166 
AFRICA AND ITS EXPLORATION. 
make large profits out of the sale of their rice and salt. 
They have no king, no religion but a barbarous idolatry, 
and are governed by the oldest man in their village, an 
arrangement which answers very well. 
On the 19th April, 1827, Caillie, with but one bearer 
and a guide, at last started for Timbuctoo. He speaks 
favourably of the Foulalis and the people of Fouta 
Djallon, whose rich and fertile country he crossed. The 
Ba-Fing, the chief affluent of the Senegal, was not more 
than a hundred paces across, and a foot and a half deep 
where he passed it; but the force of the current, and 
the huge granite rocks encumbering its bed, render it 
very difficult and dangerous to cross the river. After a 
halt of nineteen days in the village of Cambaya, the 
home of the guide who had accompanied him thus far, 
Caillie entered Kankan, crossing a district intersected 
by rivers and large streams, which were then beginning 
to inundate the whole land. 
On the 30th May the explorer crossed the Tankisso, a 
large river with a rocky bed belonging to the system of 
the Niger, and reached the latter on the lltli June at 
Couronassa. 
“ Even here,” says Caillie, “ so near to its source, the 
Niger is 900 feet wide, with a current of two miles and 
a half.” 
The town of Kankan stands in a plain surrounded by 
lofty mountains. The bombax, baobab, and butter-tree, 
also called “ ce,” the “ shea ” of Mungo Park, are 
plentiful. Caillie was delayed in Kankan for twenty- 
eight days before he could get on to Sambatikala ; and 
during that time he was shamefully robbed by his host, 
and could not obtain from the chief of the village resti¬ 
tution of the goods which had been stolen. 
“ Kankan,” says the traveller, “ is a small town near 
the left bank of the Milo, a pretty river, which comes 
from the south, and waters the Kissi district, where it 
takes its rise, flowing thence in a north-westerly direc¬ 
tion to empty itself into the Niger, two or three days’ 
journey from Kankan. Surrounded by a thick quick- 
set hedge, this town, which does not contain more than 
