On the 7th March, the travellers resumed their journey into the interior, and retracing their steps to Tshow, reached at noon the next day, the town of Algi, which was just rising from its ruins after the Fellata, inroad of the preceding year. All the intermediate villages had shared the same fate. Algi, according to the information received, no longer belonged to Youriba, but to the sultan of Kiama. It comprised three small villages, and before it was burnt down had been of considerable size. These marauders have a singular mode of setting fire to walled towns, by fastening combustibles to the tails of pigeons, which, on being loosed, fly to the tops of the thatched houses, while the assailants keep up a sharp fire of arrows, to prevent the inhabitants from extinguishing the flames.
On the 11th, the travellers once more crossed the Moussa, which formerly divided the kingdoms of Youriba and Borgoo. It was now dry in a great many places, with a very rocky bed; when full, it is about thirty yards in breadth, and flows with a very strong current. On the other side, the road to Kiama lay through a flat country, thickly wooded with fine trees, and inhabited by large antelopes. These creatures are the most lively, graceful, and beautifully proportioned of the brute creation. Wherever known, they have attracted the attention and admiration of mankind from the earliest ages, and the beauty of their dark and lustrous eyes affords a frequent theme to the poetical imaginings of the eastern poets. The antelopes seen by Lander are by the Dutch called springbok, and inhabit the great plains of central Africa, and assemble in vast flocks during their migratory movements. These migrations, which are said to take place in their most numerous form only at the intervals of several years, appear to come from the north-east, and in masses of many thousands, devouring, like locusts, every green herb. The lion has been seen to migrate, and walk in the midst of the compressed phalanx, with only as much space between him and his victims as the fears of those immediately round could procure by pressing outwards. The foremost of these vast columns are fat, and the rear exceedingly lean, while the direction continues one way; but with the change of the monsoon, when they return towards the north, the rear become the leaders, fattening in their turn, and leaving the others to starve, and to be devoured by the numerous rapacious animals, who follow their march. At all times, when impelled by fear, either of the hunter or beasts of prey darting amongst the flocks, but principally when the herds are assembled in countless multitudes, so that an alarm cannot spread rapidly and open the means of flight, they are pressed against each other, and their anxiety to escape compels them to bound up in the air, showing at the same time the white spot on the croup, dilated by the effort, and closing again in their descent, and producing that beautiful effect from which they have obtained the name of the springer or springbok.
Early on the 13th, the travellers were met by an escort from the chief of Kiama, the capital of a district of the same name, and containing thirty thousand inhabitants. Kiama, Wawa, Niki, and Boussa are provinces composing the kingdom of Borgoo, all subject, in a certain sense, to the sovereign of Boussa; but the different cities plunder and make war on each other, without the slightest regard to the supreme authority. The people of Kiama and of Borgoo in general have the reputation of being the greatest thieves and robbers in all Africa, a character which nothing in their actual conduct appeared to confirm. The escort were mounted on beautiful horses, and forming as fine and wild a looking troop as the travellers had ever seen.
By sultan Yarro himself the travellers were well received. He was found seated at the porch of his door, dressed in a white tobe, with a red moorish cap on his head, attended by a mob of people, all lying prostrate, and talking to him in that posture. He shook hands with Captain Clapperton, and after telling him who he was, and where he wished to go, he said, "Very well; I have assigned a house for you; you had better go and rest from the fatigues of your journey; a proper supply of provisions shall be sent you." The travellers took their leave, and repaired to the house prepared for them, which consisted of three large huts inside a square; they had not been long there, when a present arrived from Yarro, consisting of milk, eggs, bananas, fried cheese, curds, and foofoo. The latter is the common food of both rich and poor in Youriba, and is of two kinds, white and black. The former is merely a paste made of boiled yams, formed into balls of about one pound each. The black is a more elaborate preparation from the flour of yams. In the evening, Yarro paid the travellers a visit. He came mounted on a beautiful red roan, attended by a number of armed men on horseback and on foot, and six young female slaves, naked as they were born, except a fillet of narrow white cloth tied round their heads, about six inches of the ends flying out behind, each carrying a light spear in the right hand. He was dressed in a red silk damask tobe, and booted. He dismounted and came into the house, attended by the six girls, who laid down their spears, and put a blue cloth round their waists, before they entered the door. After a short conference, in which he promised the travellers all the assistance they solicited, sultan Yarro mounted his horse; the young spear-women resumed their spears, laying aside the encumbrance of their aprons, and away they went, the most extraordinary cavalcade, which the travellers had ever witnessed. Their light form, the vivacity of their eyes, and the ease with which they appeared to fly over the ground, made these female pages appear something more than mortal, as they flew alongside of his horse, when he was galloping, and making his horse curvet and bound. A man with an immense bundle of spears remained behind, at a little distance, apparently to serve as a magazine for the girls to be supplied from, when their master had expended those they carried in their hands.
Here, as in other large towns, there were music and dancing the whole of the night. Men's wives and maidens all join in the song and dance, Mahommedans as well as pagans; female chastity was very little regarded.
Kiama is a straggling, ill-built town, of circular thatched huts, built, as well as the town-wall, of clay. It stands in latitude 9° 37' 33" N., longitude 5° 22' 56", and is one of the towns through which the Houssa and Bornou caravan passes in its way to Gonga, on the borders of Ashantee. Both the city and provinces are, as frequently happens in Africa, called after the chief Yarro, whose name signifies the boy. The inhabitants are pagans of an easy faith, never praying but when they are sick or in want of something, and cursing their object of worship as fancy serves. The Houssa slaves among them are Mahommedans, and are allowed to worship in their own way. It is enough to call a man a native of Borgoo, to designate him as a thief and a murderer.
Sultan Yarro was a most accommodating personage, he sent his principal queen to visit Captain Clapperton, but she had lost both her youth and her charms. Yarro then inquired of Captain Clapperton, if he would take his daughter for a wife; to which Clapperton answered in the affirmative, thanking the sultan at the same time for his most gracious present. On this, the old woman went out, and Clapperton followed with the king's head-man, Abubecker, to the house of the daughter, which consisted of several coozies, separate from those of the father, and was shown into a very clean one; a mat was spread, he sat down, and the lady coming in and kneeling down, Clapperton asked her, if she would live in his house, or if he should come and live with her; she answered, whatever way he wished, "Very well," replied Clapperton, "as you have the best house, I will come and live with you." The bargain was concluded, and the daughter of the sultan was, pro tempore, the wife of the gallant captain.
On the 18th, the travellers took their leave of sultan Yarro and his capital, and the fourth day reached Wawa, another territorial capital, built in the form of a square, and containing from eighteen to twenty thousand inhabitants. It is surrounded with a good high clay wall and dry ditch, and is one of the neatest, most compact, and best walled towns that had yet been seen. The streets are spacious and dry; the houses are of the coozie form, consisting of circular huts connected by a wall, opening into an interior area. The governor's house is surrounded with a clay wall, about thirty feet high, having large coozies, shady trees, and square towers inside. Unlike their neighbours of Kiama, they bear a good character for honesty, though not for sobriety or chastity, virtues wholly unknown at Wawa; but they are merry, good natured, and hospitable. They profess to be descended from the people of Nyffee and Houssa, but their language is a dialect of the Youribanee; their religion is a mongrel mahommedism grafted upon paganism. Their women are much better looking than those of Youriba, and the men are well made, but have a debauched look; in fact, Lander says, he never was in a place where drunkenness was so general. They appeared to have plenty of the necessaries of life, and a great many luxuries. Their fruits are limes, plantains, bananas, and several wild fruits; their vegetables, yams and calalow, a plant, the leaves of which are used in soup as cabbage; and their grain are dhourra and maize. Fish they procure in great quantities from the Quorra and its tributaries, chiefly a sort of cat-fish. Oxen are in great plenty, principally in the hands of the Fellatas, also sheep and goats, poultry, honey, and wax. Ivory and ostrich feathers, they said, were to be procured in great plenty, but there was no market for them.
It was at this place that Clapperton had nearly, though innocently, got into a scrape with the old governor by coquetting with a young and buxom widow, and, in fact, Lander himself experienced some difficulty in withstanding the amorous attack of this African beauty; for she acted upon the principle, that, as she could not succeed with the master, there was no obstacle existing that she knew of, to prevent her directing the battery of her fine black sparkling eyes against the servant.
"I had a visit," says Clapperton, "amongst the number, from the daughter of an Arab, who was very fair, called herself a white woman, was a rich widow, and wanted a white husband. She was said to be the richest person in Wawa, having the best house in the town, and a thousand slaves." She showed a particular regard for Richard Lander, who was younger and better-looking than Clapperton; but she had passed her twentieth year, was fat, and a perfect Turkish beauty, just like a huge walking water-butt. All her arts were, however, unavailing on the heart of Lander; she could not induce him to visit her at her house, although he had the permission of his master.