While they were upon the point of leaving Rokon, which is in the Timannee country, the king of the place made his appearance in a violent rage, and the cause of his grievance, was a Jolofman, who attended Lieutenant Laing, having had the audacity to dress himself in a new red slop shirt, which the king considering a more splendid habiliment than his own, insisted upon having; this the Jolof obstinately refused; while the king declared it to be the law in his country, (a law made by himself at the moment) “That any man dressed better than himself, especially in red, should forfeit his clothes.” Lieutenant Laing settled this difference by desiring the Jolof to change his shirt, and giving the king a bar of tobacco and a dram of rum. After leaving Rokon, the country for a short time was beautiful and cultivated, and on reaching Nunkaba, they found the female inhabitants busy with their cotton, preparing it for spinning. On their arrival at Toma, though only sixty miles from Sierra Leone, Lieutenant Laing learned, to his surprise, that “no white man had ever before been seen there.” He says, in his journal, “the first appearance of surprise, that came under my observation was in a woman, who stood fixed like a statue, gazing at the party as they entered the town, and did not stir a muscle till the whole had passed, when she gave a loud halloo of astonishment, and covered her mouth with both her hands.” This astonishment at their appearance, was sometimes productive of annoyance during the progress of their journey. At Balanduco they found the women busily employed in separating the juicy saffron-coloured fruit from the palm nut; in squeezing it into wooden mortars, and in beating it into one common mash, in order that the oil might be extracted more easily and more commodiously in boiling. Lieutenant Laing estimated that during the season of the fruit, they manufactured, on an average, from thirty to forty gallons a-day.