MEDINA, the capital of the kingdom of Woolli in Africa, is situated in 13° 40' N. Lat. and 12° 40' W. Long. It is a place of considerable extent, and may contain from 800 to 1000 houses. It is fortified in the common
common African manner, by a surrounding high wall built of clay, and an outward fence of pointed stakes and prickly bushes; but the walls are neglected, and the outward fence has suffered considerably from the active hands of busy housewives, who pluck up the stakes for firewood. Mr Park passed through it on his route eastward, and was treated with much kindness both by the king and the people. The good old sovereign warned him of the dangers he was about to encounter, and endeavoured to persuade him to relinquish all thoughts of his journey eastward; but when he could not prevail, he gave him a guide, who conducted him in safety to Koojar, the frontier town of the kingdom towards Bondou, from which it is separated by an intervening wilderness of two days' journey. Here our author was presented, by way of refreshment, with a liquor which tasted so much like the strong beer of his native country (and very good beer too), as to induce him to inquire into its composition; and he learned, with some degree of surprise, that it was actually made from corn which had been previously malted, much in the same manner as barley is malted in Great Britain: a root yielding a grateful bitter was used in lieu of hops, the name of which he forgot; but the corn which yields the wort is the holcus spicatus of botanists.