The city is rendered very unhealthy by a large morass, which almost divides it into two parts, besides many pools of stagnant water, made by digging clay for building houses. The house gutters also open into the street, and frequently occasion an abominable stench. On the north side of the city are two remarkable mounts, each about 200 feet in height, lying nearly east and west from one another, and a trifling distance apart. They are formed of argillaceous iron-stone, mixed with pebbles, and a rather soft kind of marl. The city is of an irregular oval shape, about fifteen miles in circumference, and surrounded by a clay wall thirty feet high, with a dry ditch along the inside, and another on the outside. There are fifteen gates, including one lately built up. The gates are of wood, covered with sheet iron, and are regularly opened and shut at sunrise and sunset. A platform inside, with two guardhouses below it, serves to defend each entrance. Not more than one fourth of the ground within the walls is occupied by houses: the vacant space is laid out in fields and gardens. The large morass, nearly intersecting the city from east to west, and crossed by a small neck of land, on which the market is held, is overflowed in the rainy season. The water of the city being considered unwholesome, women are constantly employed hawking water about the streets, from the favourite springs in the neighbourhood. The houses are built of clay, and are mostly of a square form, in the Moorish fashion, with a central room, the roof of which is supported by the trunks of palm trees, where visitors and strangers are received. The apartments of the ground floor open into this hall of audience, and are generally used as store-rooms. A staircase leads to an open gallery overlooking the hall, and serving as a passage to the chambers of the second story, which are lighted with small windows. In a back courtyard there is a well and other conveniences. Within the enclosure in which the house stands, there are also a few round huts of clay, roofed with the stalks of Indian corn, and thatched with long grass. These are usually very neat and clean, and of a much larger size than those of Bornou. The governor’s residence covers a large space, and resembles a walled village. It even contains a mosque, and several towers three or four stories high, with windows in the European style, but without glass or frame-work. It is necessary to pass through two of these towers in order to gain the suite of inner apartments occupied by the governor.
The soug, or market, is well supplied with every necessary and luxury in request among the people of the interior. It is held, as I have mentioned, on a neck of land between two swamps; and as this site is covered with water during the rainy season, the holding it here is consequently limited to the dry months, when it is numerously frequented as well by strangers as inhabitants: indeed, there is no market in Africa so well regulated. The sheikh of the soug lets the stalls at so much a month, and the rent forms a part of the revenues of the governor. The sheikh of the soug also fixes the prices of all wares, for which he is entitled to a small commission, at the rate of fifty whydah or cowries, on every sale amounting to four dollars or 8,000 cowries, according to the standard exchange between silver money and this shell currency. There is another custom regulated with equal certainty and in universal practice: the seller returns to the buyer a stated part of the price, by way of blessing, as they term it, or of luck-penny, according to our less devout phraseology. This is a discount of two per cent. on the purchase money; but, if the bargain is made in a hired house, it is the landlord who receives the luck-penny. I may here notice the great convenience of the cowrie, which no forgery can imitate; and which, by the dexterity of the natives in reckoning the largest sums, forms a ready medium of exchange in all transactions, from the lowest to the highest. Particular quarters are appropriated to distinct articles; the smaller wares being set out in booths in the middle, and cattle and bulky commodities being exposed to sale in the outskirts of the market-place: wood, dried grass, bean straw for provender, beans, Guinea corn, Indian corn, wheat, &c. are in one quarter; goats, sheep, asses, bullocks, horses, and camels, in another; earthenware and indigo in a third; vegetables and fruit of all descriptions, such as yams, sweet potatoes, water and musk melons, pappaw fruit, limes, cashew nuts, plums, mangoes, shaddocks, dates, &c. in a fourth, and so on. Wheaten flour is baked into bread of three different kinds; one like muffins, another like our twists, and the third a light puffy cake, with honey and melted butter poured over it. Rice is also made into little cakes. Beef and mutton are killed daily. Camel flesh is occasionally to be had, but is often meagre; the animal being commonly killed, as an Irish grazier might say, to save its life: it is esteemed a great delicacy, however, by the Arabs, when the carcass is fat. The native butchers are fully as knowing as our own, for they make a few slashes to show the fat, blow up meat, and sometimes even stick a little sheep’s wool on a leg of goat’s flesh, to make it pass with the ignorant for mutton. When a fat bull is brought to market to be killed, its horns are dyed red with henna; drummers attend, a mob soon collects, the news of the animal’s size and fatness spreads, and all run to buy. The colouring of the horns is effected by applying the green leaves of the henna tree, bruised into a kind of poultice. Near the shambles there is a number of cook-shops in the open air; each consisting merely of a wood fire, stuck round with wooden skewers, on which small bits of fat and lean meat, alternately mixed, and scarcely larger than a pennypiece each, are roasting. Every thing looks very clean and comfortable; and a woman does the honours of the table, with a mat dish-cover placed on her knees, from which she serves her guests, who are squatted around her. Ground gussub water is retailed at hand, to those who can afford this beverage at their repast: the price, at most, does not exceed twenty cowries, or about two farthings and ⁴⁄₁₀ of a farthing, English money, estimating the dollar at five shillings. Those who have houses eat at home; women never resort to cook-shops, and even at home eat apart from men.
The interior of the market is filled with stalls of bamboo, laid out in regular streets; where the more costly wares are sold, and articles of dress, and other little matters of use or ornament made and repaired. Bands of musicians parade up and down to attract purchasers to particular booths. Here are displayed coarse writing paper, of French manufacture, brought from Barbary; scissors and knives, of native workmanship; crude antimony and tin, both the produce of the country; unwrought silk of a red colour, which they make into belts and slings, or weave in stripes into the finest cotton tobes; armlets and bracelets of brass; beads of glass, coral, and amber; finger rings of pewter, and a few silver trinkets, but none of gold; tobes, turkadees, and turban shawls; coarse woollen cloths of all colours; coarse calico; Moorish dresses; the cast off gaudy garbs of the Mamelukes of Barbary; pieces of Egyptian linen, checked or striped with gold; sword blades from Malta, &c. &c. The market is crowded from sunrise to sunset every day, not excepting their Sabbath, which is kept on Friday. The merchants understand the benefits of monopoly as well as any people in the world; they take good care never to overstock the market, and if any thing falls in price, it is immediately withdrawn for a few days.—The market is regulated with the greatest fairness, and the regulations are strictly and impartially enforced. If a tobe or turkadee, purchased here, is carried to Bornou or any other distant place, without being opened, and is there discovered to be of inferior quality, it is immediately sent back, as a matter of course,—the name of the dylala, or broker, being written inside every parcel. In this case the dylala must find out the seller, who, by the laws of Kano, is forthwith obliged to refund the purchase money.
The slave market is held in two long sheds, one for males, the other for females, where they are seated in rows, and carefully decked out for the exhibition; the owner, or one of his trusty slaves, sitting near them. Young or old, plump or withered, beautiful or ugly, are sold without distinction; but, in other respects, the buyer inspects them with the utmost attention, and somewhat in the same manner as a volunteer seaman is examined by a surgeon on entering the navy: he looks at the tongue, teeth, eyes, and limbs, and endeavours to detect rupture by a forced cough. If they are afterwards found to be faulty or unsound, or even without any specific objection, they may be returned within three days. When taken home, they are stripped of their finery, which is sent back to their former owner. Slavery is here so common, or the mind of slaves is so constituted, that they always appeared much happier than their masters; the women, especially, singing with the greatest glee all the time they are at work. People become slaves by birth or by capture in war. The Felatahs frequently manumit slaves at the death of their master, or on the occasion of some religious festival. The letter of manumission must be signed before the cadi, and attested by two witnesses; and the mark of a cross is used by the illiterate among them, just as with us. The male slaves are employed in the various trades of building, working in iron, weaving, making shoes or clothes, and in traffic; the female slaves in spinning, baking, and selling water in the streets. Of the various people who frequent Kano, the Nyffuans are most celebrated for their industry; as soon as they arrive, they go to market and buy cotton for their women to spin, who, if not employed in this way, make billam for sale, which is a kind of flummery made of flour and tamarinds. The very slaves of this people are in great request, being invariably excellent tradesmen; and when once obtained, are never sold again out of the country.
I bought, for three Spanish dollars, an English green cotton umbrella, an article I little expected to meet with, yet by no means uncommon: my Moorish servants, in their figurative language, were wont to give it the name of “the cloud.” I found, on inquiry, that these umbrellas are brought from the shores of the Mediterranean, by the way of Ghadamis.
| NATIVE OF KASUNA IN SOUDAN. | ||
| NEGRESS OF JACOBA. | NEGRESS OF NYFFEE. | |
| UMBURUM SOUTH OF KANO. | GOOBUR AND ZAMFRA. |
| Drawn by Captn. Clapperton. R.N. | Etched by E. Finden. |
Published by John Murray, London. Feb. 1826.
A large kafila of Tuaricks, loaded solely with salt, arrived here from Billma. The Arabs told me it consisted of 3,000 camels; at all events, the kafila was extremely numerous.