III. EXPEDITION TO MANDARA…

III. EXPEDITION TO MANDARA

It was late in the evening of the 15th April before my mind was made up as to the practicability of accompanying the ghrazzie. I had an interview with the sheikh, when he said, “I must refuse, because I know not how to ensure your safety: still I wish that I could comply with your request. The application by Boo-Khaloom for all your party to go was out of the question; your king could not wish that a mission sent out so far should run such risks—it was an imprudent request, and the bashaw would never have forgiven me if I had complied with it. You are differently situated; your sultan expressly orders you to accompany any military expeditions: but although you are a soldier, you will scarcely know how to take care of yourself, in an expedition of this nature, should Boo-Khaloom meet with a repulse; and on this account alone I cannot sanction your departure.” I replied, “that I could not be otherwise than sensible of the anxiety he evinced for our safety, but that the orders of my sultan must be obeyed if possible: that although he refused his approbation, I trusted he would not prevent my accompanying Boo-Khaloom. Indeed,” added I, smiling, “if that is your intention, I give you notice that the silsel[23] had better be put on—I shall certainly go, for I dare not lose such an opportunity of seeing the country.”

Here ended our conference; and some time after midnight, the negro who was to accompany me to Angornou, where I had previously intended awaiting the arrival of Doctor Oudney, roused me to commence my journey, adding, “We shall scarcely reach Angornou before daylight.” My baggage and necessaries were easily carried by one camel. My sole companion was my own negro Barca, whom I mounted on a mule, with my small canteens under him, containing a scanty supply of coffee: this, and a bag of rice, were all my provisions—and I trusted to Providence for the rest. To join the ghrazzie I was determined; but in what way it was to be accomplished, I was not yet decided. Boo-Khaloom had left Angornou the day before; and it was reported that he would halt one day about thirty-five miles south of that place: the destination of the expedition still remained a secret. Maraymy ben Soudanee, the negro whom the sheikh had appointed to accompany me, was the same that had attended me before in my excursion to the Tchad: he was born a slave in Mohamed el Soudanee’s family, the sheikh’s first cousin, who was now on his way to Mecca. As he took with him but a small retinue, Maraymy and many others were left behind, and served as an askar, or soldier, to the sheikh. His character amongst the sheikh’s people was one of great bravery; his daring manner of approaching the elephants, in our former trip, had not been unobserved by me; and during our present excursion he gave such proofs of gallantry and goodness of heart, at the same time laying me under obligations to him of the most serious kind,—no less, eventually, than the preservation of my life—that he merits every praise that it is in my power to bestow. Maraymy spoke broken Arabic, of which he was not a little proud: I had discovered that taciturnity was not among the number of his failings, and we had not proceeded many miles before he began to gratify his natural propensity with great volubility. For myself I was unusually disinclined to conversation; many circumstances combined to render me dissatisfied with the situation of our affairs. I felt, at the moment, more than ever the want of a companion and friend, in whose head and heart I could place some confidence; and Maraymy’s account of his battles, and hair-breadth escapes from the Kerdies, was almost unnoticed by me.

I was at length, however, roused by his question of “Does the rais go with the ghrazzie?” “How can I,” said I, “when the sheikh objects to it?” “But will you go, or not?” said he. “Whether I do or do not accompany it, at present is uncertain,” replied I: “you will proceed with me as far as Angornou, and leave me at Abde Nibbee’s hut. I should have thought much better of the sheikh’s conduct if he had desired you to be my companion, and sent me on to join Boo-Khaloom.” “If the rais will tell me whether he is determined, at all events, to proceed with the ghrazzie or not, I will then tell him what the sheikh’s orders are to me,” added Maraymy. “No, no!” rejoined I, “you know me well enough to be satisfied that no service done, or information given, ever goes unrewarded.—Tell me, if you choose, your directions; I cannot make you acquainted with my determination.”

Maraymy held out no longer; and it was to me most gratifying to learn, that the sheikh desired him not on any account to leave me; that if he found I was obstinate in persisting to join the expedition, he was to conduct me to their camp as quick as possible, and give me in charge to Barca Gana, the sheikh’s black Mameluke, who commanded the whole, with every possible charge to take care of me. I was not long now in making Maraymy acquainted with my intentions. I was lavish in my praises of the sheikh, whom my companion thought nearer a god than any other mortal; and we entered Angornou while twilight still spread its grey tint around, planning our departure from thence, as soon as daylight should return.

April 16.—The whole of this day Angornou was filling fast with strangers, in consequence of the great fsug the day following—and it had the appearance of a bustling town of business. Abde Nibbe, at whose hut I passed the day, was a merchant we had known at Mourzuk, and here made good his professions of service, which had never before been put to the test. On a clean mat, placed in a shady corner of his hut, I slept away the heat of the day; and besides a supper of giddeed (meat dried in the sun) and rice, he regaled me with a very pleasant drink, composed of milk, red pepper, and honey. The evening was so sultry, that I determined on waiting until after midnight; and about an hour before sunrise we mounted our horses.

April 17.—Our course was south, near a number of gardens; but the only vegetable produced in them appeared to be onions. For many miles our road was over one continued plain, covered with wheat and gussub stubble; and a little before noon we arrived at Yeddie, twenty-one miles from Angornou, a considerable town, walled, and governed by a kaid. A hut was pointed out to us, after some altercation, where we were to pass the heat of the day. I, however, took my place in the skiffa or entrance, the coolest place I could find.

The kaid soon after paid me a visit, who it seemed was asleep when I arrived. He was extremely desirous that I should come to his habitation, and was greatly distressed at not having better provided for my convenience; moving was, however, quite out of the question. The heat was excessive; and I merely begged a little sweet milk, and that the crowd round the door, which I was obliged to keep open, might, if practicable, be in part dispersed; and I added, “They are all men—pray are there no women in your town?” The kaid, who evidently wished to make up for his former inattention, immediately answered, “Yes, yes! plenty; and they also would like to come and look at you, if you will give them leave.” This I was not disposed to refuse; and the kaid, sitting by me, and Maraymy keeping the door, so that not more than three or four came in at a time, I received upwards of one hundred of the softer sex. Some of them were beautiful unaffected children of nature. I had nothing to show them but a looking-glass, and probably nothing could have pleased them more. One insisted upon bringing her mother, another her sister, in order to see the face she loved best reflected by the side of her own, which appeared to give them exquisite pleasure; as on seeing the reflection they repeatedly kissed the object of their affection. One very young and intelligent girl asked if she might bring her child, and on gaining permission quickly returned with an infant in her arms: she absolutely screamed with joy; and the tears ran down her cheeks when she saw the child’s face in the glass, who shook its hand in token of pleasure on perceiving its own reflected image.

By four in the afternoon we were again on the road, and Maraymy had raised my spirits by saying, “that if they had not moved on, we should reach the camp of the Arabs, and the sheikh’s troops, soon after sunset.” Fortunately they had not moved; and after fourteen miles we made Merty, and to the west of the town we saw the tents of the Arabs. Maraymy now told me, “that the sheikh wished I should put myself under the protection of Barca Gana; that Boo-Khaloom’s responsibility ceased on arriving at Bornou; that he was now bound to provide for my safety, and that with his people he wished me to remain.” I should have been better pleased to have pitched my tent close to that of my tried friend, and amongst my old companions the Arabs; but as Maraymy assured me the sheikh would be highly displeased, I instantly gave up the idea.

Barca Gana received me with a great deal of civility in his tent, although he kept me several minutes waiting outside, until he had summoned his fighi, or charm-writer—an indispensable person—and one or two of his chiefs, to attend him. “If it was the will of God,” he said, “I should come to no harm, and that he would do all in his power for my convenience.” A spot was appointed for my tent near his own; and I took my leave in order to visit the Arabs. The cheers they all gave me, and the hearty shake of the hand of Boo-Khaloom, made me regret that I was not to be amongst them, in spite of all their bad qualities. Boo-Khaloom repeatedly exclaimed, “I knew you would come; I said you would by some means or other join us.” One of Barca Gana’s people now brought word that we should move on by daybreak. I retired to my tent after making Boo-Khaloom acquainted with the sheikh’s arrangements, first to write to Doctor Oudney of my proceedings, and then to sleep off my fatigue. Sleep, however, was my only refreshment: I was as it were between two stools; one of my friends did not think it necessary, and the other never intended, to send me any supper.

April 18.—Before sunrise the tents were struck, and we were all in motion. Barca Gana, who commanded the sheikh’s people, about two thousand strong, was a native of a town called Sankara, in Soudan, and had fallen into the sheikh’s hands about seventeen years before, when only nine years of age. The sheikh had always been extremely attached to him, and had raised him with his fortunes, to the rank he now held, as kaid, or governor, of Angala, part of Loggun, and all the towns on the Shary, besides making him kashella, or commander-in-chief of his troops: he was a powerful negro, of uncommon bravery, possessing a charm which he imagined rendered him invulnerable to either balls or arrows. He was keen, possessed great quickness of observation, and from being so long in the sheikh’s confidence, had acquired his manner, which was gentle, and particularly pleasing: added to this, he was a bigoted Musselman.

As I have before said, the morning of the 18th saw me riding by the side of Barca Gana, in full march for Mandara. Two hours before noon we made Alla, a town fourteen miles from Merty: here our tents were pitched until the afternoon, when we again moved, and after five hours’ march arrived at Deegoa, twenty miles from Alla. Deegoa is a large walled town, governed by a sultan subject to the sheikh, and may boast a population of thirty thousand. With the exception of the immediate neighbourhood of the town, the country has been less cleared of wood than the neighbourhood of Angornou, and consequently is less productive. There is a very large wadey, or water-course, full a quarter of a mile in breadth: to the south of Deegoa we found it perfectly dry; but a large canoe, which was laid up by the side, to be used by travellers proceeding to Mandara in the wet season.

We had here a violent thunder-storm, accompanied by heavy rain during the night, which made its way plentifully into my Egyptian tent. Before daylight on the 19th, we broke up our encampment, and passing the wadey, continued our course through a very close country; the road consisted of several narrow paths, passable only for one horse at a time, and these greatly obstructed by the branches of tulloh, and other prickly trees, which hang over them. We made Affagay, another very large and populous town, early in the day: this is also subject to the sheikh, and governed by a kaid. Affagay, with the towns around it, Sogama, Kindacha, Masseram, and Kingoa, may be said to possess upwards of twenty thousand inhabitants. To the westward of Kingoa are the ruins of a very large town called Dagwamba: the country for many miles round formerly bore that name, and was governed by a sultan. The people were then all Kerdies, and, being conquered by the former sultans of Bornou, became Musselmans. Previous to arriving at Deegoa, we came upon a nest of Shouaas of the tribe of Waled Salamat: this race extends to the east quite as far as the Tchad.

Chiefs in this part of Africa are accompanied by as many personal followers as they think proper to maintain, both as horse and footmen: some of them form the band, if I may so call it. Barca Gana had five mounted, who kept close behind him, three of whom carried a sort of drum, which hung round their necks, and beat time while they sang extempore songs; one carried a small pipe made of a reed, and the other blew, on a buffalo’s horn, loud and deep-toned blasts, as we moved through the wood: but by far the most entertaining and useful were the running footmen, who preceded the kashella, and acted as pioneers; they were twelve in number, and carried long forked poles, with which they, with great dexterity, kept back the branches, as they moved on at a quick pace, constantly keeping open a path, which would without them really have been scarcely passable; they, besides this, were constantly crying aloud something about the road, or the expedition, as they went on. For example: “Take care of the holes!—avoid the branches!—Here is the road!—take care of the tulloh!—its branches are like spears—worse than spears! Keep off the branches!” “For whom?” “Barca Gana.”—“Who in battle is like rolling of thunder?” “Barca Gana!”—“Now for Mandara!—now for the Kerdies!—now for the battle of spears!—Who is our leader?” “Barca Gana.”—“Here is the wadey, but no water.”—“God be praised!”—“In battle, who spreads terror around him like a buffalo in his rage?” “Barca Gana[24]”.

This sort of question and answer, at once useful and exhilarating, is constantly kept up until the time of halting. We did not move from Affagay until the next morning, when the whole army were supplied with bullocks and sheep. This was the first meal I had made since leaving Angornou, and the following is their method of roasting the meat: the sheep were killed, cut in half, and laid upon a frame-work of wood made of strong stakes, and having four supporters; under it was a strong fire, and by this means the meat was roasted better than I ever saw it done in any part of Europe except my own country. Towards the evening I received a summons from Barca Gana, and in his tent found five or six of the chiefs assembled: half of a roasted sheep was laid on green boughs placed on the sand before us; the black chiefs then stripped off the dark blue shirt, their only covering; the sharpest dagger in the party was searched for, and being given to one who acted as carver, large slices of the flesh were cut, distributed about, and quickly devoured without either bread or salt: when we arrived at the bones, another side shared the same fate, and our repast closed by huge draughts from a large wooden bowl of rice water, honey, tamarinds, and red pepper, which nobody was allowed to drink of but myself and the kashella.—I expressed my satisfaction at this plentiful feast. Barca Gana said, “What the country afforded he always lived on; that he never carried any thing with him in these expeditions but a kind of paste, made of rice, flour, and honey, which, mixed with water, he took, morning and evening, when no better fare was to be had.”

On the 20th at noon we reached Delahay, our road lying through a thick wood. Delahay is a spot surrounded by large wide-spreading acacias, affording a delightful shade; and here there are between thirty and forty wells of very sweet water: the huts of a numerous tribe of Shouaas, called Hajainy, are near this place. It was a cloudy day, sultry and oppressive; the thermometer in my tent, in the afternoon, was at 109°. In the evening we made another halting-place, called Hasbery, where we found no water; having come a distance of thirty-four miles.

The whole of this country is covered with alluvial soil; has a dark clayey appearance. Cracks, several inches in width, make the roads difficult, and, in the wet season, the water which falls remains on the ground for several months after. This evening, Boo-Khaloom’s camels, unable to keep pace with the light-footed maherhies of the Bornou people, were so long in coming up, that he came to Barca Gana’s tent, and a few unfortunate questions put to him, on the subject of my religion, sank me wofully in the opinion of my Bornou friends. Boo-Khaloom had been a great traveller, and was extremely liberal in his religious opinions for a Musselman; more so than he dared to acknowledge to these bigoted followers of the Prophet. The kashella’s fighi, Malem Chadily, had always eyed me with a look of suspicion, and had once said, when the whole army halted, at dawn, “Do you wash and pray?” “Yes,” said I. “Where?” rejoined the fighi. “In my tent,” I replied. This fighi, who continued throughout my mortal enemy and annoyance, now asked Boo-Khaloom “what these English were? were they Hanafy or Maleki?” still believing, that as we appeared a little better than the Kerdies, or savages, that we must be Moslem in some way or other. Boo-Khaloom answered, with some hesitation, “No: that we were mesquine (unfortunate); that we believed not in ‘the book,’ the title always given to the Koran; that we did not sully, or pray, as they did, five times a day; that we were not circumcised; that we had a book of our own, which did not mention Saidna Mohamed, and that, blind as we were, we believed in it: but In sh’ allah,” added he, “they will see their error, and die Musselmans, for they are naz zein zein Yassur (good people, very good).” This account was followed by a general groan; and the fighi clasped his hands, looked thoughtful, and then said, “Why does not the great bashaw of Tripoli make them all Musselmans?” This question made Boo-Khaloom smile: “Why!” replied Boo-Khaloom, “that he could not very well do, great as he is; these people are powerful, very powerful, and an affront to even one of these might cost the bashaw his kingdom:—they are also rich, very rich.” “May it please the Lord quickly to send all their riches into the hands of true Musselmans,” said the fighi; to which the whole assembly echoed “Amen.” “However,” continued Boo-Khaloom, “there are insara Yassur fi denier (a great many Christians in the world), but the English are the best of any; they worship no images; they believe in one God, and are almost Moslem.” This was as much as he could say, although it raised me but little in the fighi’s estimation; and as he decided, so every body was obliged to think.

Our rice water, and honey, was always brought in a brass basin tinned on the inside, such as are only used by sultans and people of the highest rank, wooden bowls being always drunk out of by the people; and out of this basin Barca Gana and myself only were allowed to drink. To-night, while I was drinking, the fighi made some remark; what I left in the bowl was instantly thrown away, and soon after a separate vessel was assigned me.

We continued our course to Ally Mabur, where there is a large lake of still water. The horses, who had not drunk the night before, rushed into the lake by hundreds, and, in consequence, the water we got to drink was nearly as thick as pease-soup. The day was dreadfully sultry. My camel not coming up, I could not pitch my tent, and I became nearly exhausted by the intolerable heat. The thermometer was at 113° in the best shade I could find, and covered completely with a cloth, besides a thick woollen bornouse, I kept up some little moisture by excluding entirely all external air; still it was almost insupportable.

Ally Mabur, in the afternoon, and at night, halted at an open spot in the wood called Emcheday. The trees we had seen within the last two days were of a much larger kind, and the underwood less. We had no water but the muddy beverage we had brought with us. Through an open space, or break in the wood, I had this day seen part of the Mandara hills, and had passed an extensive line of huts belonging to the Beni-hassan Shouaas. We were now but a few miles from the capital of Mandara, and several persons had arrived from the sultan, within the last two days, to welcome Barca Gana; but this evening one of his chiefs came, attended by about twenty horsemen, saying, “that the sultan would himself meet us the next day, on the road to Mora, his residence.” Our force had been increased, during the march, by several Shouaa sheikhs joining us, with their followers, both from the banks of the Tchad and from the west. We always found them drawn up on a certain spot on the road; and their salutation was by charging rapidly up, and shaking the spear at the kashella, wishing he might “crush his enemies as an elephant tramples on his victim,” and such like expressions.

By these accessions we were now upwards of three thousand strong, all cavalry, with the exception of about eighty Arabs on foot. We continued to approach a noble chain of hills, which were now full in our view, of considerable height and extent, with numerous trees growing on their steep and rugged sides. Delow, the first town we arrived at in Mandara, formerly the residence of the sultan, containing at least 10,000 inhabitants, has springs of beautiful fresh water; and in the valleys fig-trees; and trees, which bore a white flower resembling the zeringa, possessing a grateful odour, were plentiful.

At about a mile from this town, we saw before us the sultan of Mandara, surrounded by about five hundred horsemen, posted on a rising ground ready to receive us, when Barca Gana instantly commanded a halt. Different parties now charged up to the front of our line, and wheeling suddenly round, charged back again to the sultan. These people were finely dressed in Soudan tobes of different colours; dark blue, and striped with yellow and red; bornouses of coarse scarlet cloth; with large turbans of white or dark coloured cotton. Their horses were really beautiful, larger and more powerful than any thing found in Bornou, and they managed them with great skill. The sultan’s guard was composed of thirty of his sons, all mounted on very superior horses, clothed in striped silk tobes; and the skin of the tiger-cat and leopard forming their shabracks, which hung fully over their horses’ haunches. After these had returned to their station in front of the sultan, we approached at full speed in our turn, halting with the guard between us and the royal presence. The parley then commenced, and the object of Boo-Khaloom’s visit having been explained, we retired again to the place we had left; while the sultan returned to the town, preceded by several men blowing long pipes, not unlike clarionets, ornamented with shells, and two immense trumpets from twelve to fourteen feet long, borne by men on horseback, made of pieces of hollow wood, with a brass mouth-piece, the sounds of which were not unpleasing.

The parley was carried on in the Mandara language, by means of an interpreter; and I understood that we were to visit the sultan in the course of the day, and hear his determination.

Boo-Khaloom was, as usual, very sanguine: he said “he should make the sultan handsome presents, and that he was quite sure a Kirdy[25] town full of people would be given him to plunder.” The Arabs were all eagerness; they eyed the Kirdy huts, which were now visible on the sides of mountains before us, with longing eyes; and contrasting their own ragged and almost naked state with the appearance of the sultan of Mandara’s people in their silk tobes, not only thought, but said, “if Boo-Khaloom pleased, they would go no further; this would do.” Boo-Khaloom and the Arab sheikhs had repeatedly exclaimed, when urging El Kanemy to send them to some country for slaves, “Never mind their numbers! arrows are nothing! and ten thousand spears are of no importance. We have guns! guns!” exclaiming, with their favourite imprecations, “Nakalou-e-kelab fesaa,” (We’ll eat them, the dogs, quickly)—“eich nu, abeed occul,” (what! why, they are negroes all!) I fancied I could see the keen features of El Kanemy curl at these contemptuous expressions, which equally applied to his own people; and certainly nothing could be more galling than for him to hear them from such a handful of Arabs: his own people were abeed occul, and their only arms spears and arrows, and this he could not but feel and remember.

Towards the evening Barca Gana sent to desire me to mount, for the purpose of visiting the sultan. We entered the town, Boo-Khaloom and myself riding on his right and left; and at the farther end of a large square was the sultan’s palace. As is usual on approaching or visiting a great man, we galloped up to the skiffa at full speed, almost entering the gates. This is a perilous sort of salutation, but nothing must stop you; and it is seldom made except at the expense of one or more lives. On this occasion, a man and horse, which stood in our way, were ridden over in an instant, the horse’s leg broke, and the man killed on the spot. The trumpets sounded as we dismounted at the palace gate; our papouches, or outward slippers, were quickly pulled off; and we proceeded through a wide skiffa, or entrance, into a large court, where, under a dark blue tent of Soudan, sat the sultan, on a mud bench, covered however with a handsome carpet and silk pillows: he was surrounded by about two hundred persons, all handsomely dressed in tobes of silk and coloured cotton, with his five eunuchs; the principal men of the country sitting in front, but all with their backs turned towards him. The manner of saluting is curious: Barca Gana, as the sheikh’s representative, approached to a space in front of the eunuchs, his eyes fixed on the ground; he then sat down, with his eyes still fixed on the earth, with his back to the sultan, and, clapping his hands together, exclaimed, “Engouborou dagah! (May you live for ever!)—Allah kiaro! (God send you a happy old age!)—La, lai, barca, barca. (How is it with you? blessing! blessing!)” These words were repeated nearly by the sultan, and then sung out by all the court. The fatah was then said, and they proceeded to business. Boo-Khaloom produced some presents, which were carried off by the eunuchs unopened; the sultan then expressed his wish to serve him; said he would consider his request, and in a day or two give him his decision.

The sultan, whose name was Mohamed Bucker, was an intelligent little man of about fifty, with a beard dyed of a most beautiful sky-blue; he had been eyeing me for some time, as I sat between Boo-Khaloom and Barca Gana, and first asking Boo-Khaloom his name, inquired who I was? The answer that I was a native of a very distant and powerful nation, friends of the bashaw of Tripoli and the sheikh, who came to see the country, did not appear much to surprise him; and he looked gracious as he said, “But what does he want to see?” A fatal question however followed, and the answer appeared to petrify the whole assembly:—“Are they Moslem?” “La! la! (No! no!)” Every eye, which had before been turned towards me, was now hastily withdrawn, and, looking round, I really felt myself in a critical situation. “Has the great bashaw Kaffir friends?” said the sultan. The explanation which followed was of little use: they knew no distinctions; Christians they had merely heard of as the worst people in the world, and, probably, until they saw us, scarcely believed them to be human. We shortly after returned to our camp, and I never afterwards was invited to enter the sultan of Mandara’s presence.

Our tents had been pitched but a short distance from the town of Mora, and on our return upwards of forty slaves, preceded by one of the sultan’s eunuchs, came to the camp, bearing wooden bowls filled with paste of the gussub flour, with hot fat and pepper poured over it, mixed with a proportionate seasoning of onions. This was considered as the very acmè of Mandara cooking; it was savoury, and not very unpleasant; but a few sides of mutton roasted, which came for the chiefs, was the better part of our fare. Malem Chadily betook himself to another bowl, because on Barca Gana’s putting the mess towards me, I had, as usual, plunged my right hand in without any ceremony. Barca Gana saw that I observed it, and his dread of the sheikh’s displeasure induced him to make some observation in Bornouese, which drove the fighi out of the tent: this distressed me, and I determined on adopting some measures for preventing the repetition of these disagreeables.

On the 23d we halted; but I was so dreadfully bitten by the ants and other insects, which beset us in myriads, that my hands and eyes were so swelled that I could scarcely hold a pen, or see to use one: added to this, the heat was again insufferable; for several hours in the middle of the day, the thermometer was as high as 113°. Covering myself up with all the blankets I could find afforded me the greatest relief—these defending me as well from the flies as the power of the sun: occasionally making my negro pour cold water on my head was another undescribable comfort. I passed the greater part of the evening with Boo-Khaloom, who had seen the sultan of Mandara in the day. He complained of being delayed; but was, nevertheless, still sanguine, and believed the sultan was endeavouring to find him a Kerdy country, which he was to attack; it, however, never was the intention of the sultan of Mandara to take any such steps, or the sheikh’s wish that he should. It was against people who would create in the Arabs a little more respect for spears and arrows, that the sheikh wished them to be sent; and this he thought could not better be accomplished than by consigning them to the sultan of Mandara, whose natural enemies, as well as his own, were the Felatahs, the most warlike people in the whole country.

Mandara had been several times conquered by these Felatah tribes, which extend over an immense space of country: they are found through the whole of Soudan, quite to Timbuctoo, and at D’jennie on the Quolla they form the greatest part of the population. A very populous town, Conally, to the west of D’jennie, is inhabited wholly by Felatahs[26]. They are a very handsome race of people, of a deep copper colour, who seldom mix their blood with that of the negroes, have a peculiar language of their own, and are Moslem. They bear some resemblance to the Shouaas, although they are quite a distinct race. South-west of Mandara is a country called Karowa; and these two countries were formerly governed by one sultan (Kerdy), until Mandara was wrested from them by the Felatahs of Musfeia and Kora. The son of the sultan of Karowa, the present sultan, succeeded in recovering Mandara out of their hands, and has since been able to keep possession, as they aver, from his having become Moslem—be that as it may, he is now a Musselman, and an intelligent one for his situation: his resources are great, and his country by nature easy to defend. About ten years ago, he found so little defence from the walls of his then residence Delow, against the attacks of the Felatahs, that he built the new town Mora, nearly facing the north, and situated under a semicircular ridge of very picturesque mountains. These natural barriers form a strong rampart on every side but one, and he has hitherto withstood the attempts of his enemies. It is rather a curious circumstance that no Shouaas are to be found in the Mandara dominions, nor any where to the south of them.

The Sheikh El Kanemy, very shortly after his successes and elevation, saw the advantage of a powerful ally, such as the sultan of Mandara, against the Felatahs, who were equally the dread of both these potentates; the vicinity of Mandara to the Kerdy nations, as well as the ease with which slaves are obtained from thence, was also another consideration. The tribes of Shouaas, bordering on the Mandara frontier to the north and north-east, had always been in the habit of sending marauding parties into that part of the country nearest to them, which the sultan had never been able to prevent; and the sheikh no sooner saw the necessity of bringing these dwellers in tents into subjection to the sultan of Bornou than he determined also on making a stipulation for the discontinuance of their inroads into the Mandara country, the peace of which they had so long disturbed. This treaty of alliance was confirmed by the sheikh’s receiving in marriage the daughter of the sultan of Mandara, and the marriage portion was to be the produce of an immediate expedition into the Kerdy country, called Musgow, to the south-east of Mandara, by the united forces of the sheikh and the sultan. The results were as favourable as the most savage confederacy could have anticipated—three thousand unfortunate wretches were dragged from their native wilds and sold to perpetual slavery; while, probably, double that number were sacrificed to obtain them. These nuptials are said to have been celebrated with great rejoicing, and much barbarian splendour: the blood, however, which had been shed in the path to the altar, one would almost think, was sufficient to have extinguished the hymeneal torch, and annihilated the bearers.

This treaty of alliance left the sultan of Mandara no other enemies than the Felatahs to contend with; and his power had increased too much for him to fear any offensive measures on their part: on the contrary, he had been at the time of our expedition for some months seeking for an opportunity to commence hostilities himself[27]. The Mandara force consists principally of cavalry, which, as their horses are of a superior breed, have a very imposing appearance. Some of the Kerdy towns occasionally furnish a few bowmen; but as their only object is plunder in the event of a victory, on the least appearance of a contrary result they quickly betake themselves to their mountain habitations. The principal Mandara towns are eight in number, and all stand in the valley: these, and the smaller ones by which they are surrounded, all profess Islamism. The Kerdies are far more numerous; and their dwellings are seen every where in clusters on the sides, and even at the top, of the very hills which immediately overlook the Mandara capital. The fires which were visible in the different nests of these unfortunates threw a glare upon the bold peaks and bluff promontories of granite rock by which they were surrounded, and produced a picturesque and somewhat awful appearance. The dread in which they hold the sultan has been considerably increased by his close alliance with the sheikh; and the appearance of such a force as that which accompanied Barca Gana, bivouacked in the valley, was a most appalling sight to those who occupied the overhanging heights: they were fully aware, that for one purpose alone would such a force visit their country; and which of them were to be the victims, must have been the cause of most anxious inquietude and alarm to the whole. By the assistance of a good telescope, I could discover those who, from the terms on which they were with Mandara, had the greatest dread stealing off into the very heart of the mountains; while others came towards Mora, bearing leopard skins, honey, and slaves, plundered from a neighbouring town, as peace-offerings; also asses and goats, with which their mountains abound: these were not, however, on this occasion destined to suffer. The people of Musgow, whose country it was at first reported (although without foundation) that the Arabs were to plunder, sent two hundred head of their fellow-creatures, besides other presents, to the sultan, with more than fifty horses. Between twenty and thirty horsemen, mounted on small, fiery, and very well formed steeds of about fourteen hands high, with a numerous train, were the bearers of these gifts—and a most extraordinary appearance they made. I saw them on their leaving the sultan’s palace; and both then, and on their entrance, they threw themselves on the ground, pouring sand on their heads, and uttering the most piteous cries. The horsemen, who were chiefs, were covered only by the skin of a goat or leopard, so contrived as to hang over the left shoulder, with the head of the animal on the breast; and being confined round the middle, was made to reach nearly half way down the thigh, the skin of the tail and legs being also preserved. On their heads, which were covered with long woolly, or rather bristly, hair, coming quite over their eyes, they wore a cap of the skin of the goat, or some fox-like animal; round their arms, and in their ears, were rings of what to me appeared to be bone; and round the necks of each were from one to six strings of what I was assured were the teeth of the enemies they had slain in battle: teeth and pieces of bone were also pendant from the clotted locks of their hair, and with the red patches with which their body was marked in different places, and of which colour also their own teeth were stained, they really had a most strikingly wild, and truly savage, appearance. What very much increased the interest I felt in gazing upon these beings, who, to appearance, were the most savage of their race, was the positive assertion of Boo-Khaloom that they were Christians. I had certainly no other argument at the moment to use, in refutation of his position, but their most unchristian-like appearance and deportment; in this he agreed, but added, “Wolla Insara, they are Christians!” Some of them, however, begging permission to regale themselves on the remains of a horse, which had died during the night in our camp, gave me, as I thought, an unanswerable argument against him. I can scarcely, however, at this moment forget how disconcerted I felt when he replied, “That is nothing: I certainly never heard of Christians eating dead horse-flesh, but I know they eat the flesh of swine, and God knows that is worse!” “Grant me patience!” exclaimed I to myself; “this is almost too much to bear, and to be silent.”

I endeavoured, by means of one of the Mandara people, to ask some questions of some of these reputed Christians, but my attempts were fruitless; they would hold no intercourse with any one; and, on gaining permission, carried off the carcass of the horse to the mountains, where, by the fires which blazed during the night, and the yells that reached our ears, they no doubt held their savage and brutal feast.

April 24.—The sultan of Mandara had given no intimation whatever of his intentions with regard to Boo-Khaloom’s destination, and in consequence the impatience and discontent of the latter were extreme. Offerings poured in, from all the Kerdy nations; and the sultan excused himself to Boo-Khaloom for the delay, on account of the extreme tractability of the people around him, who, he said, were becoming Musselmans without force. Again Musgow was mentioned; adding, that the warlike arm of the Arabs, bearing the sword of the Prophet, might turn their hearts. This hypocrisy, however, Boo-Khaloom inveighed against most loudly to me, declaring that the conversion of the Kerdy people would lose him (the sultan) thousands of slaves, as their constant wars with each other afford them the means of supplying him abundantly.

My own patience, also, this morning underwent a severe trial. I applied to Barca Gana, by dawn of day, for one of his men to accompany me to the mountains; and after some conversation a chief was sent with me to the house of the suggamah (chief of the town), who sent me to another, and he begged I might be taken to a third. They all asked me a hundred questions, which was natural enough; begged powder—looked at my gun—snapped the lock so often, that I feared they would break it, exclaiming, “Y-e-o-o-o! wonderful! wonderful!” when the fire came. At last, however, when I once got it in my hand, I loaded both the barrels, and after that I could not induce one of them to put their hands within five yards of it. The last great man whose house I was taken to cunningly begged me to fire, calling his slaves to stand round him while I complied with his request: immediately after he asked for the gun, and carried it into an inner court. I was kept full half an hour waiting; when about ten slaves rushed out, gave me the gun, and told the guide to carry me to the palace. I complained that they had stolen both my flints. Every body came to look—crowded round me, exclaiming, “Y-e-o-o-o!” and this was all the redress I could obtain. I soon after found out that the flints were not my only loss; my pocket handkerchief also, which several had petitioned for without success, had been stolen.

Arrived at the palace, I was desired to wait in the skiffa. I began to walk about, but was told that was not allowed, that I must sit down on the ground: after waiting nearly an hour, during which time I was desirous more than once to return, but was told by my guide that it was impossible until the sultan gave orders, I was conducted into the presence of the chief eunuch; he desired me to stop within about twelve yards of him, and then said, “The sultan could not imagine what I wanted at the hills? Did I wish to catch the Kerdies alone?—that I had better buy them,—he would sell me as many as I pleased.” He then made some remark, which was not interpreted, and which created a loud laugh in all the bystanders: the joke was evidently at my expense, although I was not aware of its point. I assured him, “that I did not wish to go at all to the hills if the sultan had the slightest objection, that it was purely curiosity, and that as to catching Kerdies, I would not take them if given to me.” This put us all to rights; I gave him some powder, and he was as civil as he could be to such a kafir as myself.

Six men, armed with large clubs and short daggers, were now desired to go with me. The sultan’s anxiety for my safety, the eunuch assured me, was the only reason I had found any difficulty. What directions these, my satellites, had received, I know not, but they watched me so closely, appeared so jealous of every stone I picked up, that I did not venture to sketch the shape of a single hill. It was now nearly mid-day, and we proceeded about three quarters of a mile along the valley, which is on the south-west side of the town, and advanced a little into two of the chasms, which appear in the southernmost ridge of the chain. In one of these we found a beautiful stream of water, bubbling from a bed of glittering sand, under two immense blocks of granite, which seemed to form a rude arch over the spot. Several naked people, chiefly women and girls, ran from the place as we approached, and scrambled up the side of the mountain with the most monkey-like agility. I was abundantly assured that this chain of mountains, the highest parts of which, in the neighbourhood of Mandara, do not exceed two thousand five hundred feet, extends nearly south for more than two months’ journey—how much beyond that they know not. The only communication, in this direction, is by means of a few venturesome freed slaves, who penetrate into these countries with beads and tobes, which are eagerly bought up, as well as turkadies from Soudan, and slaves and skins are given in exchange. The nations are very numerous; generally paint, and stain their bodies of different colours, and live in common, without any regard to relationship. Large lakes are frequently met with, plentifully supplied with fish. Mangoes, wild figs, and ground nuts, are found in the valleys. It does not appear that any other metal besides iron, which is abundant, has been discovered in these hills: near Karowa, to the south-west of Mandara, it is most plentiful.

The sound of the sultan’s trumpets, now heard at a distance, created a strong sensation amongst my attendants; they all declared we must return instantly; and when I very gently attempted to remonstrate a little, one of them took hold of the reins of my horse without any ceremony, turned him round, and led him on, while all the rest followed towards the town; of course I very quietly submitted, wondering what was the cause of alarm: it was, however, nothing but that the Sultan was giving audience, and these gentlemen of the chamber did not choose to be absent. They left me as soon as we approached the houses, and I was then instantly surrounded by at least a hundred others, who were so anxious to put their hands into, and examine, every thing about me, that I put spurs to my horse, and made the best of my way to the camp. I was exceedingly fatigued with my morning’s work, and crept into my tent, where I endured three hours of misery from a degree of excessive heat, surpassing all I could have supposed mankind were born to suffer here below.

Barca Gana sent to me soon after, and I found him preparing to receive one of the chief eunuchs of the sultan in his outward tent; his people all sitting round him on the sand, with their backs towards their chief, and eyes inclined downwards. Nothing can be more solemn than these interviews; not an eye is raised, or a smile seen, or a word spoken, beyond “Long life to you! A happy old age! Blessing! Blessing! May you trample on your enemies! Please God! Please God!” then the fatah, which is seldom or never omitted. The great man first inquired, “why I went to the hills; and what I wanted with the stones I had picked up, and put in a bag which I carried near my saddle?” Barca Gana applied to me for information, and the bag was sent for. My specimens were not more than fifteen in number, and the eunuch, laying his hand on two pieces of fine grained granite, and some quartz, asked, “how many dollars they would bring in my country?” I smiled, and told him, “Not one: that I had no object in taking them beyond curiosity—that we had as much in England as would cover his whole country, and that I was pleased to find similar natural productions here. Assure the sultan,” added I, to Barca Gana, “that to take any thing from any of the inhabitants of these countries is not the wish of the English king: the sheikh knows our intentions, which are rather to make them acquainted with European produce; and if useful to them, send more into their country.” “True, true!” said Barca Gana: “what have you brought for the sultan?”—and here I was again in a dilemma. I had only one small looking-glass of my own; neither knives, scissors, nor beads, although we had cases of them at Bornou. Something, however, was necessary to be given; I therefore sent for my trunk, and gave the sultan two French red imitation shawls, which I had bought for my own use, my own razor, and a pair of scissors; while for himself the eunuch took my two remaining pocket-handkerchiefs, and a coloured muslin one, with which he appeared to be highly delighted.

April 25.—The news of the presents I had produced brought early this morning fifteen of the sultan’s sons, with double the number of followers, to my tent: they all wanted gunpowder, knives, and scissors; I had however neither one nor the other to give them. Two or three of the oldest of the princes got a French silk handkerchief each, and one a pair of cotton socks, and, of course, the others went away sadly discontented. I this morning ventured to make two attempts at sketching, but my apparatus and myself were carried off without ceremony to the sultan. My pencils marking without ink, created great astonishment, and the facility with which its traces were effaced by India rubber seemed still more astonishing. My old antagonist, Malem Chadily, was there, and affected to treat me with great complaisance: he talked a great deal about me and my country, which made his hearers repeatedly cry out, “Y-e-o-o-o!” but what the purport of his observations were I could not make out. I endeavoured, however, to forget all his former rudeness, took every thing in good part, and appeared quite upon as good terms with him as he evidently wished to appear to be with me. Several words were written both by him and the others, which the rubber left no remains of; at length the fighi wrote Bismillah arachmani aracheme (in the name of the great and most merciful God), in large Koran characters; he made so deep an impression on the paper, that, after using the Indian rubber, the words still appeared legible: “This will not quite disappear,” said I. “No, no!” exclaimed the fighi, exulting; “they are the words of God, delivered to our Prophet! I defy you to erase them!” “Probably so,” said I; “then it will be in vain to try.” He showed the paper to the sultan, and then around him, with great satisfaction; they all exclaimed, “Y-e-o-o-o! La illah el Allah! Mohammed rassoul Allah!”—cast looks at me expressive of mingled pity and contempt, and I was well pleased when allowed to take my departure.

The whole of this scene was repeated to Barca Gana in his tent in the evening, and they all exclaimed “Wonderful! Wonderful!” and as I did not contradict any part of his account, the fighi thus addressed me: “Rais, you have seen a miracle! I will show you hundreds, performed alone by the words of the wonderful book! You have a book also, you say, but it must be false.—Why? Because it says nothing of Saidna Mohammed, that is enough.—Shed! Shed! turn! turn! say ‘God is God, and Mohammed is his prophet.’ Sully (wash), and become clean, and paradise is open to you: without this, what can save you from eternal fire? Nothing!—Oh! I shall see you while sitting in the third heaven, in the midst of the flames, crying out to your friend Barca Gana and myself, ‘Malem, saherbi! (friend), give me a drink or a drop of water!’ but the gulf will be between us, and then it will be too late.” The Malem’s tears flowed in abundance during this harangue, and every body appeared affected by his eloquence.

I felt myself, at this period, extremely uncomfortable; and Barca Gana, who saw my distress, called me into the inner tent, where nobody accompanied him, except by invitation. “The fighi,” said he, “is a rajal alem (clever man).” “Very likely,” said I; “but he surely might leave me to my own belief, as I leave him to his.” “Staffer Allah!” (God forbid!) said he. “Do not compare them.” “I do not,” said I, “God knows; but you, Kashella, should protect me from such repeated annoyances.” “No,” replied Barca, “in this I cannot interfere. Malem is a holy man. Please God! you will be enlightened, and I know the sheikh wishes it; he likes you, and would you stay amongst us, he would give you fifty slaves of great beauty, build you a house like his son’s, and give you wives from the families of any of his subjects you choose!” “Were you to return to England with me, Kashella, as you sometimes talk about, with the sheikh’s permission, would it not be disgraceful for you to turn Christian, and remain? Were I to do as you would have me, how should I answer to my sultan who sent me?” “God forbid!” said he; “you are comparing our faiths again. I propose to you eternal paradise, while you would bring me to ——.” “Not a word more,” said I.—“Good night!” “Peace be with you! I hope we shall always be friends,” said he. “Please God!” returned I. “Amen!” said the kashella.

This night we had a more dreadful storm than I ever remember being out in. The top of my Egyptian tent, which I had preferred bringing on account of its portability, was carried completely off, and the pole broken. The brightness of the lightning rendered it more like noon than midnight: a tamarind-tree was torn up by its roots in the valley near us; huge masses of stone rolled down the sides of the mountain; and I crept into a corner of Barca Gana’s outer tent, where slept his guard; and, although every rag about me was drenched with water, I was in a short time insensible to the storm which raged around me.

In the morning, however, I suffered considerably from pains in all my limbs and head. The Arabs, also, were full of complaints, and extremely dissatisfied with their situation; they loudly exclaimed against their delay. They had, for days, eaten nothing but a little flour and water, without fat: the sultan of Mandara would grant them no supply, and they demanded of Boo-Khaloom to go on, or turn back. The rain again fell in torrents, which is an Arab’s greatest dread, and they assembled round Boo-Khaloom’s tent, almost in a state of mutiny. Boo-Khaloom himself was excessively ill, more, I believe, from vexation than sickness. He had a long interview with the sultan, and returned very much irritated: he merely told me, as he passed, “that we should move in the evening;” and when I asked, “if every thing went well?” he merely answered, “In shallah!” (please God). The Arabs, from whom he kept his destination a secret, received him with cheers. Whom they were going against they cared but little, so long as there was a prospect of plunder, and the whole camp became a busy scene of preparation.

Two hours after noon we commenced our march through a beautiful valley to the east of Mora, winding round the hills which overhang the town, and penetrating into the heart of the mass of mountains nearly to the south of it. About sunset we halted in a very picturesque spot, called Hairey, surrounded by a superb amphitheatre of hills. Barca Gana’s tent was pitched under the shade of one side of an immense tree, called gubberah, much resembling a fig-tree, although wanting its delicious fruit; and the remnants of my tent, which had been mended by his people, and now stood about three feet from the ground, were placed on the opposite side. The trunks of these trees commonly measure ten and twelve yards in circumference near the root, and I have seen them covering more than half an acre of ground with their wide-spreading branches.

Soon after our arrival, the sultan’s trumpets announced his approach, and he took up his station, at no great distance, under a tree of the same kind: he never used a tent, but slept in an open space, surrounded by his eunuchs. At Hairey are the remains of a Mandara town, long since destroyed by the Felatahs; parts of the mud walls were still standing, and under shelter of these the troops bivouacked. The scorpions, however, made their appearance in the course of the night in great numbers, and several men were stung by them: on hearing the disturbance, and learning the cause, I called my negro, and, striking a light, we killed three in my tent; one of them was full six inches in length, of the black kind, exactly resembling those I had seen in Tripoli.

In consequence of Boo-Khaloom’s illness, it was after daylight when we broke up from our encampment, and probably the mountain scenery, by which we were surrounded, could scarcely be exceeded in beauty and richness. On all sides the apparently interminable chain of hills closed upon our view: in rugged magnificence, and gigantic grandeur, though not to be compared with the Higher Alps, the Apennines, the Jura, or even the Sierra Morena, in magnitude, yet by none of these were they surpassed in picturesque interest. The lofty peaks of Vahmy, Savah, Joggiday, Munday, Vayah, Moyung, and Memay, with clustering villages on their stony sides, appeared to the east and west of us; while Horza, exceeding any of her sister hills in height, as well as in beauty, appeared before us to the south, with its chasm or break through which we were to pass; and the winding rugged path we were about to tread was discernible in the distance. The valley in which I stood had an elevation superior to that of any part of the kingdom of Bornou, for we had gradually ascended ever since quitting Kouka; it was in shape resembling a large pentagon, and conveyed strongly the idea of its having been the bed or basin of some ancient lake, for the disappearance of which all hypothesis would be vain and useless. There were the marks of many outlets, some long and narrow fissures, through which the waters might have broken; the channel by which we had entered appearing most likely to have carried off its contents.

On proceeding through the pass of Horza, where the ascent continued, its perpendicular sides exceeding two thousand five hundred feet in height, hung over our heads with a projection almost frightful; the width of the valley did not exceed five hundred yards, and the salient and re-entering angles so perfectly corresponded, that one could almost imagine, if a similar convulsion of nature to that which separated were to bring its sides again together, they would unite, and leave no traces of their ever having been disjoined.

It was long after mid-day when we came to the mountain stream called Mikwa, and it afforded an indescribable relief to our almost famished horses and ourselves: the road, after quitting the Horza pass, had been through an extensive and thickly-planted valley, where the tree gubberah, the tamarind, a gigantic wild fig, and the mangoe (called by the Mandaras ungerengera, and comonah by the Bornouese), flourished in great numbers and beauty. This was the first spot I had seen in Africa where Nature seemed at all to have revelled in giving life to the vegetable kingdom; the leaves presented a bright luxuriant verdure, and flowers, from a profusion of climbing parasitical plants, winding round the trunks of the trees, left the imagination in doubt as to which of them the fair aromatic blossoms that perfumed the air were indebted for their nourishment. The ground had frequent irregularities; and broken masses of granite, ten and twelve feet in height, were lying in several places, but nearly obscured by the thick underwood growing round them, and by the trees, which had sprung up out of their crevices. The nearest part of the hills, to which these blocks could have originally belonged, was distant nearly two miles.

When the animals had drunk we again moved on, and after eighteen miles of equally verdant country, more thickly wooded, we came, after sunset, to another stream, near some low hills, called Makkeray, where we were to halt for a few hours to refresh, and then move again, so as to commence an attack on the Felatahs, who were said to be only about sixteen miles distant, with the morning sun.

Our supper, this night, which indeed was also our breakfast, consisted of a little parched corn pounded and mixed with water, the only food we had seen since leaving Mora. Nothing could look more like fighting than the preparations of these Bornou warriors, although nothing could well be more unlike it than the proof they gave on the morrow. The closely-linked iron jackets of the chiefs were all put on, and the sound of their clumsy and ill-shapen hammers, heard at intervals during the night, told the employment of the greater part of their followers.

About midnight the signal was given to advance. The moon, which was in her third quarter, afforded us a clear and beautiful light, while we moved on silently, and in good order, the sultan of Mandara’s force marching in parallel columns to our own, and on our right. At dawn, the whole army halted to sully: my own faith also taught me a morning prayer, as well as that of a Musselman, though but too often neglected.

As the day broke on the morning of the 28th of April, a most interesting scene presented itself. The sultan of Mandara was close on our flank, mounted on a very beautiful cream-coloured horse, with several large red marks about him, and followed by his six favourite eunuchs, and thirty of his sons, all being finely dressed, and mounted on really superb horses; besides which, they had each from five to six others, led by as many negroes: the sultan had at least twelve. Barca Gana’s people all wore their red scarfs, or bornouses, over their steel jackets, and the whole had a very fine effect. I took my position at his right hand, and at a spot called Duggur we entered a very thick wood, in two columns, at the end of which it was said we were to find the enemy.

During the latter part of the night, while riding on in front with Maramy, the sheikh’s negro, who had accompanied me from Kouka, and who appeared to attach himself more closely to me as we approached danger, we had started several animals of the leopard species, who ran from us so swiftly, twisting their long tails in the air, as to prevent our getting near them. We, however, now started one of a larger kind, which Maramy assured me was so satiated with the blood of a negro, whose carcass we found lying in the wood, that he would be easily killed. I rode up to the spot just as a Shouaa had planted the first spear in him, which passed through the neck, a little above the shoulder, and came down between the animal’s legs; he rolled over, broke the spear, and bounded off with the lower half in his body. Another Shouaa galloped up within two arms’ length, and thrust a second through his loins; and the savage animal, with a woful howl, was in the act of springing on his pursuer, when an Arab shot him through the head with a ball, which killed him on the spot. It was a male panther (zazerma) of a very large size, and measured, from the point of the tail to the nose, eight feet two inches; the skin was yellow, and beautifully marked with orbicular spots on the upper part of the body, while underneath, and at the throat, the spots were oblong and irregular, intermixed with white. These animals are found in great numbers in the woods bordering on Mandara: there are also leopards, the skins of which I saw, but not in great numbers. The panthers are as insidious as they are cruel; they will not attack any thing that is likely to make resistance, but have been known to watch a child for hours, while near the protection of huts or people. It will often spring on a grown person, male or female, while carrying a burthen, but always from behind: the flesh of a child or of a young kid it will sometimes devour, but when any full-grown animal falls a prey to its ferocity, it sucks the blood alone.

A range of minor hills, of more recent formation than the granite chain from which they emanate (which I cannot but suppose to form a part of El Gibel Gumhr, or Mountains of the Moon), approaches quite to the skirts of the extensive wood through which we were passing; and numerous deep ravines, and dry water-courses, rendered the passage tedious and difficult. On emerging from the wood, the large Felatah town of Dirkulla was perceivable, and the Arabs were formed in front, headed by Boo-Khaloom: they were flanked on each side by a large body of cavalry; and, as they moved on, shouting the Arab war-cry, which is very inspiring, I thought I could perceive a smile pass between Barca Gana and his chiefs, at Boo-Khaloom’s expense. Dirkulla was quickly burnt, and another smaller town near it; and the few inhabitants that were found in them, who were chiefly infants, and aged persons unable to escape, were put to death without mercy, or thrown into the flames.

We now came to a third town, in a situation capable of being defended against assailants ten times as numerous as the besieged: this town was called Musfeia. It was built on a rising ground between two low hills at the base of others, forming part of the mass of the Mandara mountains: a dry wadey extended along the front; beyond the wadey a swamp; between this and the wood the road was crossed by a deep ravine, which was not passable for more than two or three horses at a time. The Felatahs had carried a very strong fence of palisades, well pointed, and fastened together with thongs of raw hide, six feet in height, from one hill to the other, and had placed their bowmen behind the palisades, and on the rising ground, with the wadey before them; their horse were all under cover of the hills and the town:—this was a strong position. The Arabs, however, moved on with great gallantry, without any support or co-operation from the Bornou or Mandara troops, and notwithstanding the showers of arrows, some poisoned, which were poured on them from behind the palisades, Boo-Khaloom, with his handful of Arabs, carried them in about half an hour, and dashed on, driving the Felatahs up the sides of the hills. The women were every where seen supplying their protectors with fresh arrows during this struggle; and when they retreated to the hills, still shooting on their pursuers, the women assisted by rolling down huge masses of the rock, previously undermined for the purpose, which killed several of the Arabs, and wounded others. Barca Gana, and about one hundred of the Bornou spearmen, now supported Boo-Khaloom, and pierced through and through some fifty unfortunates who were left wounded near the stakes. I rode by his side as he pushed on quite into the town, and a very desperate skirmish took place between Barca Gana’s people and a small body of the Felatahs. These warriors throw the spear with great dexterity; and three times I saw the man transfixed to the earth who was dismounted for the purpose of firing the town, and as often were those who rushed forward for that purpose sacrificed for their temerity, by the Felatahs. Barca Gana, whose muscular arm was almost gigantic, threw eight spears, which all told, some of them at a distance of thirty or thirty-five yards, and one particularly on a Felatah chief, who with his own hand had brought four to the ground.

· · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · “Incidet ictus,

Ingens ad terram duplicato poplite Turnus.”

Had either the Mandara or the sheikh’s troops now moved up boldly, notwithstanding the defence these people made, and the reinforcements which showed themselves to the south-west, they must have carried the town with the heights overlooking it, along which the Arabs were driving the Felatahs by the terror their miserable guns excited; but, instead of this, they still kept on the other side of the wadey, out of reach of the arrows.

The Felatahs seeing their backwardness, now made an attack in their turn: the arrows fell so thick that there was no standing against them, and the Arabs gave way. The Felatah horse now came on; and had not the little band round Barca Gana, and Boo-Khaloom, with a few of his mounted Arabs, given them a very spirited check, not one of us would probably have lived to see the following day: as it was, Barca Gana had three horses hit under him, two of which died almost immediately, the arrows being poisoned, and poor Boo-Khaloom’s horse and himself received their death-wounds by arrows of the same description. My horse was badly wounded in the neck, just above the shoulder, and in the near hind leg: an arrow had struck me in the face as it passed, merely drawing the blood, and I had two sticking in my bornouse. The Arabs had suffered terribly; most of them had two or three wounds, and one dropped near me with five sticking in his head alone: two of Boo-Khaloom’s slaves were killed also, near his person.

No sooner did the Mandara and Bornou troops see the defeat of the Arabs, than they, one and all, took to flight in the most dastardly manner, without having once been exposed to the arrows of the enemy, and in the utmost confusion. The sultan of Mandara led the way, who was prepared to take advantage of whatever plunder the success of the Arabs might throw in his way, but no less determined to leave the field the moment the fortune of the day appeared to be against them.

I now for the first time, as I saw Barca Gana on a fresh horse, lamented my own folly in so exposing myself, badly prepared as I was for accidents. If either of my horse’s wounds were from poisoned arrows, I felt that nothing could save me: however there was not much time for reflection; we instantly became a flying mass, and plunged, in the greatest disorder, into that wood we had but a few hours before moved through with order, and very different feelings. I had got a little to the westward of Barca Gana, in the confusion which took place on our passing the ravine which had been left just in our rear, and where upwards of one hundred of the Bornowy were speared by the Felatahs, and was following at a round gallop the steps of one of the Mandara eunuchs, who, I observed, kept a good look out, his head being constantly turned over his left shoulder, with a face expressive of the greatest dismay—when the cries behind, of the Felatah horse pursuing, made us both quicken our paces. The spur, however, had the effect of incapacitating my beast altogether, as the arrow, I found afterwards, had reached the shoulder-bone, and in passing over some rough ground, he stumbled and fell. Almost before I was on my legs, the Felatahs were upon me; I had, however, kept hold of the bridle, and seizing a pistol from the holsters, I presented it at two of these ferocious savages, who were pressing me with their spears: they instantly went off; but another who came on me more boldly, just as I was endeavouring to mount, received the contents somewhere in his left shoulder, and again I was enabled to place my foot in the stirrup. Remounted, I again pushed my retreat; I had not, however, proceeded many hundred yards, when my horse again came down, with such violence as to throw me against a tree at a considerable distance; and alarmed at the horses behind him, he quickly got up and escaped, leaving me on foot and unarmed.

The eunuch and his four followers were here butchered, after a very slight resistance, and stripped within a few yards of me: their cries were dreadful; and even now the feelings of that moment are fresh in my memory: my hopes of life were too faint to deserve the name. I was almost instantly surrounded, and incapable of making the least resistance, as I was unarmed—was as speedily stripped, and whilst attempting first to save my shirt and then my trowsers, I was thrown on the ground. My pursuers made several thrusts at me with their spears, that badly wounded my hands in two places, and slightly my body, just under my ribs on the right side: indeed, I saw nothing before me but the same cruel death I had seen unmercifully inflicted on the few who had fallen into the power of those who now had possession of me; and they were alone prevented from murdering me, in the first instance, I am persuaded, by the fear of injuring the value of my clothes, which appeared to them a rich booty—but it was otherwise ordained.

My shirt was now absolutely torn off my back, and I was left perfectly naked. When my plunderers began to quarrel for the spoil, the idea of escape came like lightning across my mind, and without a moment’s hesitation or reflection I crept under the belly of the horse nearest me, and started as fast as my legs could carry me for the thickest part of the wood: two of the Felatahs followed, and I ran on to the eastward, knowing that our stragglers would be in that direction, but still almost as much afraid of friends as foes. My pursuers gained on me, for the prickly underwood not only obstructed my passage, but tore my flesh miserably; and the delight with which I saw a mountain-stream gliding along at the bottom of a deep ravine cannot be imagined. My strength had almost left me, and I seized the young branches issuing from the stump of a large tree which overhung the ravine, for the purpose of letting myself down into the water, as the sides were precipitous, when, under my hand, as the branch yielded to the weight of my body, a large liffa, the worst kind of serpent this country produces, rose from its coil, as if in the very act of striking. I was horror-struck, and deprived for a moment of all recollection—the branch slipped from my hand, and I tumbled headlong into the water beneath; this shock, however, revived me, and with three strokes of my arms I reached the opposite bank, which, with difficulty, I crawled up; and then, for the first time, felt myself safe from my pursuers.

Scarcely had I audibly congratulated myself on my escape, when the forlorn and wretched situation in which I was, without even a rag to cover me, flashed with all its force upon my imagination. I was perfectly collected, though fully alive to all the danger to which my state exposed me, and had already begun to plan my night’s rest, in the top of one of the tamarind-trees, in order to escape the panthers which, as I had seen, abounded in these woods, when the idea of the liffas, almost as numerous, and equally to be dreaded, excited a shudder of despair.

I now saw horsemen through the trees, still farther to the east, and determined on reaching them, if possible, whether friends or enemies; and the feelings of gratitude and joy with which I recognised Barca Gana and Boo-Khaloom, with about six Arabs, although they also were pressed closely by a party of the Felatahs, was beyond description. The guns and pistols of the Arab sheikhs kept the Felatahs in check, and assisted in some measure the retreat of the footmen. I hailed them with all my might; but the noise and confusion which prevailed, from the cries of those who were falling under the Felatah spears, the cheers of the Arabs rallying and their enemies pursuing, would have drowned all attempts to make myself heard, had not Maramy, the sheikh’s negro, seen and known me at a distance. To this man I was indebted for my second escape; riding up to me, he assisted me to mount behind him, while the arrows whistled over our heads, and we then galloped off to the rear as fast as his wounded horse could carry us: after we had gone a mile or two, and the pursuit had something cooled, in consequence of all the baggage having been abandoned to the enemy, Boo-Khaloom rode up to me, and desired one of the Arabs to cover me with a bornouse. This was a most welcome relief, for the burning sun had already begun to blister my neck and back, and gave me the greatest pain. Shortly after, the effects of the poisoned wound in his foot caused our excellent friend to breathe his last: Maramy exclaimed, “Look, look! Boo-Khaloom is dead!” I turned my head, almost as great an exertion as I was capable of, and saw him drop from the horse into the arms of his favourite Arab—he never spoke after. They said he had only swooned; there was no water, however, to revive him; and about an hour after, when we came to Makkeray, he was past the reach of restoratives.

About the time Boo-Khaloom dropped, Barca Gana ordered a slave to bring me a horse, from which he had just dismounted, being the third that had been wounded under him in the course of the day; his wound was in the chest. Maramy cried, “Sidi rais! do not mount him; he will die!” In a moment, for only a moment was given me, I decided on remaining with Maramy. Two Arabs, panting with fatigue, then seized the bridle, mounted, and pressed their retreat: in less than half an hour he fell to rise no more, and both the Arabs were butchered before they could recover themselves. Had we not now arrived at the water as we did, I do not think it possible that I could have supported the thirst by which I was consuming. I tried several times to speak in reply to Maramy’s directions to hold tight, when we came to breaks or inequalities in the ground; but it was impossible; and a painful straining at the stomach and throat was the only effect produced by the effort.

On coming to the stream, the horses, with blood gushing from their nostrils, rushed into the shallow water, and, letting myself down from behind Maramy, I knelt down amongst them, and seemed to imbibe new life by the copious draughts of the muddy beverage which I swallowed. Of what followed I have no recollection: Maramy told me afterwards that I staggered across the stream, which was not above my hips, and fell down at the foot of a tree on the other side. About a quarter of an hour’s halt took place here for the benefit of stragglers, and to tie poor Boo-Khaloom’s body on a horse’s back, at the end of which Maramy awoke me from a deep sleep, and I found my strength wonderfully increased: not so, however, our horse, for he had become stiff, and could scarcely move. As I learnt afterwards, a conversation had taken place about me, while I slept, which rendered my obligations to Maramy still greater: he had reported to Barca Gana the state of his horse, and the impossibility of carrying me on, when the chief, irritated by his losses and defeat, as well as at my having refused his horse, by which means, he said, it had come by its death, replied, “Then leave him behind. By the head of the Prophet! believers enough have breathed their last to-day. What is there extraordinary in a Christian’s death?” “Raas il Nibbe-Salaam Yassarat il le mated el Yeom ash min gieb l’can e mut Nesserani Wahad.” My old antagonist Malem Chadily replied, “No, God has preserved him; let us not forsake him!” Maramy returned to the tree, and said “his heart told him what to do.” He awoke me, assisted me to mount, and we moved on as before, but with tottering steps and less speed. The effect produced on the horses that were wounded by poisoned arrows was extraordinary: immediately after drinking they dropped, and instantly died, the blood gushing from their nose, mouth, and ears. More than thirty horses were lost at this spot from the effects of the poison.

In this way we continued our retreat, and it was after midnight when we halted in the sultan of Mandara’s territory. Riding more than forty-five miles, in such an unprovided state, on the bare back of a lean horse, the powerful consequences may be imagined. I was in a deplorable state the whole night; and notwithstanding the irritation of the flesh wounds was augmented by the woollen covering the Arab had thrown over me, teeming as it was with vermin, it was evening the next day before I could get a shirt, when one man who had two, both of which he had worn eight or ten days at least, gave me one, on a promise of getting a new one at Kouka. Barca Gana, who had no tent but the one he had left behind him with his women at Mora, on our advance, could offer me no shelter; and he was besides so ill, or chagrined, as to remain invisible the whole day. I could scarcely turn from one side to the other, but still, except at intervals when my friend Maramy supplied me with a drink made from parched corn, bruised, and steeped in water, a grateful beverage, I slept under a tree nearly the whole night and day, of the 29th. Towards the evening I was exceedingly disordered and ill, and had a pleasing proof of the kind-heartedness of a Bornouese.

Mai Meegamy, the dethroned sultan of a country to the south-west of Angornou, and now subject to the sheikh, took me by the hand as I had crawled out of my nest for a few minutes, and with many exclamations of sorrow, and a countenance full of commiseration, led me to his leather tent, and, sitting down quickly, disrobed himself of his trowsers, insisting I should put them on. Really, no act of charity could exceed this! I was exceedingly affected at so unexpected a friend, for I had scarcely seen, or spoken three words to him; but not so much so as himself, when I refused to accept of them:—he shed tears in abundance; and thinking, which was the fact, that I conceived he had offered the only ones he had, immediately called a slave, whom he stripped of those necessary appendages to a man’s dress, according to our ideas, and putting them on himself, insisted again on my taking those he had first offered me. I accepted this offer, and thanked him with a full heart; and Meegamy was my great friend from that moment until I quitted the sheikh’s dominions.

We found that forty-five of the Arabs were killed, and nearly all wounded; their camels, and every thing they possessed, lost. Some of them had been unable to keep up on the retreat, but had huddled together in threes and fours during the night, and by showing resistance, and pointing their guns, had driven the Felatahs off. Their wounds were some of them exceedingly severe, and several died during the day and night of the 29th; their bodies, as well as poor Boo-Khaloom’s, becoming instantly swollen and black; and sometimes, immediately after death, blood issuing from the nose and mouth, which the Bornou people declared to be in consequence of the arrows having been poisoned. The surviving Arabs, who had now lost all their former arrogance and boasting, humbly entreated Barca Gana to supply them with a little corn to save them from starving. The sultan of Mandara behaved to them unkindly, though not worse than they deserved, refused all manner of supplies, and kept Boo-Khaloom’s saddle, horse-trappings, and the clothes in which he died. He also began making preparations for defending himself against the Felatahs, who, he feared, might pay him a visit; and on the morning of the 30th April we left Mora, heartily wishing them success, should they make the attempt.

Boo-Khaloom’s imprudence in having suffered himself to be persuaded to attack the Felatahs became now apparent, as although, in case of his overcoming them, he might have appropriated to himself all the slaves, both male and female, that he found amongst them; yet the Felatahs themselves were Moslem, and he could not have made them slaves. He was, however, most likely deceived by promises of a Kerdy country to plunder, in the event of his success against these powerful people, alike the dreaded enemies of the sheikh and the sultan of Mandara.

My wounded horse, which had been caught towards the evening of the fight by the Shouaas, and brought to me, was in too bad a state for me to mount, and Barca Gana procured me another. My pistols had been stolen from the holsters; but, fortunately, my saddle and bridle, though broken, remained. Thus ended our most unsuccessful expedition; it had, however, injustice and oppression for its basis, and who can regret its failure?

We returned with great expedition, considering the wretched state we were in. On the sixth day after our departure from Mora, we arrived in Kouka, a distance of one hundred and eighty miles: the wounded Arabs remained behind, being unable to keep up with the chief, and did not arrive until four days after us. I suffered much, both in mind and body, but complained not; indeed all complaint would have been ill-timed, where few were enduring less than myself. My black servant had lost mule, canteens, and every thing, principally from keeping too near me in the action; and, by his obeying implicitly the strict orders I had given him not to fire on the Felatahs, he had narrowly escaped with his life. Bruised and lame, he could render me no assistance, and usually came in some hours after we had halted on our resting-ground. In the mid-day halts I usually crept under Mai Meegamy’s tent; but at night I laid me down on the ground, close to that of Barca Gana, in order that my horse might get a feed of corn. I always fell into a sound sleep at night, as soon as I lay down, after drinking Maramy’s beverage, who had supplied me with a little bag of parched corn, which he had procured at Mora; and about midnight a slave of the chief, whose name was, most singularly like my own, Denhamah, always awoke me, to eat some gussub, paste, and fat, mixed with a green herb called meloheia in Arabic. This was thrust out from under Barca Gana’s tent, and consisted generally of his leavings: pride was sometimes nearly choking me, but hunger was the paramount feeling: I smothered the former, ate, and was thankful. It was in reality a great kindness; for besides myself and the chief, not one, I believe, in the remnant of our army, tasted any thing but engagy, parched corn and cold water, during the whole six days of our march. On the night of the 4th of May we arrived at Angornou.

The extreme kindness of the sheikh, however, was some consolation to me, after all my sufferings. He said, in a letter to Barca Gana, “that he should have grieved had any thing serious happened to me; that my escape was providential, and a proof of God’s protection; and that my head was saved for good purposes.” He also sent me some linen he had procured from our huts at Kouka, and a dress of the country; and the interest taken by their governor in the fate of such a kaffir, as they thought me, increased exceedingly the respect of his servants towards me. The next morning we arrived at the capital.

I presented Barca Gana with a brace of French ornamented pistols, and with pink taffeta sufficient for a tobe, which he received with great delight. The sheikh sent me a horse in lieu of the wounded one which I had left at Merty, with but small hopes of his recovery; and my bruises and wounds, which were at first but trifling, got well so surprisingly quick, from the extreme low diet I had from necessity been kept to, that I was not in so bad a condition as might have been expected. My losses, however, were severe; my trunk with nearly all my linen, my canteens, a mule, my azimuth compass, my drawing-case, with a sketch of the hills, were also lost, although I obtained another sketch the morning of our quitting Mora. Such events, however, must sometimes be the consequence of exploring countries like these. The places I had visited were full of interest, and could never have been seen, except by means of a military expedition, without still greater risk. The dominions of the sheikh, in consequence of his being so extraordinarily enlightened for an inhabitant of central Africa, appear to be open to us; but on looking around, when one sees dethroned sultans nearly as common as bankrupts in England; where the strong arm for the time being has hitherto changed the destiny of kings and kingdoms; no discoveries can be accomplished beyond this, without the greatest hazard both of life and property.

The sheikh laid all the blame of the defeat upon the Mandara troops, and assured me that I should see how his people fought when he was with them, in an expedition which he contemplated against Munga, a country to the west. I told him that I was quite ready to accompany him; and this assurance seemed to give him particular satisfaction.

Of the Mandara chain, and its surrounding and incumbent hills, though full of interest, I regret my inability to give a more perfect account. Such few observations, however, as struck me on my visiting them, I shall lay before the reader. It is on occasions like this, that a traveller laments the want of extensive scientific knowledge. I must therefore request those under whose eye these remarks may come to regard them in the light they are offered, not as pretensions to knowledge, but merely very humble endeavours at communicating information to the best of my ability.

The elevation gradually increases in advancing towards the equator; and the soil, on approaching Delow, where the northernmost point of the Mandara chain commences, is covered with a glittering micaceous sand, principally decomposed granite, which forms a productive earth. The hills extend in apparently interminable ridges east-south-east, south-west, and west; while to the south several masses or systems of hills, if I may so express myself, spread themselves out in almost every picturesque form and direction that can be imagined. Those nearest the eye apparently do not exceed 2500 feet in height; but the towering peaks which appear in the distance are several thousand feet higher. They are composed of enormous blocks of granite, both detached and reclining on each other, presenting the most rugged faces and sides. The interstices and fissures appeared to be filled with a yellow quartzose earth, in which were growing mosses and lichens: trees of considerable size also grow from between them. On almost all the hills that I approached, clusters of huts were seen in several places towards the centre, and sometimes quite at the summit; generally on the flats of the ridges. At the base of these mountains, and also at a considerable elevation on their sides, are incumbent masses of what appeared to be the decomposed fragments of primitive rocks recompounded, and united anew by a species of natural cement. At some distance from the base of those which I ascended from the valley of Mora, were collections of quartzose rocks, of great variety and colour; fragments of hornblende, and several large abutments of porphyroidal rocks. About one hundred yards above the spring which I have before mentioned, in a space between two projecting masses of rock, were numerous shells, some petrified and finely preserved, while others were perforated by insects, worm-eaten, and destroyed: they were confusedly mixed with fragments of granite, quartz, sand and clay; and in some cases adhered to pieces of the composition rocks: the greater part were of the oyster kind. Various specimens of these, with pieces of every variety of the structure of the hills, I had collected, but they were all lost in the general confusion of the battle; and on the return of the army I was unable to do more than procure a few specimens of the northernmost part of the mountains; and the half of these were lost by my negro.

Of the extent of this chain, or rather these groups of mountains, I can form no idea, except from the information of the Mandara people. I have met with a man who (by the way) wanted to persuade me that he was a son of Hornemann by his slave, although, from his appearance, he must have been born ten years before that unfortunate traveller entered this country. He said he had been twenty days south of Mandara, to a country called Adamowa, which he described as being situated in the centre of a plain surrounded by mountains ten times higher than any we could see; that he went first to Mona or Monana, which was five days, and then to Bogo, which was seven more; and here, for one Soudan tobe, the sultan gave him four slaves. After eight days’ travelling from this latter country, he arrived at Adamowa. These people, he says (that is, the Kerdies on the hills; for Adamowa itself is occupied by Felatahs), eat the flesh of horses, mules, and asses, or of any wild animal that they kill: nobody but the sultans and their children are clothed; all the rest of the nation go naked; the men sometimes wear a skin round the loins, but the women nothing. This man, who was called Kaid-Moussa-ben-Yusuf (Hornemann’s name), spoke to me of several extensive lakes which he had seen in this journey, and also described with great clearness a river running between two very high ridges of the mountains, which he crossed previous to arriving at Adamowa. This river he declared to run from the west, and to be the same as the Quolla or Quana at Nyffe, Kora, and at Raka, but not the same as the river at Kano, which had nothing to do with the Shary, and which ran into the Tchad; but the main body of the water ran on to the south of Begharmi, was then called the D’Ago, and went eastward to the Nile. Kaid-Moussa was a very intelligent fellow, had visited Nyffe, Raka, Waday, and Darfur; by which latter place also, he said this river passed. He was most particularly clear in all his accounts, and his statement agreed in some points with the information a Shouaa named Dreess-boo-Raas-ben-aboo-Deleel had given me; therefore I was the more inclined to pay attention to it. To the south of this river, the population is entirely Kerdy, until the Great Desert. This desert is passed several times in the year by kafilas with white people, not Christians, who bring goods from the great sea: some of these reach Adamowa. He himself saw white loaf sugar, such as the merchants brought here from Tripoli to the sheikh, and a gun or two, with metal pots and pans, and arrack (rum). The inhabitants were unanimous in declaring these mountains to extend southward for two months’ journey; and in describing them, Yusuf called them “kou kora, kora, kantaga,”—mountains large, large, moon mountains. And from the increased love of enterprise apparent in our rising generation, we may one day hope to be as well acquainted with the true character of these stupendous mountains as with the lofty peaks of the Andes.

The extreme southern peak which I could discern was that called Mendify, which rose into the air with singular boldness. It was said to be a distance from Musfeia of two long days’ journey,—say thirty-five miles. At that distance, it had all the character of an alpine peak, of a most patriarchal height. I could perceive with a glass other mountains extending from its sides, the forms of which bore a tranquil character, compared with the arid and steep peaks which overlooked them. It resembled very much in appearance “Les Arguilles,” as they appear looking at them from the Mer-de-Glace. The following outline may serve to show their shape and character.

Iron is found in abundance in all the Mandara hills; but no other metal, that I was informed of. All the houses or huts at Mandara have outer doors to the court, which are made of pieces of wood, hasped together with iron. They make hinges, small bars, and a sort of hoe used to weed the corn, and send them for sale to the Bornou towns. The iron they use is mostly brought from the west near Karowa. I went to the house of a blacksmith, for the purpose of seeing some of the metal in its natural state, and found four men with a very rude forge, formed by a hole in the sand: the bellows were two kid skins, with an iron tube fixed in each, which tubes were conveyed underneath the fire. The wind was produced by a man blowing these skins, which were open at the top to let in the air. Their hammers were two pieces of iron, weighing about two pounds each, and a coarse piece of the same metal for an anvil; and considering their implements, they worked with some tact. I regretted much that I had not an English hammer to give them. Large masses of the iron, as nature produces it, were lying about; and they appeared to me as so many rusty earthy masses.

In appearance, the people of Mandara differ from the Bornouese, or Kanoury (as they call themselves); and the difference is all in favour of the former. The men are intelligent and lively, with high though flat foreheads, large sparkling eyes, wiry curled hair, noses inclining to the aquiline, and features altogether less flattened than the Bornouese. The women are proverbial for their good looks,—I cannot say beauty. I must allow them, however, all their acknowledged celebrity of form: they are certainly singularly gifted with the Hottentot protuberance; their hands and feet are delightfully small; and as these are all esteemed qualifications in the eye of a Turk, Mandara slaves will always obtain an advanced price. Certainly I never saw so much of them as when sporting in their native wilds, with not so much covering on as one of Eve’s fig-leaves. A man who took me to be a Moorish merchant led me to his house, in order to show me the best looking slaves in Mandara. He had three, all under sixteen, yet quite women; for these are precocious climes; and certainly, for negresses, they were the most pleasing and perfectly formed I had ever seen. They had simply a piece of blue striped linen round their loins, yet they knew not their nakedness. Many of these beauties are to be seen at Kouka and Angornou: they are never, however, exposed in the fsug, but sold in the houses of the merchants. So much depends on the magnitude of those attractions for which their southern sisters are so celebrated, that I have known a man about to make a purchase of one out of three, regardless of the charms of feature, turn their faces from him, and looking at them behind, just above the hips, as we dress a line of soldiers, make choice of her whose person most projected beyond that of her companions.

The day before the Rhamadan, which commenced on the 13th instant (May), I had an interview with the sheikh, who mentioned his intended departure for Munga; and after some conversation, it was agreed that I should proceed to Old Bornou or Birnie; and after seeing that part of the country, the ruins of the town of Gambarou, and the river of that name, which is said to come from Soudan; that I should follow its course, and join him at a place called Kabshary on the same river, to which he was about to proceed by a different route. The whole population was in confusion at the departure of this ghrazzie, and nearly all the people of Kouka, with the exception of the kadi, were to accompany the sheikh. Previously, however, to his departure, he had determined on sending off a courier to Tripoli, with an account of Boo Khaloom’s death, and we availed ourselves of the opportunity by writing to England. On the 17th of May the courier departed; and on the 18th the sheikh began his march, and bivouacked at Dowergoo.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 23: Silsel: irons placed round the necks of refractory slaves.]

[Footnote 24: The band also sang some extempore verses on my joining them, of which the following is nearly a literal translation, and delighted their chief excessively.

Christian man he come,

Friend of us and sheikhobe;

White man, when he hear my song,

Fine new tobe give me.

Christian man all white,

And dollars white have he;

Kanourie like him come,

Black man’s friend to be.

See Felatah, how he run;

Barca Gana shake his spear:

White man carry two-mouthed gun,

That’s what make Felatah fear.]

[Footnote 25: A general term for unbelievers.]

[Footnote 26: Abdul Kassum-ben-Maliki came from this town, and speaks of his people as having great influence with the sultan of Timbuctoo: their language is alike; and he conversed as freely with a Felatah slave from Musfeia, as if she had been his countrywoman, although they were born probably fifteen hundred miles distant from each other.]

[Footnote 27: A deputation of twenty-seven from Musfeia and Zouay had but a short time before arrived at Mora, for the purpose of arranging some detention of property belonging to them, which had been seized by the Mandara people. They were admitted to a parley; but had no sooner quitted the presence of the sultan, than the throats of all of them were instantly cut by the eunuchs and their slaves.]

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IV. EXCURSION TO MUNGA AND THE GAMBAROU

May 21.—Ever since my return from Mandara, an expedition, to be commanded by the sheikh in person, had been in agitation against a numerous people to the west called Munga. These people had never thoroughly acknowledged the sheikh’s supremacy, and the collecting of their tribute had always been attended with difficulty and bloodshed. They had, however, now thrown off all restraint, and put to death about one hundred and twenty of the sheikh’s Shouaas, and declared they would be no longer under his control, as the sultan of Bornou was their king; and headed by a fighi of great power, had begun to plunder and burn all the sheikh’s towns near them. It was reported, and with some truth, that they could bring 12,000 bowmen into the field; by far the most efficient force to be found in the black country. To oppose these, the sheikh assembled his Kanemboo spearmen (who had accompanied him from their own country, and assisted him in wresting Bornou from the hands of the Felatahs), to the amount of between eight and nine thousand. These, with about five thousand Shouaas and Bornou men, composed the force with which he meant to subdue these rebels. Another complaint against the Mungowy was, “That they were kaffering[28], and not saying their prayers! the dogs.” This is, however, a fault which is generally laid to the charge of any nation against whom a true Musselman wages war, as it gives him the power of making them slaves. By the laws of Mohammed, one believer must not bind another.

Rhamadan, the period generally chosen for these expeditions, had commenced, since the 13th May; and on the 8th, meaning to take the town of Yeou, with the many others on the banks of the river of that name in his way, both for the purpose of collecting forces and tribute[29], the sheikh left Kouka for Dowergoo, a lake about six miles distant, his women, tents, &c. having preceded him in the morning.

Dr. Oudney and myself accompanied him outside the gates; and at our request, he left Omar Gana, one of his chief slaves, to be our guide to the old city of Bornou, which we were anxious to see; and from whence we were to proceed to Kabshary, still farther to the west, on the Gambarou, or Yeou, and there await his arrival.

May 22.—We left Kouka with five camels and four servants for Birnie, halting in the middle of the day, and making two marches, of from ten to fourteen miles, morning and evening. The country all round Kouka is uninteresting and flat, the soil alluvial, and not a stone of any kind to be seen, but thickly scattered with trees, mostly acacias. We sometimes came to a few huts, and a well or two of indifferent water; and a mess of rice from our stores was our usual supper.

On the 24th, about noon, we arrived at the river Yeou, and halted at a rather large nest of huts called Lada. We were now seventy miles from Kouka. The river here makes a bend resembling the letter S, the water extremely shallow, and a dry path over the bed of the river appeared close to our halting-place, although the banks were high, and capable of containing a very large stream. I walked out, following the easterly course of the stream in search of game; but within four hundred yards of the banks, the ground was so choked with high grass and prickly underwood, that I was obliged to take a path more inland, where a partial clearance had been made for the sake of some scanty cotton plantations. Pursuing some Guinea fowl across one of these, I was assailed by the cries of several women and children, who having thrown down their water-jugs, were flying from me in the greatest alarm. I however went on, but had not proceeded above a quarter of a mile, when my negro pointed out several men peeping from behind some thick bushes, and evidently watching our motions. I desired him to be on his guard, as he carried a carbine loaded with slugs; and we called repeatedly to them without any effect. They had been alarmed by the women, who had represented us to be Tuaricks, of whom they are constantly in dread, as their country is not more than seven days distant from where these marauders are often seen; and the extreme points of the Bornou dominions they visit without fear. The inhabitants of these wilds cannot be induced to quit their present homes; and they patiently submit to have their flocks and children taken from them, and their huts burnt, rather than seek a more secure residence in the larger towns. They have, however, a manner of defending themselves against these cruel invaders, which often enables them to gratify their revenge: the ground is covered by the high grass and jungle close to the banks of the rivers, and they dig very deep circular holes, at the bottom of which are placed six or eight sharp stakes, hardened by the fire, over the top of which they most artfully lay the grass, so as to render it impossible to discover the deception. An animal with its rider stepping on one of these traps is quickly precipitated to the bottom, and not unfrequently both are killed on the spot.

In returning to the tents with the people whom I had alarmed, and who cautioned me not to proceed farther in that direction, I quite trembled at the recollection of the various escapes I had had, as some of these blaqua, as they are called, were not a yard distant from the marks of my former footsteps.

The country near the banks of the river to the west is ornamented by many very large tamarind and other trees, bearing a fruit resembling a medlar, green and pleasant to the taste, and many of the Mimosa tribe flourished in uncontrolled luxuriance. The Googooroo, or Jujube, abounded; and these varieties of green gave a life to the landscape that was quite new to us. The wild fruits even were palatable; and selecting those on which the monkeys were feeding, we devoured them fearlessly and eagerly,—their freshness supplying the want of either flavour or sweetness. The monkeys, or as the Arabs say, “men enchanted,”—“Ben Adam meshood,” were so numerous, that I saw upwards of one hundred and fifty assembled in one place in the evening. They did not at all appear inclined to give up their ground, but, perched on the top of the bank some twenty feet high, made a terrible noise; and rather gently than otherwise, pelted us when we approached to within a certain distance. My negro was extremely anxious to fire at them; but they were not, I thought, considering their numbers, sufficiently presuming to deserve such a punishment.

May 25.—About two miles from Lada, we left the river, and halted at noon near a small still water. Here were several flocks of geese, and some of the species of bird called adjutant. These mid-day halts, with only partial shade, were dreadfully sultry and oppressive. We moved on in the afternoon, and passing another lake of the same description, by nine in the evening came to one much larger, called Engataranaram. Nothing could be more wild than the country we had passed through this day; and compared with the sterile plains I had lately been accustomed to, seemed rich and picturesque: it was one continued wood, with narrow winding paths, to avoid the overhanging branches of the prickly tulloh. The frequent foot-marks of lions, the jackal, and hyena, gave us a pretty good idea of the nature of the inhabitants; and their roarings at night convinced us that they were at no great distance.

We had this morning met a kafila from Soudan, consisting of about twenty persons, and bringing one hundred and twenty slaves; and some hours after we saw the place where they had passed the preceding night. They had lit their fires in the very centre of the path, and made a good fence all round them of large branches of trees and dry wood. This fence is sometimes set fire to, when their four-footed visitors are numerous, and approach too near. Camels and animals of every description are placed in the centre, and should one stray in the night, he is seldom again recovered. Kafilas never travel after dusk, particularly those on foot; and our negroes had such a fright during the latter part of this day’s march, that they declared on coming up with the camels, that their lives were in danger from such late marches, an immense lion having crossed the road before them only a few miles from where we halted. There can be little doubt, that by their singing and number they had disturbed the lion from his lair, as we must have passed within ten paces of the foot of the tree from which he broke forth on their approach: they said that he had stopped, and looked back at them, and if they had not had presence of mind sufficient to pass on without at all noticing him, or appearing alarmed, some one of the party would have suffered.

Previous to pitching our tents at night, the sheikh’s negro examined the ground, and, after dismounting and listening attentively for an instant, he declared some people to be near. We fired a gun, which, after a little time, was answered by a shout, and at no great distance we found about half a dozen Kabsharians, who said they were on their way to Kouka, and near them we fixed ourselves for the night. In these woods kafilas from Soudan are often robbed, and the runaway negroes, who are good bowmen, pick off the leaders from behind the trees, and then plunder the baggage: ten men from one kafila had, we were informed, been so murdered during the last year.

May 26.—We pursued a westerly course for eight miles to a lake called Gumzaigee, about a mile in length, between which and another called Gumzaigee-gana, the road lies; seven miles beyond which is still another lake of considerable extent, called Muggaby, or the lake of the sultan of Bornou: this is nearly three miles long, and full half a mile broad; its banks are beautifully green, and its depth is very great; it contains hippopotami in great numbers, and every now and then their black heads appeared above the surface of the water.

A few straggling parties of Kanemboo infantry had occasionally crossed our path, for several days, on their way to join the sheikh, but here we found about a hundred and fifty Shouaas, or Arabs of Beni Wah’l. After our tents were pitched, and we had refreshed ourselves by a mess of ducks and rice, we determined on riding to visit the remains of Old Birnie[30], which extended nearly to this lake. We proceeded by the high road to Soudan, and after about two miles came to the spot on which once stood the capital of Bornou, and the ruins of the city certainly tended more strongly to convince us of the power of its former sultans than any of the tales we had heard of their magnificence: we had seen upwards of thirty large towns which the Felatahs had completely razed to the ground at the time they destroyed the capital, and we were now arrived at the ruins of that capital itself[31]. Old Birnie covered a space of five or six square miles, and is said to have had a population of two hundred thousand souls: the remains of the walls were in many places still standing, in large masses of hard red brick-work, and were from three to four feet in thickness, and sixteen to eighteen feet in height. From the top of one of these we obtained a sight of the river Gambarou, running nearly east, notwithstanding its windings, and only a few miles distant. At sunset we returned to our huts.

Crossing the head of the lake Muggaby, we took a north-westerly direction, for the purpose of seeing the remaining ruins of this once populous district, and particularly those of a favourite residence of the former sultan, called Gambarou, situated on the banks of the river, four miles distant, which comes from Soudan: this district gave its name to the waters during their passage through it. After wading through low grounds, occasionally overflowed, where the wild grass was above our horses’ heads, and disturbing a herd of fourteen elephants, whose retired haunts were seldom so broken in upon, we came to the river, which is here a very noble stream, nearly a quarter of a mile in breadth, and situated between two high banks thickly overgrown with jungle, bushes, and bamboo[32]: we endeavoured to ascertain if there was any current, but the water appeared perfectly stationary. Omar Gana, however, and the Shouaas who had accompanied us, were unanimous in declaring that after the rains a very strong current from west to east constantly flowed.

We determined on remaining here the next day, and ordered the tents to be pitched under the shade of an immense tamarind tree, about two hundred and fifty yards from the bank of the river. The water was sweet and palatable, and very gratifying to us after the lake water we had been drinking for the last few days, though that was nectar in comparison with the well-water near Kouka. The shoals of fish that rushed quite close to, and sometimes on, the shore, exceeded any thing I ever could have supposed, both as to size and numbers: we waded, nearly up to our knees, to a little island or sand-bank about ten yards from the land, and found the marks of two good-sized crocodiles quite fresh.

Close to the bank, and just at the hollow of a slight curve in the river’s course, fourteen years ago stood the town of Gambarou, the chosen place of residence of the late and former sultans of Bornou; and the ruins now standing give a proof of the buildings having been, for this country, of a princely kind: the walls of a mosque, which were more than twenty yards square, are still visible, and those of the sultan’s house, with gates opening to the river, still remain; a private mosque appears also to have been attached to the sultan’s residence: the buildings were all of brick, and must have had a superior appearance to any town we had seen in Africa: the situation was beautiful, and although labyrinths of thickets and brambles now overspread the banks of the river, while wild plants and useless grass were in the meadows, yet I was assured that the whole neighbourhood of Gambarou was once in a superior state of cultivation; and that in the old sultan’s time, boats were constantly moving to and from Kabshary and other towns to the west. Kouka was at that time not in being, and Angornou but a small parcel of huts.

May 28.—Dr. Oudney and myself mounted our horses this morning, and followed the course of the river to the eastward, nearly three miles: there being no pathway, we were obliged to break through the high grass, trees, and thickly scattered bamboo, which made it a fatiguing excursion, and after all, we could only now and then get a sight of the water by following the track of the elephants and other animals, whose ponderous bodies beat down every thing before them. Our negro, Omar Gana, was alarmed, and would willingly have turned back more than once; we, however, urged him on, and at length came to an open, dry shoal of sand, the bed of the river extending more than two hundred yards; here was the fresh impression of the foot of a very large lion, and we found that the stream was here again called the Yeou. To Omar Gana’s great satisfaction, we now returned by a more direct path through the wood to our tents: these wilds, from their not leading to any high road or inhabited spot, are perhaps never visited, the whole country having been abandoned ever since the Felatahs commenced their inroads. Wild animals of all descriptions here abound therefore in greater numbers than in any other part of the kingdom of Bornou: several parcels of wood tied up with oziers, and large trees stripped of their bark and afterwards deserted, showed how the wood-cutter had been disturbed at his work by the ferocious inhabitants; and some whitened bones, and the remains of a hatchet in one place, made us shudder and conclude, that some one still less fortunate had here met a miserable death. Straggling bands of Tuaricks also sometimes scour the country about the banks of the river, and carry off whatever suits their purpose.

On our return to the tents, we found that our situation was by no means so comfortable as we could have wished. Kabshary, to which place we intended proceeding, and there awaiting the arrival of the sheikh, had been attacked and partly burnt by the Munga people since our leaving Kouka, and deserted by the inhabitants; and while we were debating on what steps we should take in consequence of this intelligence, two Kanemboo spearmen came to us in great consternation, with news that the Munga horse had been reconnoitring all around us, had even visited the part of the river we had been exploring in the morning, and after murdering several Kanemboos, who were proceeding to join the sheikh, had carried off the bullocks and whatever they had with them. The sheikh’s delay in coming up had made them bold, and their approach had caused all the Shouaas we had left at Muggaby to beat a retreat; we were therefore left quite alone, and, as it seemed, might expect every minute to be surrounded, taken prisoners, and with an iron round our necks, with which slaves are coupled like greyhounds in slips, marched off to Munga. Omar Gana was greatly alarmed, and dressing himself in his steel jacket, with red giboon (waistcoat) over it, and black turban, calmed our fears but little, by leaving us for a full hour to see if the Shouaas had really left Muggaby; notwithstanding he at the same time assured us, that the sight of his red jacket would frighten a hundred Mungowy. On his return, which we looked for with much anxiety, we found the alarming reports in part confirmed; no Shouaas were near the lake, and he was quite sure the enemy had been there. He proposed going to Kabshary, along the banks of the river to the west; but acknowledged that the sheikh was not there, and that the people had moved off towards Angornou: we considered this bad advice, and determined on returning at least to the Kouka road; that was, however, no easy task; and after some consideration it was determined that we were to keep close to the bank of the river, and creep through the woods as well as we could, avoiding all beaten paths. We moved at three in the afternoon, and crossed about two miles distant to the north bank of the river, our road being extremely intricate, and overgrown with trees and underwood.

Just before sunset we came upon a herd of elephants, fourteen or fifteen in number; these the negroes made to dance and frisk like so many goats, by beating violently a brass basin with a stick; and as night now began to cast over us its gloomy veil, we determined on fixing ourselves until morning in a small open space, where a large tree, destroyed by the attacks of the white ant, had fallen, and afforded us fire-wood to prepare our supper: to seek it at any distance would have been dangerous at that time in the evening, on account of the lions, and the little grass which was gathered for our horses was furnished by the space within sight of our tents. Our animals were brought as close to us as possible, and we kept up fires the greater part of the night; a few roaring salutations, and those principally from the elephant and jackal, were the only disturbance that we met with.

We proceeded on our course on the following day, winding with the river; in several places we had the bank clear of trees and covered with verdure for some hundreds of yards, and the stream nearly as broad as the Thames at Richmond. Towards noon the wood became much thicker, no pathway was to be discovered, and our guide declared, that where we were he had not the least idea. A little further on, we came to a complete stoppage; brambles were wound round the before thickly-clustered branches of tulloh and prickly acacias; and on removing, with great difficulty, some of those, we found the treacherous grass underneath merely covering blaquas, large, deep, and well staked, capable of receiving and destroying a Tuarick with his maherhy. In endeavouring to find a passage at a short distance, Dr. Oudney was very nearly precipitated, horse and all, into one of these graves for the quick. We were absolutely afraid to move; and Omar Gana, who declared these fortifications indicated our being near to some town, which was thus prepared against the Mungowy, desired me to fire a gun, in order to bring some of the inhabitants to serve as our guide: accordingly two sturdy negroes came to our assistance, who, after eying us through the trees and ascertaining who we were, conducted us to the village, which, although at no great distance, would have foiled all our efforts to discover: the avenues were completely barricadoed on every side, the paths cut up, and these blaquas so scattered in all directions, that even with a guide, and going one by one, it was with the greatest difficulty we avoided them.

Arrived at the village, which was called Wallad, of so miserable a description that it could not even furnish a jar of milk, notwithstanding we produced both needles and beads,—a new difficulty arose; for although the camels were sought after and brought in safe by the people, yet my servant Columbus, who was behind on a mule, did not make his appearance: we were in considerable anxiety, both on account of the wild beasts and these pits, which were almost equally frightful. Our alarm was a good deal increased when, after having sent people in every direction, giving them pistols, and desiring them to fire signals, and not return without him, the people of the village came running to the jujube tree under which we were resting, to tell us that Columbus and the mule had fallen into one of these blaquas, and that they believed the mule was dead. We hastened to the spot, and found the poor mule indeed very near it: she was sticking on four stakes, one in her flank, and two in her hind quarter, with her knees dreadfully torn by struggling. Had she been a larger and heavier animal, nothing could have saved her: the man had, by a violent exertion, thrown himself out, how he knew not, almost as soon as he fell in, and had escaped with his leg only bruised. He said he had lost his way hours before, and had climbed to the top of several tamarind-trees, in order to discover traces of our route, without success: once he thought he heard a gun, but having only two charges of powder with him, he kept them as a defence against the wild animals at night, and was afraid to answer the signal.

After all our difficulties, it was some comfort at length to find that the sheikh was within only a few hours’ march of us, on the south side of the river; and in the evening we determined on joining him. Again, therefore, crossing the Yeou at a dry spot, we came to the outskirts of the Bornou camp, on the banks of a large water called Dummasak, about five miles distant from the ford: at the river we again saw the footmarks of a very large lion, and also those of a hippopotamus. It was after sunset when we arrived, and passing through numerous groups of the Kanemboo spearmen, who were lying about without any tents or covering, we came to the open space where the sheikh’s tent and the huts of his principal people were fixed. On learning that we had arrived, he desired our tents might be placed near Mady Gana, the manager of his household, who brought us his congratulations, and at the same time a very good supper of Guinea fowl, and a kind of paste, made of wheat flour, called ftat, which is considered a great delicacy. Our joy can with difficulty be imagined at learning here the arrival of a package from England, by a kafila of merchants from Fezzan. The pleasure of hearing of our country and friends, the greatest enjoyment our situation allowed us, we had been for a length of time deprived of; and this, added to our being entirely destitute of provisions of every kind, determined us to return to Kouka on the following morning. This our decision we desired might be made known to the sheikh, but, from some cause or other, the information was not communicated to him; and, to our great surprise, by daylight he moved off, and we found ourselves again alone without a guide, and without even knowing what the sheikh’s wishes were with respect to our proceedings. This was a fresh dilemma; and upon the whole we were worse off than the day before, for the sheikh’s negro was always a protection, and we were now at the tail of an undisciplined army, at least demi-savage, without any knowledge of the road. After three hours’ deliberation, and no intelligence arriving from the sheikh, we decided on making our way to Kouka alone; and having picked up a straggler, who assured us he knew the country, and left our wounded mule in the care of some people in the neighbouring village of huts, we loaded our fire-arms afresh, and commenced our route. We had proceeded, however, but a few hundred yards on our road, when Omar Gana, mounted on a miserable horse and in great distress, came up to us, entreating that we would follow the sheikh as quickly as possible; that on inquiring of him where we were, and finding that he had quitted us, he, the sheikh, had been in a violent passion; had struck him from his horse, which he desired might be taken from him; had directed him to return and bring us up to the army without delay.

We had now nothing to do but to obey; and, therefore, turning round our camels, after a four hours’ march in the heat of the day, we arrived a second time at the lake Muggaby, which we had left only three days before. Some spots on the road were extremely picturesque, by nature; and this beauty of the scene was increased by the groups of naked warriors, with their shields, resting in different places on the borders of the lake; while hundreds of others were in the water, spearing the fish, which they struck, and brought to shore with very surprising dexterity: some of the fish were as large as good-sized salmon, but shaped like a bream. Fires were lighted by their companions on the shore, and rows of from fifty to one hundred were staked, or strung on a line made of grass, extended from two sticks, and most excellently and expeditiously roasted.

Muggaby, with its still dark-blue surface, had, at the time we came on it, an appearance highly interesting: the margin, and the shallow waters, were crowded with horses feeding, and men bathing. In the centre, the hippopotami were constantly throwing up their black muzzles, spouting with water; and the wood, which at the south-west end had caught fire, and blazed to the very clouds, gave a glare to all around which made the scene almost terrific.

We now commenced our march with the Bornou army, in which but little order is preserved previous to coming near the enemy: every one appears to know, that at a certain point the assembly is to take place; and the general instructions seem to be to every one to make the best of his own way. The sheikh takes the lead, and close after him comes the sultan of Bornou, who always attends him on these occasions, although he never fights. The former is preceded by five flags, two green, two striped, and one red, with extracts from the Koran written on them in letters of gold, and attended by about a hundred of his chiefs and favourite slaves. A negro, high in confidence, rides close behind him, bearing his shield jacket of mail, and wearing his skull-cap of steel; he also bears his arms. Another, mounted on a swift maherhy, and fantastically dressed with a straw hat and ostrich feathers, carries his timbrel or drum, which it is the greatest misfortune and disgrace to lose in action. On the expedition which cost the sultan Denhamah, the late sultan of Bornou, his life, the timbrel and the sheikh were supposed to have fallen in a sudden rush of Begharmis; almost every one near him suffered. The people, however, firmly believe that he was saved by a miracle; they say, “he became invisible; that the Begharmi chiefs scoured the field, calling out for the sheikh; that his drum sounded at intervals, but could not be seen, any more than their leader.” Close in the rear of the maherhies follow the eunuchs and the harem; the sheikh takes but three wives, who are mounted, astride, on small trained horses, each led by a boy-slave, or eunuch,—their heads and figures completely enveloped in brown silk bornouses, and a eunuch riding by the side of each.

The sultan of Bornou has five times as many attendants, and his harem is three times as numerous: he is attended, also, by men bearing trumpets (frumfrum), of hollow wood, ten and twelve feet long; with these a kind of music is constantly kept up. As this instrument is considered an appendage of royalty alone, the sheikh has no frumfrums; the keigomha, or standard-bearer, rides in front of him, carrying a very long pole, hung round, at the top, with strips of leather and silk of various colours, in imitation, probably, of the bashaw’s tigue, or tails; and two ride on each side of him called Meestrumha Dundelmah, carrying immense spears, with which they are supposed to defend their sultan in action, whose dignity would be infringed upon by defending himself; but the spears are so hung round with charms, and the bearers so abominably unwieldy, that the idea of such weapons being of any use in the hands of such warriors is absurd. Indeed the grotesque appearance of the whole of this prince’s train, with heads hung round with charms, and resembling the size and shape of a hogshead; their protruding stomachs, and wadded doublets, are ridiculous in the extreme.

The town of Kabshary, where we halted, had been nearly destroyed by the Mungowy. On attacking a place, it is the custom of the country instantly to fire it; and as they are all composed of straw huts only, the whole is shortly devoured by the flames. The unfortunate inhabitants fly quickly from the destructive element, and fall immediately into the hands of their no less merciless enemies, who surround the place: the men are quickly massacred, and the women and children lashed together, and made slaves. Rhamadan, one of the sheikh’s chiefs, a slave from Soudan, had been stationed here for the last fifteen days, and under his protection the survivors of the attack had returned, and were already rebuilding their dwellings. The huts are convenient, and, from the abundance of long straw which the overflowed grounds near the river furnished them, are better built, and withstand the rain better, than those of Kouka: they are divided on the inside by mats, which the women make with great neatness; they have all of them a door of plaited straw in a frame of wood; and some of the habitations of the principals have a wall of mats round them, leaving an inclosure, in which is sometimes a second hut for the female slaves, and the cow or goats which supply them with milk. These unfortunate people seldom think of defending their habitations, but rather give them up, and by that means gain time to escape themselves, should the attack not be made in the night, and the whole set fire to, before they have time to fly. The Kabsharians had long been in dread of a visit from the people of Munga, and, on their approach, the greater part of them had retreated to the banks of the river, to the north-west of the town, which are there extremely high; and they had made a strong post, by digging blaquas, and placing pointed crossed stakes in trenches, which rendered their retreat nearly inaccessible.

June 1.—The sun had scarcely risen this morning, when the sheikh was on horseback inspecting his favourite troops, the Kanemboo infantry: a hollow space under some sandhills, called Cornamaree, was chosen, about a quarter of a mile from the camp, and the whole was conducted with a good deal of order and system. He was attended to the ground by the four sultans who accompanied the expedition under his orders, and a circle was formed by the Arabs and the Bornou horse. The sheikh’s principal slaves and commanders were dispersed in different parts, habited in their scarlet bornouses with gold lace, and surrounded also by their followers. His own dress was, as usual, neat and simple: two white figured muslin tobes, very large, with a bornouse of the same colour, and a Cashemere shawl for a turban, composed his dress; over the whole, across his shoulders, hung the sword which, as he repeatedly said, “the sultan Inglese had sent him.” He was mounted on a very beautiful bright bay horse from Mandara, and took his station on the north side of the circle; while the Kanemboos were drawn up on the opposite extremity in close column, to the number of nine thousand. On the signal being made for them to advance, they uttered a yell, or shriek, exceeding any thing in shrillness I ever heard; then advanced, by tribes of from eight hundred to one thousand each. They were perfectly naked, with the exception of a rather fantastical belt of the goat or sheep’s skin, with the hair outwards, round their middles, and a few gubkas (narrow strips of cloth, the money of the country), round their heads, and brought under the nose; their arms are a spear and shield, with a dagger on the left arm reversed, secured by a ring which goes on the wrist, the point running up the arm, and the handle downwards. The shields are made of the wood of the fogo, a tree which grows in the shallow waters of the great lake, and are so extremely light, as to weigh only a few pounds; the pieces of wood of which it is formed are bound together by thongs of the hide of bullocks with the hair on, which is also carried along the edge of the outside of the shield in vandykes and forms an ornament; they are something the shape of a gothic window, and most of them slightly convex. Under cover of these, the Kanemboo attack the bowmen with great order, and at a slow pace. Their leaders are mounted, and are distinguished merely by a tobe of dark blue, and a turban of the same colour.

On nearing the spot where the sheikh had placed himself they quickened their pace, and, after striking their spears against their shields for some seconds, which had an extremely grand and stunning effect, they filed off to the outside of the circle, where they again formed, and awaited their companions, who succeeded them in the same order. There appeared to be a great deal of affection between these troops and the sheikh; he spurred his horse onwards into the midst of some of the tribes as they came up, and spoke to them, while the men crowded round him, kissing his feet, and the stirrups of his saddle. It was a most pleasing sight; he seemed to feel how much his present elevation was owing to their exertions, while they displayed a devotion and attachment deserving and denoting the greatest confidence. I confess I was considerably disappointed at not seeing these troops engage, although more than compensated by the reflection of the slaughter that had been prevented by that disappointment.

On seeing the sheikh after this inspection, he asked me what I thought of his Kanemboos: I could not help expressing my pleasure at their orderly and regular appearance, and he smiled when I assured him that I thought with such troops as these he need fear but little the attempts of the Arabs and Fezzaneers. Rhamadan, who had been stationed at Kabshary since the burning of the town, gave me an account of a second attack made by the Mungowy since his arrival. He had about two hundred and fifty people with him, amongst whom were about a dozen Arabs in the sheikh’s service, who had guns. Eight or nine hundred of Munga people made their appearance by daylight one morning, principally to try the strength of their enemies, which it was, of course, Rhamadan’s business to prevent their ascertaining. He succeeded in driving them back, although not without some loss, quite to the inclosed country, where they had greatly the advantage of him, and killed nearly thirty of his men with their arrows. Rhamadan now practised a ruse de guerre, by which means he destroyed nearly half the force of his enemies:—He appeared to give up the chase, and retired with his party; towards evening, however, he moved round by the river to a watering-place, where he expected the Mungowy would go to drink and refresh themselves, and rushing upon them unperceived, slaughtered upwards of four hundred.

June 3.—A reconnoitring party of cavalry went out soon after daylight with Rhamadan and Dauood (David) at their head. About three in the afternoon they began to return, bringing with them women and children of both sexes, to the amount of eight hundred: one Shouaa, a friend of mine, brought a poor woman with four children, two in her arms, and two on the father’s horse, who had been stabbed for defending those he held most dear upon earth. They also brought a number of very fine horses, and several hundred bullocks and sheep. The poor wretches, on being brought to the sheikh’s tents, uttered the most piteous cries, and, after looking at them, he desired that they might all be released: saying,—“God forbid that I should make slaves of the wives and children of any Musselman! Go back; tell the wicked and powerful chiefs, who urge your husbands to rebel and to kafir, that I shall quickly be with them; and it is them I will punish, not the innocent and the helpless.”

June 4.—We found to the south a very pretty lake, embosomed in a thick wood, and the town Bassecour, with from fifteen hundred to two thousand inhabitants; and, on crossing it, saw two other populous towns, called Caroom and Batily; and again, nearer the river, which was about four miles from Bassecour, several others. I did not return until after sunset, when the positions of the Kanemboo, who always are on duty on the side nearest the enemy, afforded some very picturesque groups. They have a regular chain of posts, or pickets, consisting of five or six men each, extending from the main body to some one of the tribes, who always act as an advance, about two miles in front, and cover the whole front of the army. They lie very snugly under the shelter of their shields, which protect them both from wind and rain, as well as the arrows of their foes. One or two of each party are always on the look out, and their peculiar watch-cry is passed from one sentry to the other, at every half hour or oftener, the whole night through. On the least disturbance taking place in the camp, or horses breaking loose, after a sudden storm, the whole body strike their shields, and set up a yell, to show that they are awake to the circumstance: this also is their tattoo, may be heard for miles, and answers the blowing of the sheikh’s horn for the last prayers at Ashèa.

June 5.—Many hundreds of the Munga people now came in, bowing to the ground, and throwing sand upon their heads, in token of submission. At night every thing was prepared for our marching to the capital, leaving the women, camels, and baggage, at this place; but the people sent word, that if the sheikh remained where he was, they would come to him, and surrender themselves.

June 6.—Several towns sent their chiefs, and submitted in this manner,—bringing peace-offerings, on the sheikh’s swearing solemnly not to molest them farther; but Malem Fanaamy, a fighi of great talent, the cause of the rebellion of these people, refused to come, because he feared to lose his head, and offering, at the same time, two thousand slaves, one thousand bullocks, and three hundred horses, to the sheikh, as the price for peace[33]. The offer was refused: the sheikh’s object being the subjection of this rebellious chief, and not his death or plunder.

We had, the night before, attempted to send off two rockets, but which, to my great disappointment, as well as the sheikh’s, had failed: they had been carelessly carried, and the composition had fallen out of them. This evening he sent “to beg that I would try two more, and, please God, make them go better.” I replied, “that I would do my best;” and, most fortunately, they succeeded to my wish. They were, indeed, a beautiful sight, as the night was extremely dark, and created exceeding wonder. Some of the messengers, who had come from the towns to the west, fell on their faces, and began to pray most fearfully when the rockets burst in their descent. This evening, also, Malem Fanaamy had sent his son, a man of about thirty, handsomely attended, who also witnessed this wonderful exhibition.

The following day, Malem Fanaamy himself made his appearance. His people had become clamorous, and, having no alternative, he came superbly mounted on a white horse, with full one thousand followers, and, dismounting at the door of the sheikh’s tent, humbled himself to the dust, and would have poured sand on his head, but this was by the sheikh’s order prevented, and the fighi brought into his presence. As is the custom on these occasions, he came in poor habiliments, and with an uncovered head. The sheikh received his submission, and, when he really expected to hear the order for his throat to be cut, he was clothed with eight handsome tobes, and his head made as big as six with turbans from Egypt.

June 11.—The feast of the Aide having arrived, and the Rhamadan finished, the new moon was ushered in by loud shouts, and by the firing of guns, and our last rocket was sent up in honour of the feast. It was preceded by a volley fired by my negroes with two carabines, and two brace of pistols, with my own gun, which gave great pleasure; for certainly never were people so enamoured of gunpowder and smoke. By sunrise all the troops were under arms, and the sheikh and all the chiefs mounted, and dressed in their finest bornouses, rode round the camp, and prayed at a short distance. The chiefs of two Munga towns came in to-day, but brought no tribute. We visited the sheikh in the evening, to congratulate him on the Rhamadan being over. He asked a great many questions, particularly about printing; and, addressing me, said:—“Why did you not bring plenty of rockets? They are the most wonderful things I ever saw.” At night we had a dreadful storm, and we were witnesses of a curious custom which the natives have, of digging an immense hole immediately after rain, and, when they come to the dry sand, getting into the hole, and lying down to avoid the damp earth.

June 15.—To avoid the excessive heat of the tents, as we were still to be stationary, we rode to the town Gomsee, before the sun had gained sufficient power to be oppressive, and passed nearly the whole of the forenoon in the corner of the hut of a woman, who had come to the tents the day before for medicine. She had been troubled with ringworms for ten years: she recognised me on my entering the town, which I merely intended passing through, in order to gain the shade of some large tamarind-trees and mangoes that grow close to the lake; but she was so anxious that I should come to her house, that I could not refuse. Her husband was one of the principal persons, and their huts rather superior to the rest. In an inclosure of mats were three huts, one for the man, and the two others for his wife and slaves. I took possession of the former; when, after a repast of milk, and a kind of thick drink, made of a paste from the gussub flour, with honey and pepper, I had visits from at least one hundred of the inhabitants, male and female. This is nearly the last of the Bornou towns westwards. Although the men of Bornou are not warriors, nor the women favoured by nature, they are certainly a kind, inoffensive race; and in one hour were as intimate with me, as if I had been amongst them for years. It was decreed, however, that we were not to part quite such good friends. At noon my host brought in a very beautiful wild bull-skin, with water, on which he begged I would “sully” (pray), and, on my refusal, the usual investigation took place, which ended in my attendant explaining to them, “that I did not sully;” that is, “that I was not Mislem:” upon which, “Kerdie, Kerdie,” was whispered about. The women held up their hands, and the men retired to a distance, and I found my popularity rapidly decrease.

No kafila is permitted to enter Kouka during the sheikh’s absence, nor dare the merchants offer any goods for sale till they have his permission. On this account, one consisting of ten merchants from Soudan was ordered to encamp at a short distance from us, and await the movements of the army. They had nearly a hundred slaves, the greater part female, and girls of from twelve to eighteen years of age, some of them from Nyffee, and still further to the west, of a deep copper colour, and beautifully formed; but few of these were ironed. The males, who were mostly young, were linked together in couples, by iron rings round their legs; yet they laughed, and seemed in good condition.

It is a common practice with the merchants to induce one slave to persuade his companions, that on arriving at Tripoli they will be free, and clothed in red, a colour all negroes are passionately fond of; by which promises they are induced to submit quietly, until they are too far from their homes to render escape possible but at the risk of starvation. If the hundreds, nay thousands, of skeletons that whiten in the blast between this place and Mourzuk, did not, of themselves, tell a tale replete with woe, the difference of appearance in all slaves here (where they are fed tolerably), and the state in which they usually arrive in Fezzan, would but too clearly prove the acuteness of the sufferings which commence on their leaving the negro country.

A circumstance happened during the last two days, which created a great sensation amongst the chiefs; and while it proved that absolute power in the person of the sheikh was not unaccompanied by a heart overflowing with feelings of mercy and moderation, it also displayed many amiable qualities in his untutored and unenlightened subjects. Barca Gana, his general, and his favourite, a governor of six large districts, the man whom he delighted to honour, who had more than fifty female slaves, and twice the number of male, was taught a lesson of humility that made me feel exceedingly for him. In giving presents to the chiefs, the sheikh had inadvertently sent him a horse which he had previously promised to some one else, and on Barca Gana being requested to give it up, he took such great offence, that he sent back all the horses which the sheikh had previously given him, saying that he would in future walk or ride his own. On this the sheikh immediately sent for him, had him stripped in his presence, and the leather girdle put round his loins; and, after reproaching him with his ingratitude, ordered that he should be forthwith sold to the Tibboo merchants, for he was still a slave. The favourite, thus humbled and disgraced, fell on his knees, and acknowledged the justness of his punishment. He begged for no forgiveness for himself, but entreated that his wives and children might be provided for, out of the riches of his master’s bounty. But on the following day, when preparations were made for carrying this sentence into effect, the Kaganawha (black Mamelukes), and Shouaa chiefs about the sheikh’s person, fell at his feet, and notwithstanding the haughtiness of Barca Gana’s carriage to them since his advancement, entreated to a man pardon for his offences, and that he might be restored to favour. The culprit appearing at this moment to take leave, the sheikh threw himself back on his carpet, wept like a child, and suffered Barca Gana, who had crept close to him, to embrace his knees, and calling them all his sons, pardoned his repentant slave. No prince of the most civilized nation can be better loved by his subjects than this chief; and he is a most extraordinary instance, in the eastern world, of fearless bravery, virtue, and simplicity. In the evening, there was great and general rejoicing. The timbrels beat; the Kanemboos yelled, and struck their shields; every thing bespoke joy: and Barca Gana, in new tobes and a rich bornouse, rode round the camp, followed by all the chiefs of the army.

June 18.—We commenced our return to Kouka, after an expedition to me very interesting, and one in which the sheikh had displayed a vast deal of tact and good management; for although he threatened the extermination of the Munga people, yet nothing could have been more injurious to his interests than carrying such threats into execution, had he, indeed, been sufficiently strong to have done so. They are a powerful people, and can bring twelve thousand bowmen into the field; their arrows are much longer than those of the Felatahs, and they have a way of poisoning them more fatally than those people. A nation possessing such a force as this amongst his own people,—who, from their situation on the frontier, were constantly exposed to the attacks both of the Felatahs and the Tuaricks, and by being more accustomed to warfare, were consequently better troops than any in the kingdom of Bornou,—it became a matter of great importance to the sheikh to conciliate by fair means, if it were practicable, and he was perfectly alive to the policy of such a proceeding. The Mungowy nearly all fight on foot, while Bornou may not improperly be called an equestrian nation. The infantry here, however, as in our own quarter of the globe, most commonly decide the fortune of war; and the sheikh’s former successes may be greatly, if not entirely, attributed to the courageous efforts of the Kanem spearmen, in leading the Bornou horse into the battle, who, without such a covering attack, would never be brought to face the arrows of their enemies. No use had ever yet been made of the accession of strength to Bornou by its junction with the Munga people, and the sheikh had this in view when he planned the present expedition. All these considerations had their weight with him, as well as the numerical force with which he had to contend, and he availed himself of the superstition of the people, and his own fame as a Malem (writer), to do that which, probably, by the effect of his arms alone, it might have been difficult to accomplish. He is reported to have spent three successive nights in writing charms: the effects of which were, that the spears of some of the enemies’ chiefs were found in the morning blunted and hacked, whole quivers of arrows were found broken also, and their arms changed from one hut to another; other chiefs were seized with sickness, and all with fear. My rockets are also said to have struck terror indescribable into the hearts of the Mungowy. Their chief, Malem Fanaamy, declared, “that to withstand a sheikh of the Koran who performed such miracles was useless, and, at the same time, haram (sin).” This confession of his inability to contend with El Kanemy determined the people to submit.

Some of the Munga people were brought to me; they were completely Bornou, and had all the simplicity, good nature, and ugliness, which are the particular characteristics of that people. Malem Fanaamy himself was a sort of lusus naturæ; Nature had set a peculiar mark upon him, by covering one side of his face with a thick beard, while on the other not a hair was to be seen. This of itself, amongst a people so utterly ignorant, was sufficient to gain him disciples, who were ready to believe him gifted with superior powers. In these untraversed climes, a very little learning indeed is sufficient to raise a man’s fame and fortune to the highest pitch. Persons who have been to Mecca, of the meanest capacities, who amuse them with tales of the countries and people they have seen on the road, are treated with the greatest respect, and always provided for; indeed every house is open to them: and any European travelling in these countries might acquire an influence by these means, which would enable him to carry all his objects into effect with great facility.

On the 19th of June we returned to Kabshary, and found that great progress had been made in rebuilding the town. The sheikh gave a sum of money towards completing the work, and exempted the inhabitants from tribute for a season; and all, therefore, was rejoicing. The Alowany Shouaas are here in very great force. We had some visits from the women in the evening, who were really beautiful; and although of a sort of dingy copper colour, are here called white, and consequently held in but little estimation by the natives—black, and black only, being considered by them as desirable. I bathed this morning in the Gambarou, while poor Dr. Oudney rested on the banks: live muscles are in plenty, and we found some very pearly oyster-shells at the bottom of the river.

While we remained at Kabshary, we encountered another violent storm, and were much amused at the economy of the Shouaas when the storm approached. I saw all were extremely busy digging holes in the sand with their spears, evidently too small for them to get into themselves, and we were not a little surprised at seeing them presently bury their shirts and trowsers two or three feet deep in the sand, which, on the rain subsiding, they dug up, and put on, quite dry, with an air of great comfort and satisfaction. They never are affected by thus exposing their naked bodies to the fury of the tempest, while we, who were always covered, had colds, agues, and pains, that they were entirely free from.

We had news to-day that the people of Waday had, with a large army, visited Begharmi, that persecuted country, and again pillaged all the towns; and also that our huts had been broken into at Kouka, and some, if not all, of our property stolen. The first report turned out a false one, but the second, to our sorrow, was too true. Hillman had been confined fifteen days to his bed with ague, and during this time, in the night, the robbery was effected.

June 23.—We proceeded on our return, and again pitched our tents on the banks of the Muggaby. In all the woods are flocks of wild animals, called by the Bornouese korookoo, and by the Arabs el buger-achmer, the red bullock: some of these were disturbed to-day, and one got into the midst of our horsemen; it has immense horns, and is something between the ox and the antelope. Spears were struck at him without number, but he effected his escape, carrying off several sticking in his flesh. The horses were exceedingly alarmed, and many of their riders measured their lengths on the sand. The two kafilas from Soudan passed us to-day, on their way to Kouka; they consisted of one hundred and fifty slaves, with about twenty merchants and their servants, and thirty camels. Most of the people ran to the outskirts of the camp to see them pass, it being the custom, on these occasions, to dress out these poor victims of the most cruel avarice that certainly ever entered into the breast of man, in rags of different colours, only to be taken from them again on the procession being over. The merchants, who gratify their vanity the most in this way, lose, it is said, fewer slaves; but I observed several of these before me, whose unbidden tears flowed down their cheeks as they drew their mantle close round them, seeming to wish by that means to stifle their misery with the appearance of it.

It was intended this evening to have killed an hippopotamus, an animal which exists in great numbers in the lake on the borders of which we were encamped, but a violent thunder-storm, to our great disappointment, prevented our witnessing so novel a species of sport. The flesh is considered a great delicacy. On the morrow we had a full opportunity of convincing ourselves that these uncouth and stupendous animals are very sensibly attracted by musical sounds, even though they should not be of the softest kind: as we passed along the borders of the lake Muggaby at sunrise, they followed the drums of the different chiefs the whole length of the water, sometimes approaching so close to the shore, that the water they spouted from their mouths reached the persons who were passing along the banks. I counted fifteen at one time sporting on the surface; and my servant Columbus shot one of them in the head, when he gave so loud a roar, as he buried himself in the lake, that all the others disappeared in an instant.

We made a long march to Dummasak, when we halted until the afternoon of the next day. The army here dispersed, and the Shouaas and Kanemboo went off to their respective homes.

By daylight we began to move. The sheikh sent for us to ride near him, and, accompanied by nearly all the people who had remained behind, and who came out thus far to welcome the successful return of their prince, we arrived once more at the capital, amidst the shouts of the men, and the shrieks of the women, to take possession of our old habitations.

The kafila which came from Soudan during this expedition brought a young fighi from Timboctoo, the son of a Felatah chief of D’jennie, named Abdel Gassam ben Maleky. He was on his way to Hage, and had left Timboctoo, as is the custom, without any thing beyond the shirt on his back, the rags of which he exchanged on the road for a sheep’s skin, subsisting entirely on charity. He was a very fine and intelligent lad, of about sixteen, of a deep copper colour, but with features extremely handsome and expressive. He was five months from D’jennie, and greatly exhausted by fatigue and the want of nourishing food: his whole wardrobe was his sheep’s skin; and although the sheikh gave him a tobe, he said he almost thought it a sin to indulge in the luxury of putting it on. We were on the expedition to Munga when he arrived, and about the time of our evening meal, Abdel Gassam generally made his appearance at our tents: bad as the fare was, he found it preferable to the cold mess of flour and water he got elsewhere. He knew little or nothing of the road by which he had come to Kano, not even the names of the places he had halted at. Abdel Gassam said he could scarcely believe such good people as we were could be any thing but Moslem: but he had heard of Christians before; and when I asked how, and where, he gave the following account:—

“Many years ago, before I was born, white men, Christians, came from Sego to D’jennie, in a large boat, as big as two of our boats. The natives went out to them in their canoes; they would not have done them any harm, but the Christians were afraid, and fired at them with guns, and killed several in the canoes that went near their boat: they proceeded to Timboctoo, and there the sultan sent to them one of his chiefs, and they held a parley. The Christians complained that the people wanted to rob them. The sultan was kind to them, and gave them supplies. Notwithstanding this, they went off suddenly in the night, which vexed the sultan, as he would have sent people with them, if they had not been afraid of them a little: and he now sent boats after them, to warn them of their danger, as there were many rocks in the belly of the river, all pointed. However the Christians went on, and would not suffer the sultan’s people to come near them, and they all perished.” My informant never heard that any thing belonging to them was saved, but remembers himself seeing a man often with his father, who was in one of the canoes that followed them, and who had seen them strike against the rocks—indeed he brought the news to Timboctoo. Their appearance excited a great sensation amongst the people;—had frequently heard people talk about the Christians, and the large boat, for a whole day, at his father’s;—to this day they talk about them. They had guns fixed to the sides of the boat, a thing never seen before at Timboctoo, and they alarmed the people greatly.

Abdel Gassam was a sort of prodigy, and could repeat the Koran from the beginning to the end. I repeatedly asked him what they would do to us, if we were to go to Timboctoo? “Why,” answered he, “do by you as you now do by me, feed you. The sultan is a great man, with a large heart, and is kind to strangers. Many whites, but not like those in the great boat, come to D’jennie, and also the servants of these people, who he thinks were Christians, but they do not go to Timboctoo: they come from the great water; and the Felatahs at D’jennie, by their means, supply Timboctoo with cloth and silk, yellow and red, and guns, which are much sought after. Does not know what these white people take back, but always heard, slaves and gold dust. The sultan of Timboctoo is a very great man, never goes out to ghrazzie; but his slaves go, and bring back many slaves, mostly females, from the Kerdy countries, by which he is surrounded. At D’jennie and Melli, which are both subject to Timboctoo, the population is mostly Felatah. The whole road to Timboctoo is inhabited by Moslems; but to the north and south of the route are Kerdies, who sometimes attack kafilas; but they are very much afraid of Bello, who protects merchants. Kashna, Kano, Houssa,—one language; Timboctoo, D’jennie,—one language; but they also speak Felatah. At Sego the population is Negro, Kerdy, Kaffir. All communication between Sego, D’jennie, and Timboctoo, is by water: the river is very large, and called Qualla; and Kabra is the place where every thing going from, or coming to, Timboctoo, is embarked or disembarked. Kabra is five hours distant only from Timboctoo: always understood that this great river, which has many names and branches, went from Nyffé south, between high mountains. The river at Kano is not the same; indeed, believes it is only a lake, and no river.”

This information, as far as it goes, may, I conceive, be relied on. Unlike nearly all the Moorish traders, who are often tutored by others, who have been rewarded for describing probably what even they never saw, and come prepared to say any thing that will best please you, this lad undoubtedly had never been questioned by any one previous to his answering my inquiries: he knew but little Arabic, and had scarcely been noticed in his long journeys, during which he had been handed over from one kafila to another.

He left Kouka in the month of August, in company with an old fighi, for Waday, with a small leather bag of parched corn, and a bottle for his water. I gave him a dollar to pay for his passage across the Red Sea, which he sewed up in his sheep’s skin: I however heard afterwards, that he had been drowned in crossing one of the branches of the Tchad. My informant was a Waday Shouaa: but if they found out that he had the dollar, he was most likely murdered for the sake of such a booty.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 28: Gaadeen, kafir.]

[Footnote 29: The feudal law exists here in full force; and a man unwilling to serve, provides one or more substitutes according to his means.]

[Footnote 30: Birnie means Medina, the capital, in the Bornou language.]

[Footnote 31: From these ruins the sheikh procures the greater part of the nitre used in preparing his gunpowder.]

[Footnote 32: There are two species of the bamboo, one called Kayay, and the other Gummary.]

[Footnote 33: This fighi was a most extraordinary person, and his fame for knowledge and charm-writing was by some thought to exceed that of the sheikh himself, of whom he was jealous to a degree. He had passed years amongst the Kerdies to the south, and knew

“· · · · · · · · · · · · · The dreadful art

To taint with deadly drugs the barbed dart.”

He was now, however, about to be humbled.]

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