TRAVELS IN AFRICA. 97 any I had before seen ; it was composed of darkbrown mould, intermixed with white sand and sand-stone. The walls and many of the houses were both strongly and well built with yellow clay, raised from about four feet below the surface, and intermixed with cut straw or withered grass and cow-dung.

It was destroyed about twelve months before by the people of Bondoo, in one of their plundering excursions, and many of its inhabitants were either killed or made prisoners (slaves), a fate but too common in this country, where the strongest party always finds an excuse for making war on the weaker, not unfrequently carrying off whole towns of miserable inoffensive beings, without either any previous intimation of their hostile intentions, or indeed any cause given by those wretched objects of their avaricious encroachments. On all such occasions, the only object in view is the attainment of money, as they call it, and in this they succeed by selling their unfortunate fellow-creatures, and, what is still more unnatural, their compatriots, to slave-dealers.

A multitude of ideas, bringing with them the conviction of how much Englishmen, and indeed all civilized nations, are favoured by Divine Providence, in enjoying freedom and security against such unwarranted and barbarous H