CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE OF FOUTA DIALLON. 299 
impudence which they manifest in their incessant demands 
of presents from them. Their dress and the manner in which 
they arrange their hair bespeak some taste. 
Every person who does not acknowledge Mahomet as the 
messenger of God, is considered as an enemy by the Poulas 
of Fouta Diallon. But notwithstanding their numbers, they 
have found pagans who have made them repent their fanati- 
cism. Bokari, a Djalonké chief, is even at the present mo- 
ment their most formidable enemy. I am the more surprised 
at the excessive zeal which they evince for the Mahometan 
religion, as we might be tempted to believe, from the cross 
with which they ornament their dresses and their houses, that 
they formerly professed Christianity. 
As the race of the red Poulas is daily diminishing, they 
have been obliged to extend the rights they enjoyed to the 
offspring of black slaves by red Poulas ; thus children whose 
mothers were slaves, may become the chiefs of villages, if 
they happen to be the eldest. 
The rumbdés, which I have several times had occasion 
to mention, are establishments truly honourable to humanity. 
Each village, or several inhabitants of a village, assemble 
their slaves, and make them build themselves huts close to 
each other ; this place is called a rumbdé. They chuse a chief 
from among themselves : if his children are worthy of the 
distinction, they succeed to the post after his death. These 
slaves, who are so but in name, cultivate the plantations of 
Q Q 2 
