Niger

white man. No bandits appeared, however, and the
landlord at length declared that the way was now
safe and fully sanctified.
They pressed forward through trackless cultivated
lands with deserted villages : the inhabitants had
fled to Kasson. Sunset brought them to the village
of Karankalla, and, before lying down to rest in one
of its huts, Mungo looked on the extensive ruins of
the place, plundered and burned by the army of
Bambarra nearly four years before.
Kemmoo was but a short day’s journey from
Karankalla, and for once Mungo took the road
easily. He and his attendants wandered from the
path as the day rose, and picked such fruits and corn
as the fleeing inhabitants had left behind. Mungo
wandered far from his companions, and at last lost
them. He rode his horse up a rise to look about him,
and then encountered a ludicrous adventure.
Two negroes on horseback came galloping
through the bushes, halted at sight of him, stared
appalled. Mungo urged forward his horse towards
them. At that one of the horsemen, casting on him
a look of incredulous disgust, rode off at breakneck
speed ; the other, overcome by this first gaze upon
the full horror of a white man’s countenance,
covered his eyes with his hands and burst into
prayer. Praying, and still covering his eyes, he
rode slowly away.
A mile to the east, however, he and the other fell
in with Mungo’s attendants and told them of the
hideous apparition they had encountered, a devil
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