“Amongst Amadu’s people the man and woman who have sinned are deprived of all their property, but Abdul Bubakar goes still further, for he sacks the entire village to which a frail woman belongs, a capital way of getting slaves and everything else. In other districts the woman is put in irons, but the man goes free; but if the seducer comes forward and owns his crime, he can obtain remission of the punishment by payment of a large sum to the chief of the village; generally, however, the unfortunate girl dies in her chains. “Such are the manners and customs of the Mussulmans, and God alone knows what their women are really like. “Samory used to kill both the guilty parties, but Tieba, his enemy and neighbour, professed an amiable kind of philosophy on the subject of the weaker sex and the ways of women. When Samory was conquered by Tieba, the chief auxiliaries of the latter were the nomad Diulas who were strangers in the land. These Diulas had come to the district by way of Sikasso, where they had met with women of free and easy manners, and had been driven by the force of circumstances to remain amongst them, adopting their ways. Now it generally happens amongst the negroes, that those who have travelled much and seen something of the world are not only brave but sensible and free from bigotry. [Illustration: WOMEN OF SAY.] “Samory, who was so fond of cutting off heads in obedience to the injunctions of the Koran, had a wife named Sarankeni, who is still his favourite, and she was the one to lay her finger on the cause of his defeat, when he was still smarting from its effects. She saw that it was the women of easy morals who prevented the strangers who had aided Tieba from deserting him in his need. Samory was open to conviction, and since then”—according to Suleyman, though I think he exaggerated—“if one of the chief’s people discovers that a woman or a daughter of his house has gone wrong, he gives a fee to the seducer, or at least offers him refreshments and speaks him fair, and this has now become the fashion throughout the districts reigned over by the great Fama. Sarankeni, the favourite, the giver of the advice which led to the change, is alone excepted from the new rule.” Probably, as she is still young, she had a very different motive for her conduct than that generally accepted.