The country at present, on this side of Zaria, looks like some of the finest in England, about the latter end of the month of April. All around is green and beautiful, with only trees here and there. The soil a red clay, mixed with gravel. The cultivated ground continued until 11 A.M. when we entered a wood of low trees, which continued until noon, when we found ourselves amongst the cultivated grounds belonging to the town of Leokoro, which we passed, and halted on the east side. It is of considerable size, walled round, but the wall is in very bad condition, being broken and falling down in several places. The houses are in good repair, and the inhabitants numerous. Towards sunset several large herds of cattle came in from grazing in the neighbouring woods, and were secured in thorny enclosures outside the walls for the night.
Saturday, 15th.—At 4.30 P.M. arrived and halted at a town called Roma, in English, Soup, whose walls are extensive; and, from the number of shady trees within them, must have once been a populous and well inhabited place. The present inhabitants do not amount to more than forty, poor, mean, and miserable. They were all collected under one of the old shady trees in the town to receive me, with their chief man at their head, bearing a long white wand, or peeled palm-tree branch in his hand, dressed in a ragged dirty white tobe, his skin spotted black and white like a leopard with disease. He conducted me to his house, which was large and spacious; but the courts were overgrown with weeds and grass; the roofs of the huts falling in; the floors wet, damp, and dirty. I could not amongst the whole find one fit to shelter man or beast. I went out, and he accompanied me until, amongst the untenanted houses, I found one, where I put my baggage for the night. He brought me a little corn in a gourd for my horses, and I asked him the cause of the sad state in which the town was: he said, the Fellatas, and held his peace. “Why is your house in such a state?” I asked. He said he once had fifty wives, but they had all run away one after another, and he could not take care of it himself. Plenty of guinea fowls came to roost on the shady tree. Towards sunset I went out and shot six, which served all hands.
Sunday, 16th.—At 12.20 halted at the town of Aushin, where I was provided with as good a house as the place afforded; and this being the day of the aid kebur, or great feast, they had killed a bullock, of which the head man of the town sent me a part, with Indian corn for my horses and camel. I had not taken possession of my house more than ten minutes, and hung my watch and compass up to the rafters, as was my usual custom, than, having occasion to go out, I found my watch torn forcibly from the ring; but I fortunately caught the thief, who was one of the bullock drivers: I threatened him very much, but was glad I had got my watch again without any serious injury. The bullocks on this day’s journey were nearly all worn out; it was with great difficulty we could get two of them on with very light loads.
Monday, 17th.—Having passed Roma and several other towns, at noon of this day we entered the town of Dunchow, the first to the westward in the province of Kano. I rode up to the head man’s house, who was just coming out of his door to take his ride; a jolly looking tall Fellata, about thirty years of age. After we had exchanged compliments, he took me to a very good house to lodge in, and promised to send me every thing I wanted, which was food for man and beast. I got corn sent me in abundance, but nothing else; all his other promises proved to be nothing but empty words.
Tuesday, 18th.—Clear and cool. Thermometer at sunrise 68° F. in the open air. After giving the head man of Dunchow a knife, and a lecture for not performing his promises to me, in giving me meat or milk, or lending me a horse, he said, they had no meat, because they had killed no bullock; no milk, as all the young women were dancing last night, as their custom is after the aid, and they did not milk the cows; his horses had all been killed this summer at the war with the sheik of Bornou. All these excuses were made with as much ease as he made the promises, and I could not help admiring the courtier-like manner in which he behaved, though he has only been here a month as governor. At 7 A.M. I left Dunchow and its polite governor, and travelled through a well cultivated and populous country, the inhabitants of the villages all out in their plantations, giving the millet and dourra the second hoeing, and drawing the earth up to the roots of the grain: the soil a fine black mould, covered with a thin layer of sand. Passed several plantations of rice, which was sown in beds in the low and swampy grounds; also beds of sweet potatoes, yams, and a root called goza, like a small short yam, more watery, and of a yellow colour inside: it has a broad flat leaf.
At 2 P.M. entered the town of Baebaegie. I rode to the house of the governor, whose head man gave me a part of his house to lodge in; and shortly after I had halted he sent me a sheep, two fowls, some wheat, the first I had seen since I left England, and plenty of millet for my horses and camel. I sent him in return a knife, six yards of red silk, a gilt chain, and a pair of scissars. In the evening the governor sent me pudding, boiled rice, milk, and stewed meat.
Wednesday, 19th.—The town of Baebaegie is in latitude 11° 34′ north, and longitude 9° 13′ east, and stands as it were in the midst of a large plain, having in sight, from the granite mount about a musket shot outside the southern gate, the hills of Nora, about ten miles east; to the south, the mountains of Surem, distant about twenty-five miles; to the west I could distinguish the tops of one or two of the hills of Aushin, in Zegzeg; to the north a plain bounded only by the horizon; to the north-east the two mounts inside the walls of Kano could just be distinguished above the horizontal line, bearing north-east by north. One hill bore north, breaking the horizontal line, twenty or twenty-two miles; the land, every where the eye turned, looked beautiful; the grain was just high enough to wave with the wind; little towns and villages were numerous; the trees full of foliage, none being left hardly but such as were fit for use, such as the micadania or butter-tree, the nutta or durow, and the tamarind: heads of fine white cattle were seen grazing on the fallow ground; horses and mares were tethered in the small spaces left between the plantations in cultivation; women, to the amount of a hundred, were thrashing out corn with large sticks, on the flat rock at the base of the mount, the wind, blowing fresh from the westward, serving them as a winnowing machine. The town was below, in the form of an oblong square, the four sides facing the four cardinal points; the head man’s house in the centre of the town, and is like one of the old keeps or castles in Scotland, near the Borders; it is also of the Moorish form, and the general one for all the governor’s houses in Houssa. A high clay tower, through which is the gate or entrance from each side, overtops a wall of clay about twenty feet high, in the form of a square; inside are huts or coozies for the women, eunuchs, domestics, and horses; the governor occupying the upper part of the tower in times of alarm and danger, and his men-slaves and armed retainers the lower. This, like all the others, is built of clay, and is three stories high, with a flat roof and battlement. In the lower story, at each side, and above the gate, are oblong holes, which serve for archers and to give light in the upper stories; the windows are like ours in England in form, four on each side, but no attention as to regularity in placing them; the windows are either shut by a mat on the side next the wind, or by a number of coloured and plaited lines of grass strung over a small rod, which is hung across the top of the window; the ends falling down, admit sufficient air and light, and keep out flies. This plan is also used for the doors of inner apartments in the lower houses, and requires no opening or shutting. The rooms in the town are supported by pillars formed by lashing long poles together until sufficiently strong, and, when they are up, plastering them thickly over in all parts with clay, and then a coating of cow-dung, to prevent the white ants and other insects eating away the wood; the great beams are formed in the same manner. The floors of the upper rooms are first laid with rafters of stout poles, then short diagonal pieces are laid over as close as they can be laid, then a coating of clay and small gravel is laid six or eight inches thick. The walls are made, first by mixing clay well up with a little chopped grass or cow-dung, and making it up in lumps of two handfuls, and letting it dry in the sun; when dry, they build with them as our masons would do with rough stones, laying a thick layer of well-wrought soft clay between each layer of hardened lumps, and a good thick coat outside: their hand is the only trowel; and, without plumb-line or level, they manage to make pretty fair walls and buildings, taking these things into consideration. The walls outside, before the commencement of every rainy season, get a fresh plastering, the tops are repaired, and parts that may be washed down are built up. The water is conveyed from the tops of the houses, clear of the walls, by long, baked, clay funnels, like what are used on the tops of smoky chimneys in England, and look like great guns mounted on the tops of the walls. The other houses of the town are like almost all others outside the capital towns, a number of circular huts within a high, square, clay wall; frequently a single room, with a flat roof, used by the master of the house as a safe repository for his goods. Every house has two or three date trees within this wall or enclosure, which bear fruit twice a year, like those of Kashna and Kano; once before or at the commencement of the rains, the other after the rains a month or forty days. They use two pieces of flat board or gourd, one fixed, the other moveable, to which is attached a line for the purpose of clapping one against the other to frighten the vampire-bat and a kind of jay which lodge on the trees and destroy a great quantity of fruit. The ibis, stork, crane, adjutant-crane, and several other birds, build their nests in the shady trees of the town. A market is held daily, which is well attended: grain, oxen, sheep, and all the necessaries of life, abound. A tame ostrich is kept in the market-place to avert the evil eye—a Bornou and eastern custom. There are several places of prayer in the town, but one principal mosque or jama, as they call them, stands on the right of the governor’s house, forming one side of the square before his door. The inhabitants may amount to about twenty or twenty-five thousand, the greater part of whom are refugees from Bornou and Wadey, and their descendants, who are all engaged in trade: from the little I saw of them, they appeared to be cleanly, civil, and industrious. In the afternoon I went through a great number of these houses, shooting pigeons, of which there are four kinds here: the domestic or house pigeon, the large wood dove, a larger kind with a fleshy substance round the outside of the eye like the carrier pigeon, and the small dove with purple breast and black ring round the neck. The inhabitants offered not the least objections to my shooting in their court-yards, but were as much amused as I was, and afforded me every assistance in procuring the wounded birds. At sunset I took leave of the governor, who lent me a horse and a messenger to go with me early to Kano to provide a house, for I had not yet heard from Hadje Salah. The governor’s son sent me a present of a turkey and some wheat, but I sent him nothing in return, as all my things were packed up ready for starting.
Thursday, 20th.—Daylight, fresh breezes and cloudy; thermometer, at sunrise, 75° Fahrenheit. Landed the bullocks, and saw them out of the north gate of Baebaegie, when I started ahead, on the horse I had borrowed from the governor, his servant and the messenger of Zaria accompanying me. I left the baggage in charge of Richard, desiring him to halt at the nearest town or village if it should come on to rain, and not to start in the morning if the weather was bad. My road was through a well-cultivated country, the soil clay and gravel; the villages were numerous, the inhabitants of which were busy in their plantations, dressing up the earth to the roots of the dourra, and hoeing away the weeds. The road was broad and good, thronged with passengers, asses and bullocks loaded with goods and grain, going to and returning from Kano. At 7 A.M. crossed a small stream which runs south and falls into the Girkwa. At 8.30 A.M. passed the town of Madagie, which is walled, and appeared to be well filled with houses and inhabitants. At noon, arrived at the banks of the river which passes Girkwa, and which rises amongst the hills of Aushin. All the streams to the south of the granite ridge passing Roma, close to the south of Kashna, fall into this river. One considerable river passing Duncomee and Fariroa, flows south of Kano close to the walls of Girkwa, runs east past the town and hills of Dushie, near Katagum, and enters the river Yoau near Hadega. This is the river which has been spoken of by the Arabs as coming from Timbuctoo, and continuing its course to the Nile of Egypt. It is dry for nearly the whole length of its course during six months: the stream, when full, is broad but shallow; at this place, about 100 or 120 yards across: its waters are now muddy with yesterday’s rains; the depth five feet. I got wet up to the middle as I crossed, the horse I rode being a small one, and at times off his legs and swimming. I halted on the other side to dry my clothes, and after an hour’s rest under a tree, when my clothes were pretty well drained and half dry, I again started, and, about five in the evening, arrived at the city of Kano.