294 
FROM SOCCATOO TO DUNRORA. 
tion, and celebrated market, I was rather surprised on finding it 
to consist of nearly five hundred small villages, almost adjoining 
each other ; nearly the whole of which occupy a vast and beautiful 
plain, adorned with the finest trees. Here, for the first time since 
leaving the coast, I saw plantain, palm, and cocoa-nut trees, in great 
abundance, and in a flourishing condition ; the country resembling, 
in a striking manner, some parts of Yariba. A considerable traffic 
is carried on here in slaves and bullocks ; the latter are bred by 
F ellatas, a great number of whom reside here for no other purpose. 
Slaves, as well as bullocks and sheep, are exposed in the market, 
which is held daily ; and also red cloth, gum, salt, goora nuts, trona, 
beads, tobacco, country cloth, rings, needles, cutlery articles, and 
honey, rice, milk, &c. People from the most distant parts of the 
country resort here in vast numbers, to purchase these various 
articles. The sultan being a very great man, I thought it necessary 
to make him a present worthy the representative (however humble) 
of the king of England. I accordingly gave him four yards of blue 
damask, the same quantity of scarlet ditto, a print of my own gra- 
cious sovereign, and one of his royal highness the Duke of York, 
with several more trifling articles. In return, I received from him 
a sheep, the humps of two bullocks, and stewed rice sufficient for 
fifty men. Ten of the king’s wives, on paying me a visit a day or 
tw o after my arrival, took a fancy to the gilt buttons on my jacket, 
which I cut off and presented to their sable majesties. Thinking 
them to be gold, they immediately stuck them in their ears. In 
this belief I took care not to undeceive them. 
During my stay at Cuttup I was never in want of a bullock’s 
hump (by far the best part of the animal, weighing from twelve to 
fifteen pounds), for the king invariably receives, as a tax from the 
butchers, the hump of every bullock they slaughtered ; and one or 
tw r o was sent me by his wives each day. Being in want of money, 
I sent to the market and informed the people I had needles and 
