I Also
Accompanied Them, And Took Up My Station Close To The Gadado.
The march
had been the most disorderly that can be imagined; horse and foot
intermingling in the greatest confusion,
All rushing to get forward;
sometimes the followers of one chief tumbling amongst those of another,
when swords were half unsheathed, but all ending in making a face, or
putting on a threatening aspect. We soon arrived before Coonia, the
capital of the rebels of Goobur, which was not above half a mile in
diameter, being nearly circular, and built on the bank of one of the
branches of the rivers or lakes, which I have mentioned. Each chief, as
he came up, took his station, which, I suppose, had previously been
assigned to him. The number of fighting men brought before the town could
not, I think, be less than fifty or sixty thousand, horse and foot, of
which the foot amounted to more than nine-tenths. For the depth of two
hundred yards all round the walls, was a dense circle of men and horses.
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 the front of the Sulfcaa, the
Zeg-Zeg 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:
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