sheep, and some asses. After proceeding three miles 
over a soil composed of loose sand, in which in many 
places the vegetation is similar to that which I had observed 
on the preceding day, we came in sight of Tomga, a village 
