46 
RESIDENCE AT KATUNGA. 
I not like a wife ? he would give me one. Did he not give us 
plenty to eat, or did he not use me well ? “ All very true, and very 
good,” says 1, “ but 1 am not like a black man, who has no book to 
write. I must know the day on which 1 am to go, as I must have 
all my books ready for the king of England. Every thing I give 
away is in that book, every thing I get, and every thing I say.” All 
my talk would not make him fix a day, but he said I should have 
a servant of his to the king of Youri; that that road was safe. I 
would go in four days to Yara in Bamba, which was tributary to 
him ; there I would cross the river Moussa, which ran into the 
Quorra, three days distance ; that the Moussa came from the north- 
west, and in it were plenty of hippopotami. He is still particularly 
shy of giving any information about the Quorra, of which, perhaps, 
he has none. At one time he says it runs into the sea between 
Jaboo and Benin, and at another that it passes Benin; that the 
Fellatahs are in possession of Baka, only a day’s journey north- 
north-east, and of all the country between it and the Quorra : he 
therefore cannot contrive to get me thither. He now shifted the 
subject of conversation ; told me he did not know how many wives, 
or how many children he had got, but he was sure that his wives 
alone, hand to hand, would reach from hence to Jannali. He sent 
for one of his daughters, whom he had given as wife to Abaco, the 
messenger. His daughters are allowed to take any one they may 
choose, either as a husband or lover ; but it is death to touch any 
of the king’s wives. The son, at the father’s death, takes all the 
widows to maintain. The king had his skin rubbed over with the 
powder of a species of red wood, ground very fine, and made like 
a paste ; it is used by all classes. The wood is brought from Waree 
and Benin. We gave him a flask of rum on his leaving us, and he 
promised to give me some of the blue stone of which his beads are 
made. He says it comes from a country between this and Benin. 
They are not glass, as I at first supposed. 
