Hugh Clapperton

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We had not been in our hut more than a couple of hours when the Gadado, his brother, Hadji Ben Sallah, and several of the principal inhabitants of Soccatoo, entered, and demanded, in the name of Bello, the presents intended for the sheik of Bornou, together with all the arms and ammunition we did not want ourselves. My master became deeply agitated when he had heard their errand, and rising up from his couch, exclaimed with much energy and bitterness—“There is no faith in any of you; you are an unjust people; you are worse than highway robbers.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ I had not undressed, but had my horse saddled, and the camels loaded. My servants would have run too, but I made them stop and load the camels, when I sent them off with those of the Gadado, which now only remained.
The flags of the Fellatas are white, like the French, and their staff is a branch of a palm. They are not borne by men of honour, but by their slaves. The sultan had six borne before him; each of the governors had two. They also all dress in white tobes and trowsers, as an emblem of their purity in faith and intentions. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Last night we had a visit from the caboceer and the principal people of the town, to inquire what would make their town large and flourishing as it once was. I told them, that to encourage people to come and settle in it by treating them well, and also to encourage them to come and trade, and plant plenty of corn and yams, and then poor people would make money, and get children; that no man ought to have one hundred wives and another none, but that every man ought to have only one wife. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ After waiting about two hours for carriers, the old caboceer said with the most invincible gravity that he would not procure a single carrier, alleging that he had not received enough for a present. We then declared we would return to Badagry, and let the king know of his conduct, and made a show of going that way; but the old caboceer was not in the least moved. Poor Captain Adamooli, however, prostrated himself before me, laid hold of my legs, and said he should lose his head if I went back. I therefore returned, and he loaded his own people; the old wretch not giving us a single man. ”

“ I was both surprised and pleased to observe the neatness of this town, and the cleanliness of its inhabitants. Every inch of spare ground was planted with tobacco, and very tastefully fenced round with dried tobacco stalks. The natives manufacture large quantities of cotton cloths, which are neat and durable; and at the north end of the town are several dye-pits. The wall surrounding the town is in rather a ruinous state. The chief welcomed me to his house, and offered me the best apartment in it. Provisions were plentiful, and we fared exceedingly well. ”

“ The widow Zuma has been kind enough to send me provisions ready cooked, in great abundance, ever since I have been here. Now that she has failed with Richard, she has offered Pascoe a handsome female slave for a wife, if he could manage to bring about matters with me. Not being much afraid of myself, and wishing to see the interior arrangement of her house, I went and visited her. I found her house large, and full of male and female slaves; the males lying about the outer huts, the females more in the interior. ”

“ RESIDENCE AT EYEO, OR KATUNGA, THE CAPITAL OF YOURIBA.
Tuesday, January 24th.—Early this morning the king paid us a visit, accompanied by his favourite eunuch and Abaco the messenger. He had received previous information that he wished to have the presents intended for him this night; and such is the crooked policy of these petty sovereigns of Africa, that no present can be given, no business or transaction of importance can be done openly: all must be conducted under the cover of night, and with the greatest secrecy, from the highest to the lowest. ”

“ Saturday, 11th.—Cool and cloudy; during the night, heavy storm of wind, with thunder and lightning. At daylight I had every thing ready for starting; the butcher’s son having arrived last night, mounted on a little mare, with a saddle, and he without shoes or boots. On leaving Watatoo, I gave the two head men of the village a fathom of blue cloth each, as they had been as good as their circumstances would admit, and they promised to send every thing after me as soon as possible. ”

“ After a little preliminary conversation, Bello asked me which route I should prefer. Although my master had advised me to proceed with the Arabs to Fezzan, just before his death, I much feared that the papers intrusted to my care would be stolen, and myself murdered, by that wily and treacherous race, whose behaviour to my master, from the time of his arrival in Houssa, I very much disliked; and would rather cast myself, unarmed and unprotected, upon the good faith of the natives, than go with them. ”

“ This world,” continued she, “is nothing without the men after all. If three of the thieves had only come, they might have taken the town and all that was in it, for the gates were all open, and we had not sense to shut them.”—After breakfast and a good sleep, I waited on the Gadado, and told him that, as all was happily quiet, I should return to Soccatoo at day-break to-morrow, as I had neither bed nor baggage with me. ”

“ Notwithstanding all this against them, they are a people of a natural good disposition; for when it is considered that they have been twice burnt out of the town by the enemy within the last six years, and that they have had a civil war desolating the country for the last seven years, and been subject to the inroads of the Fellatas during twenty years, and having neither established law nor government but what a present sense of right and wrong dictates, I am surprised that they are as good as they are. ”

“ My servant, with a load on his head, was obliged to lead on the fatigued bullock; and I, with another servant, managed to drive it along at a quick pace, but not without incessant beating, which, in a country like ours, famed for its humanity, would have appeared extreme cruelty; but a man will do many things here in Africa, that his humanity would revolt at in our more happy country. ”

“ At the time of harvest, when they cut and tie up the grain, each slave gets a bundle of the different sorts of grain, about a bushel of our measure, for himself. The grain on his own ground is entirely left for his own use, and he may dispose of it as he thinks proper. At the vacant seasons of the year he must attend to the calls of his master, whether to accompany him on a journey, or go to war, if so ordered.
The children of a slave are also slaves, and when able are usually sent out to attend the goats and sheep, and, at a more advanced age, the bullocks and larger cattle ”

“ Our place of encampment was soon filled by the inhabitants of the neighbouring little towns, having raw goat’s flesh, boiled beans, millet, and pudding for sale; as usual all Cumbrie, and every two or three women attended by an armed companion to see fair play; the men and women dressed in the same gay style as usual; upon the whole they were a fine, active, clean-looking people: most of the men had a bastard kind of greyhound following them, whose necks were ornamented with colours and strings of cowries. ”

“ Lofty trees, covered with the most beautiful foliage, casting their welcome shade along the earth; plots of ground, planted with corn, every here and there enriching the landscape, and vegetation springing up at every step in the richest luxuriance, afforded a gratifying and delightful relief to the sameness of African scenery, which is welcomed with emotions of pleasure that a person who has never wandered in these regions can never know. The town contains six or seven thousand inhabitants, who are all dressed with peculiar neatness ”

“ The view on leaving Afoora was beautiful [20] from the hills; all the valleys being filled with streams of water running to the north-west, to join a larger river said to empty itself into the Lagos. Halted at the town of Assulah, and received plenty of yams, fowls, plantains, eggs, and a goat; the inhabitants were as usual very kind and civil, and may consist of five or six thousand people: the town is surrounded by a new made ditch, on account of the existing war, and they are building a number of houses; the women are very shy, and they say that adultery is punished with death. ”

“ He attended us some distance out of town with the whole population of Laboo around him, the women singing in chorus and holding up both hands as we passed; and groups of people were kneeling down and apparently wishing us a good journey. The country well cultivated and beautiful, rising into hill and dale: from the tops of the hills we had distant views, the road leading through plantations of millet, yams, calavances, and Indian corn. ”

“ The food of the free and the slave is nearly the same; perhaps the master or mistress may have a little fat flesh, fish, or fowl, more than their slaves, and his meat is served in a separate place and dish; but the greatest man or woman in the country is not ashamed at times to let their slaves eat out of the same dish, but a woman is never allowed to eat with a man. Their food consists of ground maize, made into puddings or loaves, and about half a pound each, sold at five cowries each in the market ”