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It is from the Mandingo tribes, who inhabit the country bordering on the river, that the supply of ground-nuts is principally obtained, and in the swampy districts a good deal of rice is grown; they also trade in beeswax and small quantities of gold. They are an industrious and, generally speaking, harmless people, and a European, speaking Arabic, might traverse the entire country alone and unarmed. To eat kola-nut with, or present some kola-nuts to, a Mandingo or Jolloff, places a stranger on the same footing as the tasting of salt does with an Arab; and after such a ceremony one is entitled to protection and assistance. A kola-nut is a good kind of passport and viséd for any Mohammedan town.

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British Combo—An interesting Conversation—Bakko—A small Account—Sabbajee—Peculiar Governors—The Gambia Militia—A new Field for Sportsmen.

Until I had visited British Combo I never could understand why it was that old officers always spoke of the withdrawal of troops from the Gambia with regret, and talked of that colony fondly as the best station in West Africa; but after I had seen it, though shorn of its former glories, it was quite comprehensible. Having borrowed from a friend one of those diminutive but thoroughbred Arab horses common to the country, I started from Bathurst one morning soon after daybreak on my expedition. Passing the disgraceful burial-ground, and leaving to the right Jolah town, which is inhabited by a race of outcasts supposed to have no moral or religious code of any kind, and to possess their women in common, I crossed a level tract of cultivated country, and halted for a few minutes in the grove of palms at Oyster Creek. This creek used to be the resort of the sporting members of the garrison, who would supplement the somewhat scanty food supply of the colony with green pigeons, wild ducks, curlew, and snipe from this place; but now the report of a gun but rarely awakes its echoes.