TRAVELS IN AFRICA. 169 tianity ; and, without taking into consideration the difference between the two nations, he adverted to an engagement which he said he knew had been entered into between the commandant of Senegal, when that place was in possession of the French several years before, and Daisey, the king of Karta, who had sworn an inviolable oath that neither himself nor his successors would ever give peace to the countries lying between them and St. Louis, until a woman with a basket on her head could travel unmolested from one place to the other. It was to no purpose I endeavoured to convince him that such an improbable arrangement had never been entered into between any European governor of Senegal and his enemies ; and I likewise as ineffectually brought forward to support my assertion the friendly intercourse which had so long subsisted between the several English governors of Senegal and himself, and the very handsome and rich presents he, as well as his predecessors, had received from them and the vessels trading in the river. To all this he only answered in a general way, and finishing with the usual African expression of " All is in the hands of God."

He was extremely ill, and so weak that he could not sit on his horse without the assistance