Those valuable commodities, gold and ivory (the next objects of our
inquiry), have probably been found in Africa from the first ages of
the world. They are reckoned among its most important productions
in the earliest records of its history.

It has been observed that gold is seldom or never discovered except
in mountainous and barren countries--nature, it is said, thus making
amends in one way for her penuriousness in the other. This,
however, is not wholly true. Gold is found in considerable
quantities throughout every part of Manding, a country which is
indeed hilly, but cannot properly be called mountainous, much less
barren. It is also found in great plenty in Jallonkadoo
(particularly about Boori), another hilly, but by no means an
unfertile, country. It is remarkable that in the place last
mentioned (Boori), which is situated about four days' journey to the
south-west of Kamalia, the salt market is often supplied at the same
time with rock-salt from the Great Desert and sea-salt from the Rio
Grande; the price of each, at this distance from its source, being
nearly the same. And the dealers in each, whether Moors from the
north or negroes from the west, are invited thither by the same
motives--that of bartering their salt for gold.

The gold of Manding, so far as I could learn, is never found in any
matrix or vein, but always in small grains nearly in a pure state,
from the size of a pin's head to that of a pea, scattered through a
large body of sand or clay, and in this state it is called by the
Mandingoes sanoo munko (gold powder). It is, however, extremely
probable, by what I could learn of the situation of the ground, that
most of it has originally been washed down by repeated torrents from