Travels Of Richard And John Lander Into The Interior Of Africa For The Discovery Of The Course And Termination Of The Niger By Robert Huish
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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 deg.
37' 33" N., longitude 5 deg. 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.
This gay widow appeared by no means disposed to waste any time by
making regular approaches, like those by which widow Wadman
undermined the outworks, and then the citadel of the unsuspecting
uncle Toby, but she was determined at once to carry the object of her
attack by storm.
The widow Zuma attempted in the first place to ingratiate herself
with the Europeans, by sending them hot provisions every day in
abundance, during their stay at Wawa. She calculated very justly,
that gratitude is the parent of love, and therefore imagined that as
the Europeans could not be otherwise than grateful to her, for the
delicacies, with which she so liberally supplied them, it would soon
follow as a natural consequence, that their hearts would overflow
with love; at all events it was not to be supposed, that both master
and man could remain callous to the potency of her corporeal charms.
Finding, however, that the hearts of the Europeans were much like the
rocks of her native land, perfectly impenetrable, she had recourse to
another stratagem, which is generally attended with success.
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