The doctor had now to borrow two thousand kurdie, which did not amount to the value of a dollar.
He was forbidden to leave his quarters until he had seen the governor, and he was thus kept within them for several days, till he was attacked by fever. At length, on the 18th of February, he received a summons to attend the great man.
Although the distances in Kano are less than those of London, they are very great, and the ceremonies to be gone through are almost as tedious as those of any European court.
Arousing himself, and putting on his warm Tunisian dress, wearing over it a white tobe and a white bournous, he mounted his poor black nag and followed his advocates, Bawu Elaiji and Sidi-Ali, the two latter of whom showed him the most disinterested friendship. It was a fine morning: before him lay the whole scenery of the town, in its great variety of clay houses, huts, sheds, green open places affording pasture for oxen, horses, camels, donkeys, and goats, in motley confusion, with many beautiful specimens of the vegetable kingdom—the slender date-palm, the spreading alleluba, and the majestic silk-cotton tree—the people in all varieties of costume, from the almost naked slave up to the most gaudily-dressed Arab, all formed a most animating and exciting scene.
Passing through the market-place, they entered the quarters of the ruling race—the Fulbe or Fellani, where conical huts of thatched work and the gonda-tree are prevalent.
They first proceeded to the house of the gadado, the lord of the treasury. It was an interesting specimen of the domestic arrangements of the Fulbe, who do not disown their original character of nomadic cattle-breeders. Its court-yard, though in the middle of the town, looked like a farm-yard, and could not be commended for its cleanliness.
The treasurer having approved of the presents and appropriated to himself a large gilt cup, the doctor and his companions were conducted to the audience-hall. It was very handsome, and even stately for this country. The rafters of the elevated ceiling were concealed by two lofty arches of clay, very neatly polished and ornamented. At the bottom of the apartment were two spacious and highly-decorated niches, in one of which the governor was reposing on the gado spread with a carpet. His dress consisted of all the mixed finery of Haussa and Barbary. He allowed his face to be seen, the white shawl hanging down far below his mouth, over his breast.
The governor was highly pleased with the handsome presents he received, and the doctor, notwithstanding the fatigue he had gone through, quickly recovered from his fever.
The next day he rode round the town. Here were a row of shops filled with articles of native and foreign produce, with buyers and sellers in every variety of figure, complexion, and dress, yet all intent upon their little gain. There a large shed full of naked half-starved slaves torn from their homes—from their wives or husbands, from their children or parents—ranged in rows like cattle, and staring desperately upon the buyers, anxiously watching into whose hands it should be their destiny to fall. In another part were to be seen all the necessaries of life; here a rich governor dressed in silk and gaudy clothes, mounted upon a spirited and richly-caparisoned steed, and followed by a host of idle, insolent slaves; there a poor blind man, groping his way through the multitude, and fearing at every step to be trodden down. There were pleasant scenes too, a snug-looking cottage with the clay walls nicely polished, beneath the shade of a wide-spreading alleluba-tree; or a papaya unfolded its large leather-like leaves above a slender, smooth and undivided stem; or the tall date-tree, waving over the whole scene; a matron, in clean black cotton gown, busy preparing the meal for her absent husband or spinning cotton, and at the same time urging the female slaves to pound the corn, and children, naked and merry, playing about in the sun, or chasing a straggling, stubborn goat; earthenware pots and wooden bowls, all cleanly washed, standing in order. In one place dyers were at work, mixing with the indigo some coloured wood in order to give it the desired tint, others drawing a shirt from the dye-pot or hanging it up on ropes fastened to the trees. Further on, a blacksmith, busy with his rude tools making a dagger, a formidable barbed spear, or some more useful instrument of husbandry. Here a caravan appears from Gonga bringing the desired kola-nut, chewed by all who have ten kurdie to spare; or another caravan laden with natron; or a troop of A’sbenawa going off with their salt to the neighbouring towns; or some Arabs leading their camels, heavily laden with the luxuries of the north and east. Everywhere human life was to be seen in its varied forms, the most cheerful and the most gloomy closely mixed together—the olive-coloured Arab, the dark Kanuri with his wide nostrils, the small-featured, light, and slender Ba-fellanchi, the broad-faced Mandingo, the stout, large-boned, and masculine Nupe female, the well-proportioned and comely Ba-háushe woman.
The doctor met with many friends, and was very kindly treated at Kano. He was again attacked with illness, but, recovering, prepared to set out for Kukawa, where he had arranged with Mr Richardson to arrive in the beginning of April. The capital of the large province of Sackatoo contains sixty thousand inhabitants during the busy time of the year, about four thousand of whom belong to the nation by whom the people were conquered. The principal commerce consists in native produce, viz., cotton cloth, woven and dyed here and in the neighbouring towns in the forms either of tobes, the oblong piece of dress of dark colour worn by the women, or plaids of various colours, and the black litham. A large portion of it is sent to Timbuctoo, amounting to three hundred camel-loads annually, thus bringing considerable wealth to the population, for both cotton and indigo are produced and prepared in the country. Leathern sandals are also made with great neatness and exported in large quantities. Tanned hides and red sheep-skins are sent even as far as Tripoli. The chief article of African produce sold in the Kano market is the kola-nut, which has become to the natives as necessary as coffee or tea to Europeans. The slave trade is an important branch of commerce, though the number annually exported from Kano does not exceed five thousand; but very many are sold into domestic slavery, either to the inhabitants of the province itself or to those of the adjoining districts.