[60] I heard the name pronounced in this way, but lower down it may be pronounced Bí-nuwé. However, I have to remark that Mr. Petermann changed the é into an í, from mere mistake; and I do not know whether the members of the Chádda expedition had sufficient authority for writing the name in this way. The word belongs to the Bátta language, where water is called “beé,” or “bé”; but in kindred dialects it is called “bí.” “Nuwé” means the mother; and the whole name means “mother of water.” The name, therefore, properly is of the feminine gender.
[61] “Tépe” is a Púllo or rather Fulfúlde word meaning “junction,” “confluence,” which by the Western Fúlbe would be called “fottérde máje.” In Háusa the name is “magángamú.”
[62] That this river is anywhere really called Chádda, or even Tsádda, I doubt very much; and I am surprised that the members of the late expedition in the Pleiad do not say a word on this point. I think the name Chádda was a mere mistake of Lander’s, confirmed by Allen, owing to their fancying it an outlet of Lake Tsád.
[63] This immense rise of the river agrees perfectly with the experience of Messrs. Laird and Oldfield, who, from absolute measurement, found the difference in the level of the water at Idda in the course of the year nearly sixty feet. See their Journal, vol. ii., p. 276, and p. 420, note, “fifty-seven to sixty feet.”
[64] There was a very serious discrepancy amongst those gentlemen with regard to the fall of the river. Dr. Baikie states, in his Journal, which recently appeared, p. 230, that “the water first showed decided signs of falling about the 3rd of October, and by the 5th the decrease was very perceptible.” If, therefore, the river began to fall at Zhibu on the 3rd of October, the fall would commence at the Tépe, more than two hundred miles higher up along the windings of the river, at least three days before, if we take the current at three miles an hour. My statement, therefore, that the river begins decidedly to fall at the confluence at the very end of September, has been singularly confirmed. But that there is also some truth with regard to the long continuance of the highest level is evident from the conflicting observations of the party. (See Baikie’s Journal, p. 217.) Indeed the sailor-master insisted that the river had fallen long before; and all the people were puzzled about it. From all this I must conclude that my statement with regard to the river, instead of having been considerably modified by the expedition, has been confirmed by their experience in all its principal points. We shall see the same difficulty recur with regard to a maximum level preserved for forty days by the western river, although the time when it begins to fall is entirely different; and as to the latter river, not only I, but the natives also were mistaken with respect to its presumed time of falling. The same is the case with the (river) Shári, and is natural enough, considering the extensive inundations with which the rise of these African rivers is attended. This state of the rivers in the tropical climes is so irregular, that Leo Africanus has made quite the same observation. (L. i. c. 28, “Descrizione dell’ Africa.”)
[65] I leave this passage as it stood in my journal, although it describes a state of things which now, in 1857, belongs to the past. This stronghold also has at length been taken by the intruders, and the seat of happiness and independence converted into a region of desolation. In 1853, two years after my journey to Ádamáwa, Mohammed Láwl left his residence with a great host, having sworn not to return before he had reduced Bágelé. After a siege of almost two months, with the assistance of a few muskets, he succeeded in conquering the mountaineers, and reducing them to slavery. The chief of the pagans of the Bágelé, who belong to the Bátta tribe, in the height of his power exercised paramount authority over the neighbouring tribes, and is said to have even had the “jus primæ noctis.”
[66] Ribágo, sometimes contracted to the form Ribáwo, means “a governor’s country-seat.”
[67] With regard to the Fúlbe, the prayers of dhohor (“zúhura,” or “sallifánna”) may rightly be called midday prayers, as they are accustomed to pray as soon as the zawál has been observed. But in general it would be wrong to call dhohor noon, as is very often done; for none of the other Mohammedans in this part of the world will say his dhohor prayer before two o’clock P.M. at the very earliest, and generally not before three o’clock.
[68] Adamáwa is certainly not quite identical with Fúmbiná, as it denotes only those regions of the latter which have been conquered by the Fúlbe, while many parts are as yet unsubdued.
[69] With regard to salt, I will observe that the greater part of it is brought from Búmánda, on the Bénuwé, near Hamárruwa, where it seems to be obtained from the soil in the same way as I shall describe the salt-boiling in Fóga, although in Búmánda there is no valley-formation, and Mr. Vogel, who lately visited this place, may be right in stating that the salt is merely obtained from ashes by burning the grass which grows in that locality.