126 JOURNEY WITHOUT MAPS

progressive scene and he had noticed there nothing
more lovely than the Buzie cloths the President
spread for his inspection. There was nothing crudely
peasant, nothing art and crafty, nothing to remind
one of stalls at bazaars and dear ladies with pale-blue
bulbous eyes, about these cloths: they were sophisti-
cated in their design, but the sophistication had a
different source from ours. It sprang directly from a
deeper level; it wasn't tinged by the artistic self-
consciousness of centuries.

There was a world of difference between these
cloths and the Mandingo cloths from French
Guinea, one of which I had bought in the market
at Bolahun and which can be bought, too, at double
the price, on the Coast, at Freetown and Monrovia.
The Mandingo is a trader, his line of country is
immense when it is computed less in mileage than
in difficulty: in forest, swamp, river and flood. One
finds him in the ports, one finds him five hundred
miles in the interior in places where no white man
has been seen in living memory. He is unmistakable:
his height and shaven head, his Semitic features^ his
air in his scarlet fez and his long robe, a verse of
the Koran hung round the neck, of a long trading
lineage. He rides the only horses to be seen in the
interior, but more often he does the journey on foot
In French Guinea I met a Mandingo who could tell
me the whole route to the Coast at Cape Palmas or
Grand Bassa. He made the wild four weeks' journey
as regularly as a traveller in silk stockings who
catches the Brighton Belle once a week. But the
cloths, the swords and knives they carry with them
.are not superior to the peasant arts of Central