Like the birds, their day finishes when the sun goes down; but very few, even of the great people, indulge in the luxury of a lamp, which is made of iron, and filled with bullocks’ fat. They have no oil. A few jars are brought by the Tripoli merchants from the valleys of the Gharian, as presents only. Soap is also an article they are greatly in want of. An oily juice, which exudes from the stem of a thorny tree, called Kadahnia, or mika dahniah, resembling a gum, enables the people of Soudan to make a coarse soap, by mixing it with bullocks’ fat and trona. It is something like soft soap, and has a pleasant smell. This is brought in small wooden boxes, holding less than half a pound, which sell for seven rottala each, two-thirds of a dollar. From this tree is also procured a nut, from which a purer oil is extracted, which they burn in Soudan, and is also used by the women, to anoint their heads and bodies. This tree is not found in Bornou.
The skin of their sheep is covered with a long hair; wool therefore they have none. Brass and copper are brought in small quantities from Barbary. A large copper kettle will sell for a slave. The brass is worked into leglets, and worn by the women.
A small brass basin tinned is a present for a sultan, and is used to drink out of. Four or five dollars, or a Soudan tobe, will scarcely purchase one. Gold is neither found in the country, nor is it brought into it. The Tuaricks are almost the only merchants visiting Soudan who trade in that metal, which they carry to Barbary and Egypt. It is said the sheikh has a store, which is brought him directly from Soudan.
Iron is procured in the Mandara mountains, but is not brought in large quantities, and it is coarse. The best iron comes from Soudan, worked up in that country into good pots and kettles. The money of Bornou is the manufacture of the country. Strips of cotton, about three inches wide, and a yard in length, are called gubbuk; and three, four, and five of these, according to their texture, go to a rottala. Ten rottala are now equal to a dollar.
The government of Bornou has ever been, until during the last fifteen years, an elective absolute monarchy, the brother sometimes succeeding, to the exclusion of the son. Achmet Ali, who, descended from a royal line of ancestors, was sultan in 1808, contended for several years with a powerful people from the westward, called the Felatah. These people had gradually been increasing in power for more than half a century, had established themselves firmly in Soudan; where Bello their chief, assuming the government, dictated laws to a numerous and powerful black population.
Soon after the conquest of Bornou by the Felatahs, El Kanemy formed a plan for delivering that country from the bondage into which it had fallen; and, stirring up the Kanemboo to assist him by a well planned tale of having been called by a vision to this undertaking, he made his first campaign with scarcely 400 followers, and defeated an army of the Felatahs nearly 8,000 strong. He followed up this victory with great promptitude and resolution, and in less than ten months had been the conqueror in forty different battles.
He refused the offer of being made sultan; and placing Mohammed, the brother of sultan Achmet, on the throne, he, first doing homage himself, insisted on the whole army following his example. The sheikh built for Sultan Mohammed his present residence, New Birnie, establishing himself at Angornou, three miles distant, and retaining the dictatorship of the kingdom, pro tempore. Such a commencement was extremely politic, on the part of the sheikh; but his aspiring mind was not calculated to rest satisfied with such an arrangement.
The whole population now flocked to his standard, and appeared willing to invest him with superior power, and a force to support it. One of the first offers they made was to furnish him with twenty horses per day, until a more regular force was organized, which continued for four years[63]. He now raised the green flag, the standard of the Prophet, refused all titles but that of the “servant of God!” and after clearing the country of the Felatahs, he proceeded to punish all those nations who had given them assistance, and with the slaves, the produce of these wars, rewarded his faithful Kanemboo and other followers for their fidelity and attachment.
Even in the breasts of some of the Bornouese, successful war had raised a passion for conquest: their victories, no less a matter of surprise than delight, crest-fallen and dispirited as they were, gave a stimulus to their exertions, and they became accustomed to warfare and regardless of danger.
For the last eight years the sheikh has carried on a very desperate and bloody war with the sultan of Begharmi, who governs a powerful and warlike people, inhabiting a very large tract of country south of Bornou, and on the eastern bank of the Shary. Although meeting with some reverses, and on one occasion losing his eldest son in these wars, who was greatly beloved by the people, he has, upon the whole, been successful; and is said to have, from first to last, destroyed and led into slavery more than thirty thousand of the sultan of Begharmi’s subjects, besides burning his towns and driving off his flocks.