156 TRAVELS IN AFRICA.

finding a little milk was the only article offered for sale, and that after sunset, and at exorbitant prices, I was reduced to the necessity of endeavouring, by means of a considerable present, to make peace with him. This, however, took some time, and put me to much inconvenience in sending messengers to him.

Although I had a month's corn in store, I conceived it much better to arrange matters thus, than remain at variance with a man who had so many opportunities of annoying me, and who, the longer I resisted him, would become the more difficult to be satisfied.

The present amounted to three hundred and fifty bars, being nearly double what I had paid for the mare. Thus is a man, when in the power of these chiefs, subject to every species of imposition and insult, both of which it would not only be improper, but unsafe, to resent on some occasions.