geographical question, but an endeavour at the eventual improvement of the commercial and social interests of the countries we visited, by opening a safe and direct communication between them and our settlements, where I assured Almamy we should be most happy to see himself and subjects as constant visitors. What could have induced him to act as he did towards us I was really for a long time at a loss to define, although he more than once hinted at having received private information, and as he said from good authority, that we had in view the destruction of his country, but which I could not then believe, and supposed he only made that excuse a cloak to hide some other motive with which I ineffectually strained every nerve to become satisfactorily acquainted. The information which I afterwards acquired with respect to the immense profits arising to the native merchants from the trade, and barter of slaves, in the transaction already mentioned of redeeming the Bondoo woman and her daughter out of the hands of the Kaartans, led me, in considering that subject minutely, to reflect on other circumstances connected with the question, and that left no doubt on my mind as to his having been thereby influenced: these shall be fully explained hereafter. The king of Kaarta likewise, after tempting me under the most flattering promises to enter his country, having even sent an escort of one thousand horse to conduct me in safety, when he had received from me to the full measure which inclination or duty prompted me to give him, not only broke every promise he made me of assistance in the prosecution of my journey, but literally plundered me of the few articles which his avarice had hitherto spared. As on other occasions, I was here at a loss to conjecture the cause of such treatment, and upon the most mature and unprejudiced consideration, can only attribute it to the same causes as operated on his brother chiefs of Woolli and Bondoo.