called Funing-kedy, where being
informed that the road to Jarra was much infested by the moors, and
that a number of people were going to that town on the following
day, Mr. Park resolved to stay and accompany them. Accordingly in the
afternoon of the 17th of February, accompanied by thirty people, he
left Funing-kedy, it being necessary to travel in the night to avoid
the moorish banditti. At midnight they stopped near a small village,
but the thermometer being so low as 68 deg., none of the negroes could
sleep on account of the cold. They resumed their journey at daybreak,
and in the morning passed Simbing, the frontier village of Ludamar.

From this village Major Houghton wrote his last letter, with a
pencil, to Dr. Laidley, having been deserted by his negro servants,
who refused to follow him into the moorish country. This brave but
unfortunate man, having surmounted many difficulties, had endeavoured
to pass through the kingdom of Ludamar, where Mr. Park learned the
following particulars concerning his fate. On his arrival at Jarra,
he got acquainted with some moorish merchants, who were travelling to
Tisheel, a place celebrated for its salt pits in the great desert,
for the purpose of purchasing salt. It is supposed that the moors
deceived him, either in regard to the route he wished to pursue, or
the state of the country between Jarra and Timbuctoo, and their
intention probably was to rob and leave him in the desert. At the end
of two days he suspected their treachery, and insisted on returning
to Jarra. Finding him to persist in this determination, the moors
robbed him of every thing he possessed, and went off with their
camels; the major, being thus deserted, returned on foot to a
watering place called Tarra. He had been some days without food, and
the unfeeling moors refusing to give him any, he sunk at last under
his distresses. Whether he actually perished of hunger, or was
murdered by the savage Mahometans, is not certainly known. His body
was dragged into the woods, and Mr. Park was shown at a distance, the
spot where his remains were left to perish.

Leaving Simbing, the travellers arrived in safety at Jarra, which is
a large town situate at the bottom of rocky hills; the houses being
built of clay and stones intermixed, the former answering the purpose
of mortar. It forms part of the moorish kingdom of Ludamar, but the
majority of the inhabitants are negroes, who purchase a precarious
protection from t