Niger

defence of English ships against French privateers.
The picture of the grateful negro defending the
grateful slaver against the latter’s enemies presented
itself to Mungo without any humour at all. Instead,
he was moved to wish that the minds of a people
so determined and faithful, could be softened and
civilised by the mild and benevolent spirit of
Christianity ! ’ The mark of ejaculation seems
warranted.
The Jaloffs (he heard) lived inland, between the
Senegal River and the Mandingo states on the
Gambia—a warlike people who appear to have had
a considerable admixture of Arab blood. They were
divided into a number of states and tribes, at
constant feud. In the intervals of feuding, the
Jaloffs manufactured a c very fine cotton cloth ’.
Verging on Gambia territory were also the
Foulahs, more Arab even than the Jaloffs, a pastoral
people without definite and distinct social organi¬
sation, apart from those imposed by the inhabitants
of the alien states into which they had gradually
penetrated, coming from the interior with their
flocks and herds.
But the most powerful and numerous of all the
negroid racial groupings, Mungo gathered, was the
Mandingo. They came from an interior country,
Manding, and had established a number of c king¬
doms ’ in the Gambia hinterland. Like the other
tribes, they had been permeated by Arab influences;
the chief magistrate in each town was el caid, which
is good Arabic ; the courts were called palavers,
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