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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The Young Then Go To Dance
And Play, If It Be Moonlight, And The Old To Lounge And Converse In
The Open Square Of The House, Or In The Outer Coozie, Where They
Remain Until The Cool Of The Night, Or Till The Approach Of Morning
Drives Them Into Shelter.
The majority of the inhabitants of Koolfu are professedly
Mahommedans; the rest are pagans, who once a year, in common with the
other people of Nyffee, repair to a high hill in one of the southern
provinces, on which they sacrifice a black bull, a black sheep, and a
black dog.
On their fetish houses are sculptured, as in Youriba, the
lizard, the crocodile, the tortoise, and the boa, with sometimes
human figures. Their language is a dialect of the Youribanee, but the
Houssa is that of the market. They are civil, but the truth is not in
them; and to be detected in a lie is not the smallest disgrace; it
only causes a laugh. The men drink very hard, even the Mahommedans
and the women are not particularly celebrated for their chastity,
although they succeeded in cheating both Clapperton and Lander; they
were not, however, robbed of a single article, and they were
uniformly treated with perfect respect. The people seem, indeed, by
no means devoid of kindness of disposition. When the town of Bali was
burned down, every person sent next day what they could spare of
their goods, to assist the unfortunate inhabitants. In civilized
England, when a fire takes place, thieving and robbery are the order
of the day, but during the conflagration at Bali, not an article was
stolen.
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