"I entered the town about sunset, and received a first impression highly favourable to its inhabitants, who were returning from their respective labours of the day, every individual bearing about him proofs of his industrious occupation. Some had been engaged in preparing the fields for the crops, which the approaching rains were to mature; others were penning up cattle, whose sleek sides and good condition denoted the richness of their pasturages; the last clink of the blacksmith's hammer was sounding, the weaver was measuring the quantity of cloth he had woven during the day, and the gaurange, or worker in leather, was tying up his neatly-stained pouches, shoes, knife-scabbards, &c. (the work of his handicraft) in a large kotakoo or bag; while the crier at the mosque, with the melancholy call of 'Alla Akbar,' uttered at measured intervals, summoned the devots Moslems to their evening devotions." Had a Marilhat or a Henri Regnault transferred to canvas a scene like this, when the dazzling light of the sun is beginning to die away in green and rose tints, might he not aptly name his painting the _Retour des Champs_, a title so often given to landscapes in our misty climate. "This scene," adds Laing, "both by its nature and the sentiment which it inspired, formed an agreeable contrast with the noise, confusion, and the dissipation which pervaded a Timmannee town at the same hour; but one must not trust too much to appearances, and I regret to add, that the subsequent conduct of the Kouranko natives did not confirm the good opinion which I had formed of them." The traveller now passed through Koufoula, where he was very kindly received, crossed a pleasant undulating district shut in by the Kouranko hills and halted at Simera, where the chief ordered his "guiriot" to celebrate in song the arrival of his guest, a welcome neutralized by the fact that the house assigned to Laing let in the rain through its leaky roof and would not let out the smoke, so that, to use his own words, he was more "like a chimney-sweeper" than the white guest of the King of Simera. Laing afterwards visited the source of the Tongolelle, a tributary of the Rokelle, and then left Kooranko to enter Soolimana. Kooranko, into which our traveller did not penetrate beyond the frontier, is of vast extent and divided into a great number of small states. The inhabitants resemble the Mandingoes in language and costume, but they are neither so well looking nor so intelligent. They do not profess Mohammedanism and have implicit confidence in their "grigris." They are fairly industrious, they know how to sew and weave. Their chief object of commerce is rosewood or "cam," which they send to the coast. The products of the country are much the same as those of Timmannee.