nces
and the councillors, so that I was forced to interfere through the
interpreters, who could only quiet the rebels by the promise of a
dozen additional flasks for their private account.

In the midst of the wrangling, Sulimani and Ahmah ordered their
father's slaves to carry the gifts to the Ali-Mami's palace; and,
taking me between them, we marched, arm in arm, to my domicil. Here I
found Abdulmomen-Ali, another son of the king, waiting for his
brothers to present him to the Mongo of Kambia. Abdulmomen was
introduced as "a learned divine," and began at once to talk Koran in
the most _mufti_-like manner. I had made such sorry improvement in
Mahometanism since Ahmah-de-Bellah's departure from the Rio Pongo,
that I thought it safest to sit silent, as if under the deepest fervor
of Mussulman conviction. I soon found that Abdulmomen, like many more
clergymen, was willing enough to do all the preaching, whenever he
found an unresisting listener. I put on a look of very intelligent
assent and thankfulness to all the arguments and commentaries of my
black brother, and in this way I avoided the detection of my
ignorance, as many a better man has probably done before me!

CHAPTER XXIV.

Timbo lies on a rolling plain. North of it, a lofty mountain range
rises at the distance of ten or fifteen miles, and sweeps eastwardly
to the horizon. The landscape, which declines from these slopes to the
south, is in many places bare; yet fields of plentiful cultivation,
groves of cotton-wood, tamarind and oak, thickets of shrubbery and
frequent villages, stud its surface, and impart an air of rural
comfort to the picturesque scene.

I soon proposed a gallop with my African kindred over the
neighborhood; and, one fine morning, after a plentiful breakfast of
stewed fowls, boiled to rags with rice, and seasoned with delicious
"palavra sauce," we cantered off to the distant villages. As we
approached the first brook, but before the fringe of screening bushes
was passed, our cavalcade drew rein abruptly, while Ahmah-de-Bellah
cried out: "Strangers are coming!" A few moments after, as we slowly
crossed the stream, I noticed several women crouched in the underwood,
having fled from the bath. This warning is universally given, and
enforced by law, to guard the modesty of the gentler sex.

In half an hour we reached the first suburban village; but fame had
preceded us with my character, and as the settlement was cultivated
either by