MR. HUTCHISON'S DIARY. 407 
or drink, but stir it about repeating incantations, and shaking a 
pair of iron castanets, without which, the charm would be incom- 
plete. I saw an old hag at this work on the Bantama road, who 
would not answer mj question as to what she was doing, but made 
many wry faces, and squint looks, for me to be gone and not spoil 
her work, and while I stood, she stirred, and muttered, and clat- 
tered the castanets with greater fury. 
My attention being anxiously turned towards information con- 
cerning the Niger and its course, all enquiries end in making 
the Nile its continuation. An old Moor from Jenne told me, 
unasked, that while he was at Askanderee (Alexandria) twenty- 
six years ago he saw a fight at the mouth of the Nile between 
ships, and one of them was blown up in the air with a terrible ex- 
plosion. This must have been the battle fought by Lord Nelson, 
although there is a mistake in the date of seven years ; he surely 
could not invent such a story. He states also, that returning to 
Masser (Grand Cairo) the European armies advanced to that 
place; the first army took every thing they wanted and would not 
pay : but when the second European and Turkish army got pos- 
session of it, they paid for whatever they wanted^ All the Moors 
were ordered to retire to one quarter of the city, and not allowed 
to mix with the soldiers ; this agrees with Sir Robert Wilson's ac- 
count of the Egyptian campaign. I shewed him a seal I have, of 
Pompey's pillar, which he said he knew ; he had travelled from 
Jenne to Masser on a joma (camel) and drew me a map of the 
Quolla and Nile from its source to its emptying itself into the sea 
at Alexandria. There is one thing that disagrees with Mr. Park's 
account, they call the Niger Quolla at Jenne, Sansanding, &c. 
and describe the Jolliba as falling into the Quolla to the east of 
Timbuctoo. When I told them of the conjectures that the great 
