These preliminary excursions, during which Laing ascertained that many Soolimanas owned a good deal of gold and ivory, led to his asking the governor's sanction to explore the districts to the east of the colony, with a view to increasing the trade of Sierra Leone by admitting their productions. Maccarthy liked Laing's proposal and submitted it to the council. It was decided that Laing should be authorized to penetrate into Soolimana by the most convenient route for future communications. Laing left Sierra Leone on the 16th April, 1824, and rowed up the Rokelle river to Rokon, the chief town of Timmannee. His interview with the King of Rokon was extremely amusing. To do him honour Laing had a salvo of ten charges fired as he came into the court in which the reception was to be held. At the noise the king stopped, drew back, darted a furious look at his visitor, and ran away. It was with great difficulty that the cowardly monarch was induced to return. At last he came back, and seating himself with great dignity in his chair of state he questioned the major: "He wished to know," says Laing, "why he had been fired at, and was, with some difficulty, persuaded that it had been done out of honour to him. 'Why did you point your guns to the ground?' 'That you might see our intention was to show you respect.' 'But the pebbles flew in my face; why did you not point in the air?' 'Because we feared to burn the thatch on your houses.' 'Well, then, give me some rum.'" Needless to add that the interview became more cordial after the major had complied with this request! The portrait of the Timmannee monarch deserves a place in our volume for more than one reason. It is a case of _ab uno disce omnes_." "Ba-Simera," to quote Laing again, "the principal chief or king of this part of the Timmannee country, is about ninety years of age, with a mottled, shrivelled-up skin, resembling in colour that of an alligator more than that of a human being, with dim, greenish eyes, far sunk in his head, and a bleached, twisted beard, hanging down about two feet from his chin; like the king of the opposite district he wore a necklace of coral and leopard's teeth, but his mantle was brown and dirty as his skin. His swollen legs, like those of an elephant, were to be observed from under his trousers of baft, which might have been originally white, but, from the wear of several years, had assumed a greenish appearance."