Tesee is a large unwalled town, fortified only by a sort of citadel, in which Tiggity Sego and his family reside.  The present inhabitants, though possessing abundance of cattle and corn, eat without scruple rats, moles, squirrels, snakes, locusts, &c.  The attendants of Mr. Park were one evening invited to a feast, where making a hearty meal of what they thought to be fish and kouskous, one of them found a piece of hard skin in the dish, which he brought away with him, to show Mr. Park what sort of fish they had been eating.  On examining the skin, it was discovered they had been feasting on a large snake.  Another custom, which is rigidly adhered to, is, that no woman is allowed to eat an egg, and nothing will more affront a woman of Tesee than to offer her an egg.  The men, however, eat eggs without scruple.

The following anecdote will show, that in some particulars the African and European women have a great resemblance to each other, and that conjugal infidelity is by no means confined to the latter.  A young man, a kafir of considerable affluence, who had recently married a young and handsome wife, applied to a very devout Bushreen or Mussulman priest of his acquaintance, to procure him saphies for his protection during the approaching war.  The Bushreen complied with his request, and to render the saphies more efficacious, enjoined the young man to avoid any nuptial intercourse with his bride for the space of six weeks.  The kafir obeyed, and without telling his wife the real cause, absented himself from her company.  In the mean time it was whispered that the Bushreen, who always performed his evening devotions at the door of the kafir’s hut, was more intimate with the young wife, than was consistent with virtue, or the sanctity of his profession.  The husband was unwilling to suspect the honour of his sanctified friend, whose outward show of religion, as is the case with the priests and parsons of the civilized part of the world, protected him from even the suspicion of so flagitious an act.  Some time, however, elapsed before any jealousy arose in the mind of the husband, but hearing the charge repeated, he interrogated his wife on the subject, who confessed that the holy man had seduced her.  Hereupon the kafir put her into confinement, and called a palaver on the Bushreen’s conduct, which Mr. Park was invited to attend.  The fact was proved against the priest, and he was sentenced to be sold into slavery, or find two slaves for his redemption, according to the pleasure of the complainant.  The injured husband, however, desired rather to have him publicly flogged, before Tiggity Sego’s gate; this was agreed to, and the sentence immediately carried into execution.  The culprit was tied by the hands to a strong stake, and the executioner with a long black rod round his head, for some time applied it with such dexterity to the Bushreen’s back, as to make him roar until the woods resounded.  The multitude, by their looking and laughing, manifested how much they enjoyed the punishment of the old gallant, and it is remarkable, that the number of stripes was exactly the same as enjoined by the Mosaic law, forty, save one.