90 TRAVELS IN AFRICA.

6th, and all things being ready, we commenced moving from Madina, that nest of thieves ; but the front division had scarcely left the ground, when an immense mob collected, in order to plunder if possible. Messrs. Dochard and Partarrieau remained with the camel division, which was to bring up the rear, and had much difficulty in keeping the natives from actually forcing some things out of our men's hands. A small medicine-chest was purloined by one of them, who had run some distance with it before it was missed. Private Ferrier overtook and knocked the fellow down, and would have shot some others who came to his assistance, had not Mr. Dochard prevented him by laying hold of his firelock. Such a barefaced and determined set of thieves we never met.

We travelled se. and by e. thirteen miles, to the village of Bambako. The path this day was over a hard yellow clay soil, mixed with small quartz pebbles, and much broken into deep ruts by the rains ; the whole distance, to within a quarter of a mile, covered with loose brushwood and a few large trees of the acacia species.

Corporal Pickard, a European, was so ill as to be unable to walk, and private Richmond, a native soldier, was nearly as bad ; they were carried forward on two of the officers' horses. Bambako is a very miserable village indeed, not