Page:The land of fetish.pdf/35

 "Verbum sap," I yelled, in despair.

"Ri-tiddi, to tolli, soh gamma," they both shouted, and, bowing almost to the earth, extended their hands deferentially towards me.

I shook them with unction, and they both passed on, highly gratified with our interesting conversation, and pleased with the information that I had given them. Really the Mandingos are a most intelligent race, and how well these two understood what I had been telling them.

Riding on, I shortly arrived at a small village surrounded by a fence made of palm-sticks, and further fortified on the exterior by hedges of thorned acacia and prickly pear. This was the Mandingo town of Bakko, and here the individual in whose honour the stone advertisements of which I have spoken were erected was, during one of his numerous petty expeditions, defeated with considerable loss by the natives under Hadji Ismail, the black prophet. On that occasion a portion of the colonial force was cut off and annihilated, while the remainder fell back with considerable difficulty upon Bathurst, where, as the victorious Mandingos followed up their success, and received large accessions to their number from their warlike neighbours, the governor was obliged ingloriously to apply to the French to save him and the