The weather having cleared up, we set out at an early hour, following a north-easterly direction through an open water not obstructed by reeds, but soon halted again for prayer near the green bushy shore; while from the opposite side of the island of Kóra, the lowing of cattle, cackling of fowls, and the voices of men were distinctly to be heard, the island being still tolerably well inhabited and the people being said to possess even a good number of horses. It was of considerable interest to me here to fall into the course pursued by that very meritorious French traveller, Réné Caillié, on his toilsome and dangerous journey through the whole western part of the continent of Africa, from Sierra Leone to Morocco; and it is an agreeable duty for me to confirm the general accuracy of his account. Following close upon the track of the enterprising and intelligent, but unfortunate Major Laing, who had been assassinated two years previously on his desperate journey from Timbúktu, Caillié naturally excited against himself the jealousy of the English, to whom it could not but seem extraordinary that a poor unprotected adventurer like himself should succeed in an enterprise where one of the most courageous and nobleminded officers of their army had succumbed. Gliding slowly along the channel, which here was about 600 yards in width, and gradually exchanging the eastern shore for the middle of the stream, we observed after a few miles’ advance the first river-horses, or banga, that we had as yet seen in the Niger, carrying their heads out of the water like two immense boxes, and rather frightening our boatmen, who did not seem to relish a _tête-à-tête_ with these animals, till I sent a ball after them. Passing then the site of the former town of Gakoira, near which the people were busy with the labours of the rice-fields, and having again landed on the opposite shore, which was covered with numerous kalgo trees, in order that the lazy boatmen might get their breakfast with comfort and ease, we had to follow a large bend of the river where the town of Danga is situated on the right, beyond a swampy low ground. This is probably the same town so repeatedly mentioned in the interesting records of Bábá Áhmed, especially as the residence of the Púllo chief, Sambo Lámido, who at the period of the ruin of the Songhay empire was the chief instrument in achieving that destruction. We then crossed from here to the other side, and passed the town of Sanyáre on a projecting headland, which at times appears to be changed into an island, and containing, besides a good number of reed huts, even a few clay dwellings. Here our people indulged in the hope of procuring some tobacco, but were sadly disappointed, the natives being too much afraid of their fanatical master, the Shékho Áhmedu ben Áhmedu.