the heat is such
that even animals cannot endure to labour and no green thing grows for
the food of any quadruped, so that of one hundred camels bearing gold
and salt (which they store in two hundred or three hundred huts) scarce
thirty return home to Tagaza, for the journey is a long one, 'tis forty
days from Tagaza to Timbuctoo and thirty more from Timbuctoo to Melli.

"And how comes it," proceeds Cadamosto, "that these people want to use
so much salt?" and after some fanciful astrological reasoning he gives
us his practical answer, "to cool their blood in the extreme heat of
the sun": and so much is it needed that when they unload their camels at
the entrance of the kingdom of Melli, they pack the salt in blocks on
men's heads and these last carry it, like a great army of footmen,
through the country. When one negro race barters the salt with another,
the first party comes to the place agreed on, and lays down the salt in
heaps, each man marking his own heap by some token. Then they go away
out of sight, about the time of midday sun, when the second party comes
up, being most anxious to avoid recognition and places by each heap so
much gold as the buyer thinks good. Then they too go away. The sellers
come back in the evening, each one visits his pile, and where the gold
is enough for the seller's wishes, he takes it, leaves the salt and goes
away for good; where it is not enough, he leaves gold and salt together
and only goes away to wait again till the buyers have paid a second
visit. Now, the second party coming up again, take away the salt where
the gold has been accepted, but where it still lies, refused, they
either add more or take their money away altogether, according to what
they think to be the worth of the salt.

Once the King of Melli, who sent out a party with salt to exchange for
gold, ordered his men to make captive some of the negroes who concealed
themselves so carefully. They were to wait till the buyers should come
up to put down their gold; then they were to rush out and seize all they
could. In this way one man and only one was taken, who refused all food
and died on the third day after his capture, without uttering a word,
"whereby the King of Melli did not gain much," but which induced the men
of Melli to believe that the other people were naturally dumb. The
captors described the appearance of those who escaped their hands, "men
of fine build and height, more than a palm's length greater than