He repeats very much of what he has
said before about the Azaneguys, of their servility to their Princes,
"who are to them as mortal Gods"; of the everlasting progresses and
wanderings of those Princes round their kingdoms, from kraal to kraal,
living on the stores each wife has provided; of the kraals themselves,
no towns or castles, as people at home might think, says Cadamosto, but
merely collections of forty and fifty huts, with a hedge of living trees
round, intertwined, and the royal palace in the middle.
The Prince of Budomel has a bodyguard of two hundred men, besides the
volunteer guard of his innumerable children, who are broken up in two
groups, one always at Court, "and these are made the most of," the other
scattered up and down the country, as a sort of royal garrison. The
wretched subjects, who "suffer more from their King with a good will
than they would from any stranger under force," are punished with death
for the smallest things. Only two small classes have any privileges:
ministers of religion share with the greatest nobles the sole right of
access to the person of the "Mortal God."
Cadamosto set up a mart in the upland and made what profits he could
from their miserable poverty, making exchanges with cottons, cloths,
oil, millet, skins, palm-leaves, and vegetables, and above all, of
course, with gold, what little there was to be had.
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