98 TRAVELS IN AFRICA.

practices, rushed on my mind, as we surveyed the silent and awful remains of some human bodies which lay outside the walls of this once respectable and no doubt happy town, the inhabitants of which were torn by unrelenting savages from that native spot, so dear to all mankind. Even the strongest ties of nature riven asunder, and all this to gratify the brutal desires of some neighbouring tyrant, or to enrich a set of savages, who are daily exposed to a similar fate themselves, at least as long as they can find people ready to purchase their unnatural booty.

Mr. Partarrieau not having come up, we left Muntobe at six o'clock on the morning of the 11th, and travelled slowly to the east until noon, when we reached Sansanding, a small town, the last of the kingdom of WooUi, beautifully situated on an eminence surrounded by high grounds, through the valleys of which winds a branch of the Gambia, now nearly dry j its banks are covered with cane, acacias, and mimosas, which afforded us an agreeable shelter from the intense heat of the sun. Here we decided on halting one day, in order to i%st the animals, particularly the camels, which were become very weak for the last two days, owing to an insufficiency, indeed a scarcity, of that species of food on which they are used to feed. One