request also I readily granted, and he promised to return at the end of
three days. During his absence I amused myself with walking about the
town, and conversing with the natives, who attended me everywhere with
great kindness and curiosity, and supplied me with milk, eggs, and what
other provisions I wanted, on very easy terms.

Teesee is a large unwalled town, having no security against the attack of
an enemy except a sort of citadel, in which Tiggity and his family
constantly reside. This town, according to the report of the natives, was
formerly inhabited only by a few Foulah shepherds, who lived in
considerable affluence by means of the excellent meadows in the
neighbourhood, in which they reared great herds of cattle; but their
prosperity attracting the envy of some Mandingoes, the latter drove out
the shepherds, and took possession of their lands.

The present inhabitants, though they possess both cattle and corn in
abundance, are not over nice in articles of diet; rats, moles, squirrels,
snakes, locusts, &c., are eaten without scruple by the highest and
lowest. My people were one evening invited to a feast given by some of
the townsmen, where, after making a hearty meal of what they thought fish
and kouskous, one of them found a piece of hard skin in the dish, and
brought it along with him, to show me what sort of fish they had been
eating. On examining the skin, I found they had been feasting on a large
snake. Another custom, still more extraordinary, is, that no woman is
allowed to eat an egg. This prohibition, whether arising from ancient
superstition, or from the craftiness of some old Bushreen who loved eggs
himself, is rigidly adhered to, and nothing will more affront a woman of
Teesee than to offer her an egg. The custom is the more singular, as the
men eat eggs without scruple in the presence of their wives, and I never
observed the same prohibition in any other of the Mandingo countries.