The principal difficulties which impeded my progress may be reduced to a few heads. The cupidity and duplicity of the chiefs, the existence of slavery as connected with our endeavours to abolish it, the idle fears and apprehensions growing out of recent hostile transactions in the Senegal, and, mainly, the rapid spread and dreadful influence of the Mahomedan faith. The duplicity of the chiefs is principally exemplified in the conduct of the kings of Woolli, Bondoo and Kaarta, and either in the want of inclination, or the fear of our approaching or passing Sego, by the king of that country. At Woolli perhaps they were of too trivial a nature, and the king so inadequate to prevent our passing by force, that they scarcely merit attention. They serve however to shew, that if he had not the power, he had at least the inclination to throw every obstacle in the way of our proceeding eastward, but in which direction, it is equally true, that none but his enemies resided. It may be naturally supposed he did not wish such persons to be enriched by sharing in the booty expected from our baggage, exaggerated reports of whose value had been circulated through the interior long before even the first expedition had left Senegal. At Bondoo the fairest promises were in the first instance held out to us by Almamy; nay, an apparent impatience was evinced by him to send us forward, but this we soon discovered to have originated in a desire on his part to grasp at those presents which he supposed we should make him in consideration for so laudable an attention to our interests, but which (although more than we could well afford) not being sufficiently valuable in his eyes, were no sooner handed over to him, than the appearance of things changed, and he made a demand for nearly as much more, under the name of customs. The English name, and the liberality of the British governors of St. Louis, and Senegal, to Almamy Bondoo were well and long known to him previously to our entering his country, but it appears that not only the recollection of their kindness to him had vanished with our cession of that colony to the French, but that he had been determined to crown his ingratitude with treachery, deceit, and even want of common hospitality to the expedition, which was unfortunately induced to prefer the road through his country for the reasons already mentioned in p. 61, and in consequence of the very apparently warm manner in which he expressed himself grateful for the handsome presents he had received from Sir Charles M‘Carthy when commanding at St. Louis. That every deference and respect for him as the king of Bondoo, and indeed in some cases rather more than enough, had been shewn him, is but too evident from the enormous sacrifices we made at the shrine of his insatiable avarice, with a view of conciliating his favour and protection, and of convincing him that our object in going to the east was not only the mere solution of a