300 TRAVELS IN AFRICA.

and onions are grown there, and the people are well and abundantly supplied with milk and butter from large herds of horned cattle and sheep. The only disadvantage the place labours under is the bad quality of the water, which they obtain from wells about four feet deep, on the borders of a narrow stagnant lake.

The chief (Safere) who with his followers and slaves composed a part of the Kaartan forces, received us kindly, provided us with huts, and furnished us with an excellent supper of rice and mutton, the first good one we had made since leaving Galam.

I paid him a complimentary visit at his palace, where I found him seated in an open court surrounding his own hut, but separated from the others, composing the palace, by a clay wall eight feet high. He was attended by a few of his domestic slaves and favourites. He accommodated me with a seat on his own mat, and asked many questions about the country of the white people, as they call us, our mode of warfare, government, laws, and revenue, and appeared much astonished at some of my answers, particularly when I said that we fought on firm ground and on horseback, and which he acknowledged he could scarcely credit, as it was his belief in common with all the natives of the interior, that we live exclusively on the sea in ships.