It was a highly interesting camping-ground. This branch of the river, which was about two hundred yards broad, and at present from six to eight feet deep, was enlivened by several boats, together with a good number of cattle, apparently rather averse to entering the water, which in summer usually dries up; the Tawárek busily arranging their little property and pitching their tents, or erecting their little boothlike huts of matting; then behind us the dense forest, closely enveloped by climbing plants. The principal branch of the river is from two to three miles distant. We had scarcely arrived, when the cheerful little Wóghda started from his tent with a sudden bound, worthy of a public exhibition, in order to receive his friend the Sheikh El Bakáy. We encamped in the shade of the large trees, close to the border of the water, where we were soon visited by several Songhay people, who inhabit a small hamlet on the island of Kóra, where they cultivate tobacco. This article constituted in former times the chief branch of cultivation all along the river, but at present, since the conquest of the country by the Fúlbe, it has become a contraband article, so that the people from Timbúktu come stealthily hither, in order to buy from these people their produce with cotton strips or tári. This chief, Wóghda, had been present, when quite a boy, at the attack which the Igwádaren at Égedesh made upon Mungo Park, whom all the old men along the river know very well, from his large strange-looking boat, with his white sail, his long coat, his straw hat, and large gloves. He had stopped at Bámba in order to buy fowls, of which he appears to have endeavoured to obtain a supply at every large place along the river. Wóghda further asserted that it was on this occasion that the Tawárek killed two of the Christians in the boat; but this seems to be a mistake, as it appears evident that two of the four valiant men, who, solitary and abandoned, in their boat, like a little fortress, navigated this river for so many hundred miles in the midst of these hostile tribes, were killed much lower down. The people have plenty of asses, and a sword-blade of the commonest German or Solingen manufacture fetches every where two of these animals, which are sold for at least 6000 shells each in the town. But the more conscientious Arabs do not trade with the Tawárek, whose property they well know, for the greatest part, to be “harám,” or forbidden, because taken by violent means.