108 
FADE — SEDO. 
all Marabouts. The questions which they put to me, shewed 
the mean idea which the Negroes entertain of our knowledge 
and our wealth. " Can you write ? Can you ride a horse ? 
fire a gun ? Have you horses, flocks, water, stones in your 
country ?" Such were the questions they asked, and the last 
were suggested by the attention with which they saw me 
examine all these things, 
February 2ôth. We departed before day-light, and soon 
passed Padé, a village inhabited by Jolofts. To draw the 
water from the wells of this place, a boy is let down by a rope 
and fills the leather buckets. A very steep hill which we 
then climbed was absolutely bare ; its sides presented a surface 
which seemed to have been burned by the action of fire, and 
from which ferruginous rocks here and there projected. But 
on the summit of this hill, a magnificent prospect presented 
itself to our view. Since I had been in the interior of Africa 
I had not beheld so beautiful a scene. A spacious and well 
cultivated plain opened before me ; the fields were interspered 
with clumps of trees, several large villages indicated the 
opulence of the country, in the middle of which rose Sedo, a 
town containing a population of about six thousand souls. 
Almamy, or the sovereign of Foutatoro, was then there. My 
fellow-travellers conducted me to their houses ; the whole quar- 
ter of the town in which they resided was exclusively inhabited 
by Joloffs. It is difficult to describe the joy of these good 
people on meeting each other again. The women threw them- 
