W. Gray del.
BOOLEBANY, CAPITAL OF BONDOO.
Published Feb. 1825. by John Murray, London.
The town is surrounded by a strong clay wall, ten feet high and eighteen inches thick[11]; this is pierced with loop-holes, and is so constructed that, at short intervals, projecting angles are thrown out, which enable the besieged to defend the front of the wall by a flanking fire, and answers all the purposes of defence where nothing but small arms is made use of.
The gates, of which there are five, and some of the intermediate parts of the wall, are surmounted by small embattled turrets, nine or ten feet square; those are likewise pierced with loop-holes, and give to the place a better fortified appearance than any town we had before seen.
Within these outer walls, at the west end of the town, and surrounded by stronger and higher ones of the same materials and form, are the palaces of Almamy, his son Saada, and his nephew Moosa Yoro Malick, all joining each other, but having no internal communication.
The mosque, by no means a good one, stands in an open space in the south-west end of the town. It was in very bad repair, being nearly destitute of thatch. It is a large oblong clay building, lying east and west, the walls about nine feet high, and the roof, which is composed of rough timber, is supported in the centre by three strong forked stakes, about eighteen feet high. The ends of this roof extend five or six feet over the walls, on which it rests, and is there supported by forked stakes five feet high, forming a sort of piazza. Public prayers are performed in it five times a day, with the greatest apparent devotion.
The town is divided by streets, or more properly lanes, which are very narrow, dirty, and irregular. The outside of the walls too, in consequence of the want of public places of convenience, is nothing but a continued heap of filth, which emits, particularly during the rains, an overpowering and unpleasant effluvia.
The huts or houses are of different forms: some entirely composed of clay and rough timber, are square and flat roofed; others are round, having the walls of the same material as the former, but are covered with a conical roof, formed of poles and thatched with long dry grass; the third and last are entirely composed of wood and dry grass, in the form of a half splaire. The doors of all are inconveniently low, particularly the latter, which is rendered the more unpleasant by its serving, at the same time, as door, window, and chimney.
Those of Almamy, his son, nephew, and some of the princes, display the same variety of form, and, with the exception of being larger, are equally inconvenient. The interior of each of these palaces may contain about an English acre, divided, by low clay walls, into several small courts, in some of which are the chambers of their wives and concubines, and in others the magazines of arms, ammunition, merchandize, and corn. The exterior walls are about thirteen feet high, and are lined, nearly all round inside, with a range of square clay hovels, serving as cooking places, stables, slave rooms, and other stores, all which have flat roofs, where, in case of attack, a number of armed men, the best marksmen, are placed, and being there defended by that part of the outside walls which rises above the roofs, in form of parapets, they can do much against an attacking enemy.