Hugh Clapperton

“ There is something about El Wahr surpassing dreariness itself: the rocks are dark sandstone, of the most gloomy and barren appearance; the wind whistles through the narrow fissures, which disdain to afford nourishment even to a single blade of wild grass; and as the traveller creeps under the lowering crags, to take shelter for the night, stumbling at each step over the skeleton of some starved human being, and searching for level spots on the hard rock, on which to lay his wearied body, he may fancy himself wandering in the wilds of desolation and despair. ”

“ The chief of Ingaskie, the second town in Youri, only a day’s journey distant, sent me a present of a sheep, some rice, and a thousand gora nuts, for which he expects double the amount in return. The women were dressed and painted to the height of Nyffé perfection; and the young and modest on this day would come up and salute the men as if old acquaintances, and bid them joy on the day; with the wool on their heads dressed, plaited, and dyed with indigo ”

“ The whole day our route lay through most pleasing forest scenery. It was near sunset when we arrived at Mittimee, which, in the Bornou language, means warm, tepid: the wells exceed fifty in number, and lie in a woody hollow, where there are clumps of the tulloh and other species of the mimosa tribe, encircled by kossom and various parasitical and twining shrubs, which, embracing their stems, wind to the extremities of their branches, and climb to the very tops, when, falling over, they form weeping bowers of a most beautiful kind: it was indeed a lovely and a fair retreat. ”

“ Within about four or five miles of Zaria the country became altogether clear of wood: except a patch here and there, all was in pasture, or planted with rice, millet, and dourra. Herds of beautiful cattle were feeding in the valleys, or lying chewing the cud on the higher grounds. Zaria was seen to the eastward, and known by its tall trees, like a long avenue of gigantic poplars; running across the horizon from north to south, stretching from the south end of one detached mount to the north end of another. ”

“ Their chief is alive, returns, and is victorious! All my people, even little children, shall sing these our deeds; all must share in the joy of their chief, as well those whose age prevents their sharing my glories, as those who have yet to learn the path of heroes! God has made us to overcome those who stood against us! They are fallen, and their towns are in ruins! In the open day, by the light of the sun, the children of the prophet trod them under foot! ”

“ The sultan made a great many inquiries about England, and asked me two or three times if I had not come to buy slaves. I laughed in his face, and told him there was nothing we so much abhorred in England as slavery; that the king of England did every thing to prevent other nations buying slaves; that the slave trade was the ruin of Africa; that Yourriba presented nothing but ruined towns and deserted villages, and all caused by the slave-trade; that it was very bad to buy and sell men like bullocks and sheep. ”

“ The presence of nothing but deep sandy valleys and high sand hills strikes the mind forcibly. There is something of the sublime mixed with the melancholy. Who can contemplate without admiration masses of loose sand, fully four hundred feet high, ready to be tossed about by every breeze, and not shudder with horror at the idea of the unfortunate traveller being entombed in a moment by one of those fatal blasts, which sometimes occur. ”

“ At the rising of the Fellatas it surrounded the hill on which the city is built, and great part of another; the new wall runs over the ridge of the hill, cutting the town into one half the size it was formerly; and even now the wall is much too extensive for the inhabitants to defend, and appears enclosing a few scattered houses and villages, not a town or city. The house of the chief is like a walled village, with a large clay castle at one end: this serves as the harem of the chief, and is well filled, or, more properly speaking, there are a great number of women in it. ”

“ The culprit appearing at this moment to take leave, the sheikh threw himself back on his carpet, wept like a child, and suffered Barca Gana, who had crept close to him, to embrace his knees, and calling them all his sons, pardoned his repentant slave. No prince of the most civilized nation can be better loved by his subjects than this chief; and he is a most extraordinary instance, in the eastern world, of fearless bravery, virtue, and simplicity. ”

“ I saw five elephants, and the traces of a great many more. They hunt them, or set watch for them in their regular paths, sitting on the branch of some high tree which overhangs the path. Their weapon is a harpoon, with two moveable barbs, like our whale harpoons, but a shorter shaft, which is stuck into the end of the large wooden pestle with which the women beat the husks of the rice and millet in their mortars. The iron head is poisoned, and night being the time, they strike on the back as the animal passes under the branch. ”

“ As a thorn pierces whatever disturbs its retirement, so do my spear-hurling hosts dash their pointed javelins into the flesh of those who break our peace and our repose! When I cheer them on, miserable are they that oppose them! But he that submits, and acknowledges the One and Omnipotent, and his Prophet, blessed be God and his angels, shall receive mercy! I govern by the will of the most High, and by God’s decree, and administer the law of God, whose servant I am; and whoever dies under such law, paradise is his. ”

“ They were soon on the most familiar footing with me, and seem an artless and good-humoured people; but disgusting in their manners, and filthy in their persons: their sheep, goats, and poultry eat and sleep in the same hut with them, and a most intolerable stench is exhaled from all their dwellings. They do not appear to have the least affection for their offspring: a parent will sell his child for the merest trifle in the world, with no more remorse or repugnance than he would a chicken. ”

“ The depth of the well at Meshroo is from sixteen to twenty feet: the water good, and free from saline impregnations: the ground around is strewed with human skeletons, the slaves who have arrived exhausted with thirst and fatigue. The horrid consequences of the slave trade were strongly brought to our mind; and, although its horrors are not equal to those of the European trade, still they are sufficient to call up every sympathy, and rouse up every spark of humanity. They are dragged over deserts, water often fails, and provisions scarcely provided for the long and dreary journey. ”

“ The governor’s house is surrounded by a clay wall, about thirty feet high, in the form of a square, having large coozies, shady trees, and square clay towers inside.
The marriages of the Wawanies are very simple. The pagans make up matters with the girl first, give the father or mother a present, and all is right. The Mahometans read the fatha, and make a present; read it again, and part, when tired of one another. [93] The virtue of chastity I do not believe to exist in Wawa. Even the widow Zuma lets out her female slaves for hire, like the rest of the people of the town. ”

“ The wind raised the fine sand with which the extensive desert was covered, so as to fill the atmosphere, and render the immense space before us impenetrable to the eye beyond a few yards. The sun and clouds were entirely obscured, and a suffocating and oppressive weight accompanied the flakes and masses of sand, which, I had almost said, we had to penetrate at every step. At times we completely lost sight of the camels, though only a few yards before us. ”

“ Saw the traces of elephants every where, and last night the lions were roaring close to the camp. The heat of the sun from nine in the morning to three in the afternoon was the most oppressive I had ever felt it; and the dust raised by the number of men, and animals all pressing forward as hard as they could, made the air at times quite suffocating; and now that we are supposed to be surrounded by enemies, it is who shall be foremost: no halting is allowed. ”

“ When we saw the black ridge that extends along the wadey of Aghadem, the negroes, female slaves, and followers, set up screams of joy, and began dancing and singing with all their might. It was almost noon when we got to the well, and several slaves, belonging to an old Shouaa who was going to Hage, were speechless from want of water; yet they ran several miles to reach the well, like things distracted, with their mouths open, and eyes starting from their heads. ”

“ I have seen slaves exposed for sale here, the aged, infirm, and the idiot, also children at the breast, whose mothers had either fled, died, or been put to death. The domestic slaves are looked upon almost as the children of the family, and if they behave well, humanely treated: the males are often freed, and the females given in marriage to freemen, at other times to the male domestic slaves of the family; when such is the case a house is given to them, and if he be a mechanic, he lives in the town, and works at his trade ”

“ Tripoli has been so often described, that I shall pass it over in silence. Its Jews, its Arabs, its Moors, and Maraboots; the slave population, and the bashaw’s family; are all so well painted to the life in “Tully’s Letters,” as to require no further notice from me as a casual visitor. Neither is it my intention to enter into a minute description of the country between Tripoli and Mourzuk; the surface of which is not essentially different from that between Mourzuk and Bornou, and has already been noticed by Captain Lyon, and in the communications to the African Association. ”

“ My camels I could hardly get along, as they were nearly worn out with sores and fatigue. The country around Zurmie is well cultivated, and planted with millet, Indian corn, and dourra. The villages are numerous, the soil a light red clay, mixed with small crumbling rocks scattered over the surface, which is generally covered with a thin layer of sand.
The army has now increased to a large size, the forces of Zurmie and Jaroba having joined, the roads on every side crowded with horse and foot, camels, bullocks, and asses, all striving who shall get foremost. ”

“ Cowardice is ever visited in an Arab by the most disgraceful punishments; he is often bound, and led through the huts of the whole tribe, with the bowels and offal of a bullock, or some other animal, tied round his head; and amongst a people who only desire to be rich in order to increase the number of their wives, probably the greatest punishment of all is, that could even any woman be found who would receive him as a husband, which would be an extraordinary circumstance, no Arab would allow him to enter into his family with such a stain on his character as cowardice. ”

“ At 11.30 passed the town of Duncamie; after which the roads were the worst I have ever seen, or rather, in fact, there were no roads at all. Every where the surface was a swamp, the men sometimes up to their middles in water for half an hour at a time; the path leading through fields of millet and doura. Thus the road continued until 5.30, when it came on to rain, thunder, and lighten. My servants stripped to the buff, and put their shirts under the hides that covered the baggage, to preserve them dry until they halted. ”

“ Were an European to attain manhood without ever casting his eye upon the representation of a landscape on paper, would he immediately feel the particular beauties of the picture, the perspective and the distant objects? Certainly not: it is from our opportunities of contemplating works of art, even in the common walks of life, as well as to cultivation of mind, and associations of the finer feelings by an intercourse with the enlightened and accomplished, that we owe our quick perception in matters of this kind, rather than from nature. ”

“ The horse kept out of bow-shot, while the foot went up as they felt courage or inclination, and kept up a straggling fire with about thirty muskets, and the shooting of arrows. In front of the sultan, the Zegzeg troops had one French fusil: the Kano forces had forty-one muskets. These fellows, whenever they fired their pieces, ran out of bow-shot to load; all of them were slaves; not a single Fellata had a musket. The enemy kept up a sure and slow fight, seldom throwing away their arrows until they saw an opportunity of letting fly with effect. ”

“ I had bought a sheep for a dollar, a coin with which he was not conversant; and he asked if it was true that they came out of the earth? The explanation pleased him. “You are not Jews?” said he. “No,” said I. “Christians, then?” “Even so,” replied I. “I have read of you: you are better than Jews,” said he. “Are Jews white, like you?” “No,” replied I; “rather more like yourself, very dark.” “Really;” said the sheikh: “Why, are they not quite white? They are a bad people.” After staying a full hour, he took my hand, and said, “I see you are a sultan: I never saw any body like you. ”

“ I cannot omit bearing testimony to the singular and perhaps unprecedented fact, that we have already travelled sixty miles in eight days, with a numerous and heavy baggage, and about ten different relays of carriers, without losing so much as the value of a shilling public or private; a circumstance evincing not only somewhat more than common honesty in the inhabitants, but a degree of subordination and regular government which could not have been supposed to exist amongst a people hitherto considered barbarians. Humanity, however, is the same in every land ”

“ A solitary being, who thinks himself unobserved, is sometimes pointed out to you as having been one; but his misery protects him. So complete an overthrow of the most numerous tribe that inhabited the regency of Tripoli, and one whose riches and influence were so well known, has had the effect of humbling the turbulent spirit of the Arabs to a wonderful degree: the bashaw rules them literally with a rod of iron, and for the slightest cause he has the heads of their sheikhs over the gates of his palace in a few hours. ”

“ 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. ”

“ No sooner did the Mandara and Bornou troops see the defeat of the Arabs, than they, one and all, took to flight in the most dastardly manner, without having once been exposed to the arrows of the enemy, and in the utmost confusion. The sultan of Mandara led the way, who was prepared to take advantage of whatever plunder the success of the Arabs might throw in his way, but no less determined to leave the field the moment the fortune of the day appeared to be against them. ”

“ Bands of male and female slaves, accompanied by drums and flutes, and singing in chorus, were passing to and from the river with water, to mix the clay they were building with. Each great man has his part of the wall to build, like the Jews when they built the walls of Jerusalem, every one opposite his own house. ”

“ It is not good to pretend ignorance: I therefore told her I had no such medicine along with me. The same worthy personage took my friend Clapperton for an old man—from his light coloured beard and mustachios—to my great amusement, and his chagrin. He had prided himself on the strength and bushiness of his beard, and was not a little hurt that light colour should be taken as a mark of old age. None of them had ever seen a light coloured beard before, and all the old men dye their grey beards with henna, which gives them a colour approaching that of my friend. ”

“ I consider the establishment of a friendly intercourse with this potentate beyond the Great Desert, by whose means the unknown parts of Africa may at no distant period be visited, of the greatest importance, in every point of view. By encouraging a commercial intercourse, all the objects of African discovery must be advanced: not alone will the cause of science and research be benefited, but the real philanthropist must see, that an opening is now made, by means of which, with judicious arrangements, thousands of his fellow beings may be saved from slavery. ”

“ The fondness of an Arab for traditional history of the most distinguished actions of their remote ancestors is proverbial: professed story-tellers are ever the appendages to a man of rank: his friends will assemble before his tent, or on the platforms with which the houses of the Moorish Arabs are roofed, and there listen, night after night, to a continued history for sixty, or sometimes one hundred nights together. It is a great exercise of genius, and a peculiar gift, held in high estimation amongst them. ”

“ You have seen enough yourself of the dispositions of the inhabitants of the countries towards me, and their power, to know that this is true. It has pleased God to grant me a victory now, which may lead to quieter times; even the pilgrims have not for years gone by the Lake Fittre to Hadge. I am as anxious as you are, and with more reason, to open a road with Egypt from hence: I cannot, nor can my people, now go to Mecca, without passing through the bashaw of Tripoli’s territories, and there are reasons which make that disagreeable. ”

“ June 11.—The feast of the Aide having arrived, and the Rhamadan finished, the new moon was ushered in by loud shouts, and by the firing of guns, and our last rocket was sent up in honour of the feast. It was preceded by a volley fired by my negroes with two carabines, and two brace of pistols, with my own gun, which gave great pleasure; for certainly never were people so enamoured of gunpowder and smoke. By sunrise all the troops were under arms, and the sheikh and all the chiefs mounted, and dressed in their finest bornouses, rode round the camp, and prayed at a short distance. ”

“ In the evening I visited the town of Lari: it stands on an eminence, and may probably contain two thousand inhabitants. The huts are built of the rush which grows by the sides of the lake, have conical tops, and look very like well thatched stacks of corn in England. They have neat inclosures round them, made with fences of the same reed, and passages leading to them like labyrinths. In the inclosure is a goat or two, poultry, and sometimes a cow. The women were almost all spinning cotton, which grows well, though not abundantly, near the town and lake. ”

“ Neutrality has been the policy of Loggun during the whole of the wars that have laid waste Bornou: she has, at times, made great sacrifices to preserve it, but peace has been her reward; and should confidence and tranquillity be established by El Kanemy’s exertions in those provinces bordering on the great track of kafilas, Loggun will be a profitable resort for merchants: they are any one’s people who can gain an influence over them, and appeared to care as little about the Mohammedan forms of religion as we did ourselves. ”

“ By God’s help my people overcame them, but that is nothing; I am to the sheikh, in point of strength, as an egg is to a stone: if he wishes peace, and will no more molest me in my wilds, peace be with us—I will give up his people, his horses, and his arms, that have fallen into my hands; if not, I will keep them all, and may be add to their number. We are not easily beaten: by the head of the Prophet, I can and will, if I am forced, turn fish, and fly to the centre of the water; and if the sheikh comes himself against me, I will bring Waday against him. ”

“ Every probability is against such a barter being preferred by the African black. Let the words of the sheikh himself, addressed to us in the hearing of his people, speak the sentiments that have already found a place in his bosom:—“You say true, we are all sons of one father! You say, also, that the sons of Adam should not sell one another, and you know every thing! God has given you all great talents, but what are we to do? The Arabs who come here will have nothing else but slaves: why don’t you send us your merchants? ”

“ It is quite surprising with what terror these children of the desert view the Arabs, and the idea [38] they have of their invincibility; while they are smart active fellows themselves, and both ride and move better and quicker: but the guns! the guns! are their dread; and five or six of them will go round and round a tree, where an Arab has laid down his gun for a minute, stepping on tiptoe, as if afraid of disturbing it, talking to each other in a whisper, as if the gun could understand their exclamations ”

“ Dugheia is a ford and a ferry, where the sheikh, with all his people, pass the stream on their expeditions against the Begharmis: the ford is in a slanting direction, and between two sinuosities. When the river is at its greatest height, the water reaches up to the neck; it was now not above the arm-pits of a good sized man. The infantry, placing their spears and bags of corn on their heads, in their shields, cross with ease: the cavalry are moved over in canoes, and the horses swam at the sterns. ”

“ In passing these desert wilds, where hills disappear in a single night by the drifting of the sand, and where all traces of the passage, even of a large kafila, sometimes vanish in a few hours, the Tibboos have certain points in the dark sandstone ridges, which from time to time raise their heads in the midst of this dry ocean of sand, and form the only variety, and by them they steer their course. From one of these landmarks we waded through sand formed into hills from twenty to sixty feet in height, with nearly perpendicular sides, the camels blundering and falling with their heavy loads. ”