Sometimes a slight variation is made in the hair, five rolls being used instead of three. The women are so fond of indigo that they dye their eyebrows, hands, arms, feet, and legs with it, using the ruddy henna for the palms of the hands and the nails of the toes and fingers, and black antimony for the eyelashes. Beads, bracelets, and other ornaments are profusely worn, mostly of horn or brass. Silver and ivory mark the woman of rank. The dress is primarily composed of a sort of blue, white, or striped sheet called toorkadee, which is wrapped round the body under the arms, and falls as low as the knees. This is the usual costume, but if a woman be well off, she adds a second toorkadee, which she wears like a mantilla, over her head and shoulders.
Like other African tribes, though they belong to the Mahometan religion, they use the tattoo profusely. Twenty cuts are made on each side of the face, converging in the corners of the mouth, from the angle of the lower jaw and the cheek-bones, while a single cut runs down the centre of the forehead. Six cuts are made on each arm, six more on the thighs, and the same number on the legs, while four are on each breast, and nine on each side just above the hip-bone. These are made while they are infants, and the poor little things undergo frightful torments, not only from the pain of the wounds, but from the countless flies which settle on the hundred and three cuts with which their bodies are marked.
The Bornuese are governed, at least nominally, by a head chief or sultan, who holds his court with most quaint ceremony. When the travellers Denham and Clapperton went to pay their respects to him, they were visited on the previous evening by one of the royal chamberlains, who displayed the enormous staff, like a drum-major’s bâton, wore eight or ten shirts in order to exhibit his wealth, and had on his head a turban of huge dimensions. By his orders a tent was pitched for the white visitors, and around it was drawn a linen screen, which had the double effect of keeping out the sun and the people, and of admitting the air. A royal banquet, consisting of seventy or eighty dishes, was sent for their refection, each dish large enough to suffice for six persons, and, lest the white men should not like the native cookery, the sultan, with much thoughtfulness, sent also a number of live fowls, which they might cook for themselves.
Next morning, soon after daylight, they were summoned to attend the sultan, who was sitting in a sort of cage, as if he had been a wild beast. No one was allowed to come within a considerable distance, and the etiquette of the court was, that each person rode on horseback past the cage, and then dismounted and prostrated himself before the sultan. The oddest part of the ceremony is, that as soon as the courtier has made his obeisance, he seats himself on the ground with his back toward his monarch. Nearly three hundred of the courtiers thus take their places, and nothing could be more ludicrous than the appearance which they presented, their bodies being puffed out by successive robes, their heads swathed in turbans of the most preposterous size, and their thin legs, appearing under the voluminous garments, showing that the size of the head and body was merely artificial.
In fact, the whole business is a sham, the sultan being the chief sham, and the others matching their sovereign. The sultan has no real authority, the true power being lodged in the hands of the sheikh, who commands the army. Those who serve the court of Bornu are, by ancient etiquette, obliged to have very large heads and stomachs, and, as such gifts of nature are not very common, an artificial enlargement of both regions is held to be a sufficient compliance with custom. Consequently, the courtiers pad themselves with wadding to such an extent that as they sit on horseback their abdomens seem to protrude over the pommel of the saddle, while the eight or ten shirts which they wear, one over the other, aid in exaggerating the outline, and reducing the human body to a shapeless lump.
Their heads are treated in a similar fashion, being enveloped in great folds of linen or muslin of different colors, white, however, predominating; and those who are most careful in their dress fold their huge turbans so as to make their heads appear to be one-sided, and as unlike their original shape as possible. Besides all these robes and shirts and padding, they wear a vast number of charms, made up in red leather parcels, and hung all over the body. The sultan is always accompanied by his trumpeters, who blow hideous blasts on long wooden trumpets called frum-frums, and also by his dwarfs, and other grotesque favorites.
In war, as in peace, the sultan is nominally the commander, and in reality a mere nonentity. He accompanies the sheikh, but never gives orders, nor even carries arms, active fighting being supposed to be below his dignity. One of the sultans lost his life in consequence of this rule. According to custom he had accompanied the sheikh in a war against the great enemy of Bornu, the Sultan of Begharmi, and, contrary to the usual result of these battles, the engagement had gone against him, and he was obliged to take refuge in flight. Unfortunately for him, though he was qualified by nature for royalty, being large-bodied and of enormous weight, yet his horse could not carry him fast enough. He fled to Angala, one of his chief towns, and if he could have entered it would have been safe. But his enormous weight had distressed his horse so much that the animal suddenly stopped close to the gate, and could not be induced to stir.
The sultan, true to the principle of noblesse oblige, accepted the position at once. He dismounted from his horse, wrapped his face in the shawl which covered his head, seated himself under a tree, and died as became his rank. Twelve of his attendants refused to leave their master, and nobly shared his death.
Around the sultan are his inevitable musicians, continually blowing their frum-frums or trumpets, which are sometimes ten or twelve feet in length, and in front goes his ensign, bearing his standard, which is a long pole hung round at the top with strips of colored leather and silk. At either side are two officers, carrying enormous spears, with which they are supposed to defend their monarch. This, however, is as much a sham as the rest of the proceedings; for, in the first place, the spearmen are so fat and their weapons so unwieldy that they could not do the least execution, and, as if to render the spears still more harmless, they are covered with charms from the head to the butt.
It has been mentioned that the real power of Bornu rests, not with the sultan, but with the sheikh. This potentate was found to be of simple personal habits, yet surrounded with state equal to that of the sultan, though differing in degree. Dressed in a plain blue robe and a shawl turban, he preferred to sit quietly in a small and dark room, attended by two of his favorite negroes armed with pistols, and having a brace of pistols lying on a carpet in front of him.