Notwithstanding the power of the ruler, the place is in a miserable condition, and resembles rather a wilderness than a town; but it is extremely picturesque, having a thick covert of beautiful trees nourished by a large sheet of water. The place contains scarcely 200 huts, and nothing like a market is to be found. The difficulty of our obtaining supplies was the greater, as, contrary to our expectation and the information we had received, nothing but shells had currency in the place; and it was with a great deal of trouble that, by means of the cotton strips with which we had provided ourselves, we obtained a small supply of butter and corn, four drʿa being reckoned here the same as in Gando, while in the town of Say there was thirty per cent profit upon the cotton strips. The most abundant article I found here was milk, which was the best I had ever yet tasted in Negroland; and it gave me a fair but rather exaggerated idea of what I might expect to find amongst the Fúlbe further west. We also bought a small quantity of corn from the women, in exchange for some looking-glasses and cloves. All the corn here consists of sorghum; and seventy shells, at the time, would just buy sufficient corn for a horse for one day, which is a very high price indeed for Negroland. Notwithstanding the poor character of the place, I was obliged to stay here two whole days, exclusive of the day of my arrival, in order to give the camels some rest, as they were suffering greatly from the effects of the rainy season, and on account of the holiday of the “fotr,” which fell on the 8th. If I had known the character of the province of Libtáko better, I should have deemed it prudent to make even a longer stay here: and I would advise any future traveller to do so, taking care, however, to have a sufficient supply of shells with him, which will enable him to make himself quite comfortable in Yágha. Music having announced the arrival of the important and joyful day, soon after midnight, almost the whole of the men went out in the morning in order to say their prayers at about a mile’s distance from the town. All the Fúlbe were dressed in snow-white shirts, as a symbol of the purity of their creed; but some of them wore dark-blue trousers. There were about forty horses with the party, which probably was all that the townspeople could muster. Having had to sustain here a slight religious attack from the kádhi, who wanted to represent me as a sorcerer, I thought it prudent to make a small present to each of the holiday people, as a kind of séddega, or alms. The holiday also disturbed me in compiling a small vocabulary of the Gurma language, called by the Fúlbe Gurman-kóbe, which I had begun, but was obliged to leave unfinished. [Footnote 64: The present consisted of a red cap, half a piece of muslin, and some smaller articles.]