The town of Bathurst is small and insignificant: there is a row of habitable buildings, principally stores, built of brick and stone, facing the river, and behind this lies the remainder of the town, which consists of native huts built of palm-leaves, old boards, and matting. There are no made roads, and every street is ankle-deep in sand. To one side of an open space in the centre of the town stand the old barracks, in which the West India troops were formerly quartered, and this, with Government House, which though small is perhaps the most comfortable in West Africa, are the only two buildings in Bathurst worth a second glance.
The natives of the country north of the Gambia are Jolloffs, an entirely distinct race of negroes, and, as far as my experience goes, the only really black people to be found in West Africa. The colour of the ordinary negro is a deep brown, but the skin of the Jolloffs is of a dead dull black. Their features differ from those of other races on the coast: the eyes are slightly oblique and almond-shaped, the nose long and inclined to be aquiline, and the lower part of the face less prognathous than is usual amongst Africans. There is a tradition amongst them that they were once white, and it may be a fact that in the dim past their ancestors were of Arab blood, and that their colour may be accounted for by a succession of
