STAY AT SAY 331 something of the world are not only brave but sensible and free from bigotry.

" Samory, who was so fond of cutting off heads in obedience to the injunctions of the Koran, had a wife named Sarankeni, who is still his favourite, and she was the one to lay her finger on the cause of his defeat, when he was still smarting from its effects. She saw that it was the. women of easy morals who prevented the strangers who had aided Tieba from deserting him in his need.

Samory was open to conviction, and since then " — according to Suleyman, though I think he exaggerated — " if one of the chiefs people discovers that a woman or a daughter of his house has gone wrong, he gives a fee to the seducer, or at least offers him refreshments and speaks him fair, and this has now become the fashion throughout the districts reigned over by the great Fama. Sarankeni, the favourite, the giver of the advice which led to the change, is alone excepted from the new rule." Probably, as she is still young, she had a very different motive for her conduct than that generally accepted.

Whilst the market was going on, we used also to make a tour of inspection in our kitchen-garden. An officer of the garrison of Timbuktu had been good enough to give us some packets of the usual seeds, and under the skilled direction of the doctor we had had a plot of ground cleared, manured, and planted. To sow seed is one thing, however, to reap results is another, and in spite of the delicate attentions of Atchino, our man from Dahomey, our gardener for the nonce, who religiously watered the seeds every morning, and in spite of the visits we paid to our plantations at dawn and eventide, no great results ensued. Probably the sheep and goats, who were greedy creatures all of them, got the pick of everything, in spite of the thorn hedge we had put up round our garden.