In his passage from Sami to Sansandig, Park was attacked by a violent fever, which rendered him temporarily delirious. According to the sufferer, the heat was so terrific as to have been equal to the roasting of a sirloin, and there was neither covering to ward it off nor slightest puff of wind to temper it.
On reaching his destination the traveller was received by his old friend Kunti Mamadi, who placed the necessary huts at his disposal. On the following day two more of his men expired, and it began to look as if at the very moment when success seemed assured he was to be doomed to lose all. So frightfully were they all reduced at this time, and so little able to look after each other, that, unmolested, hyenas entered the dead men’s hut, dragged one of them out, and devoured him.
From Park’s journal we get an interesting glimpse of Sansandig, with its 11,000 inhabitants and its mosques, of which two were by “no means inelegant.” But, as in all African towns, it was the market-place which was the centre of life and interest. From morning till night the square was crowded with busy groups of people gathered round the various mat-covered stalls which formed the shops, each containing its own speciality--beads in every gorgeous hue to catch the eye of the ornament-loving sex, antimony to darken and beautify the tips of the ladies’ eyelids, rings and bracelets to attract wandering male glances to female feet and hands. In more substantial houses were scarlet cloths, silks, amber, and other valuable commodities which had found their way across the desert from Morocco or Tripoli--over roads marked out by the skeletons of slaves and camels who had sunk down to perish under the frightful hardships of the route. Vegetables, meat, salt, &c., each had their own stalls--beer, too, in large quantities, near a booth where leather work found its purchasers.
Such was the everyday state of the square; but the scene was still more animated and interesting on the occasion of the Tuesday weekly market. On that day enormous crowds of people gathered from the whole surrounding country to buy and sell wholesale, and many were the delightful glimpses of native life and character continually presenting themselves to the eyes of the observant traveller. He even found a means whereby to turn the market to his own advantage.