12 TRAVELS IN AFRICA. 
any arrangements with that chief which might be 
thought necessary, but Captain Campbell did 
not conceive it requisite to send an officer; and, 
therefore, despatched one of our native Ser- 
jeants^, who had been before employed by the 
governor of Sierra Leone on similar occasions. 
He left us on the 10th of February, and was ac- 
companied by Abou Baccary, one of the princes 
in Abdul Hamed's train. 
In the evening, the animals and baggage were 
removed across the Tingalinta, which, at that 
place is about 110 feet wide and from two to 
three deep, with a bottom of small round peb- 
bles. At a little distance below the ford was a 
swinging bridge, composed of cane and bark 
ropes, by which it was attached, at about twenty- 
four feet above the water, to the branches of the 
trees which grew on the banks, and affi)rded 
during the rainy season and periodical floods, a 
safe, though apparently slight and tottering, 
passage for people on foot. 
We were in motion at three o'clock on the 
morning of the ISth, but the Kakundy people, 
who had been hired as carriers, refused to cross 
the Tingalinta, assigning as a reason that they 
were afraid of being seized, and retained as 
slaves by the Footas, who had some years be- 
* William Tuft. 
