well regulated. The Sheikh of the soug lets the stalls at so much a month, and the rent forms a part of the revenue of the Governor. The Sheikh of the soug also fixes the prices of all wares, for which he is entitled to a small commission, at the rate of fifty whydah or cowries, on every sale amounting to four dollars, or eight thousand cowries, according to the standard exchange between silver money and this shell currency. There is another custom regulated with equal certainty, and in universal practice: The seller returns to the buyer a stated part of the price, by way of blessing, as they term it, or of luck-penny, according to our less devout phraseology. This is a discount of two per cent. on the purchase money; but if the bargain is made in a hired house, it is the landlord who receives the luck

penny. I may here notice the great convenience of the cowrie, which no forgery can imitate; and which, by the dexterity of the natives in reckoning the largest sums, forms a ready medium of exchange in all transactions, from the lowest to the highest. Particular quarters are appropriated to distinct articles; the smaller wares being set out in booths in the middle, and cattle and bulky commodities being exposed to sale in the outskirts of the market-place: wood, dried grass, bean straw for provender, and beans, Guinea corn, Indian corn, wheat, &c., are in one quarter; goats, sheep, asses, bullocks, horses, and camels, in another; earthenware and indigo in a third; vegetables and fruit of all descriptions, such as yams, sweet potatoes, water and musk molons, papaw fruit, limes, cashew nuts, plums, mangoes, shaddocks, dates, &c., in a fourth, and so on. Wheaten flour is baked into bread of three different kinds; one like muffins, another like our twists, and the third a light puffy cake, with honey and melted butter poured over it. Rice is also made into little cakes. Beef and mutton are killed daily. Camel flesh is occasionally to be had, but is often meagre; the animal being commonly killed, as an Irish grazier might say, to save its life; it is esteemed a great delicacy, how

ever, by the Araos, when the carcase is fat. The native butchers are fully as knowing as our own; for they make a few slashes to show the fat, blow up the meat, and sometimes even stick a little sheep's wool on a leg of goats' flesh, to make it pass with the ignorant for mutton. When a fat bull is brought to market to be killed, its horns are dyed red with henna; drummers attend, a mob soon collects, the news of the animal's size and fatness spreads, and all run to buy. The colouring of the horns is effected by applying the green leaves of the henna tree, bruised into a kind of poultice. Near the shambles there is a number of cook-shops in the open air; each consisting merely of a wood fire, stuck round with wooden skewers, on which small bits of fat and lean meat, alternately mixed, and scarcely larger than a pennypiece each, are roasting. Every thing looks very clean and comfortable; and a woman does the honours of the table, with a mat dish cover placed on her knees, from which she serves her guests, who are squatted around her. Ground gussub water is retailed at hand, to those who can afford this beverage at their repast: the price, at most, does not exceed twenty-cowries, or about two farthings and four-tenths of a farthing English money, estimating the dollar at five shillings. Those who have houses eat at home; women never resort to cook-shops, and even at home eat apart from men.

The interior of the market is filled with stalls of bamboo, laid out in regular streets; where the more costly wares are sold, and articles of dress, and other little matters of use or ornament made and repaired. Bands of musicians parade up and down to attract purchasers to particular booths. Here are displayed coarse writing paper, of French manufacture, brought from Barbary; scissors and knives, of native workmanship; crude antimony and tin, both the produce of the country; unwrought silk of a red colour, which they make into belts and slings, or weave in stripes into the finest cotton tobes; amulets, and bracelets of brass; beads of glass, coral, and

amber; finger rings of pewter, and a few silver trinkets, but none of gold; tobes, turkadees, and turban shawls; coarse woollen cloths of all colours; coarse calico; Moorish dresses; the cast off gaudy garbs of the Mamelukes of Barbary; pieces of Egyptian linen, checked or striped with gold; sword blades from Malta, &c. &c. The market is crowded from sunrise to sunset every day, not excepting their Sabbath, which is kept on Friday. The merchants understand the benefits of monopoly as well as any people in the world; they take good care never to overstock the market, and if any thing falls in price, it is immediately with drawn for a few days. The market is regulated with the greatest fairness, and the regulations are strictly and impartially enforced. If a tobe or turkadee, purchased here, is carried to Bornou, or any other distant place, without being opened, and is there discovered to be of inferior quality, it is immediately sent back, as a matter of course; the name of the dylala, or broker, being written on the inside of every parcel. In this case the dylala must find out the seller, who, by the laws of Kano, is forthwith obliged to refund the purchase money.

The slave-market is held in two long sheds, one for males, the other for females, where they are seated in rows, and carefully decked out for the exhibition; the owner, or one of his trusty slaves, sitting near them. Young or old, plump or withered, are sold without distinction: but in other respects, the buyer inspects them with the utmost attention, and somewhat in the same manner as a volunteer seaman is examined by a surgeon on entering the navy: he looks at the tongue, teeth, eyes, limbs, and endeavours to detect rupture by a forced cough. If they are afterwards found to be faulty or unsound, or even without any specific objection, they may be returned within three days. When taken home they are stripped of their finery, which is sent back to their former owner. Slavery is here so common, or the mind of slaves is so constituted, that they always ap

peared much happier than their masters; the women, especially, singing with the greatest glee all the time they are at work. People become slaves by birth, or by capture in war. The Felatahs frequently manumit slaves at the death of their master, or on the occasion of some religious festival. The letter of manumission must be signed before the Cadi, and attested by two witnesses; and the mark of a cross is used by the illiterate among them, just as with us. The male slaves are employed in the various trades of building, working in iron, weaving, making shoes or clothes, and in traffic; the female slaves in spinning, baking, and selling water in the streets. Of the various people who frequent Kano, the Nyffuans are the most celebrated for their industry. As soon as they arrive, they go to market and buy cotton for their women to spin, who, if not employed in this way, make billam for sale, which is a kind of flummery made of flour and tamarinds. The very slaves of this people are in great request, being invariably excellent tradesmen; and when once obtained, they are never sold again out of the country.

I bought, for three Spanish dollars, an English green cotton umbrella, an article I little expected to meet with, yet by no means uncom mon. My Moorish servants, in their figurative language, were wont to give it the name of "the cloud." I found, on inquiry, that these umbrellas are brought from the shores of the Mediterranean, by the way of Ghadarmis.

A large kafila of Tuaricks, loaded solely with salt, arrived here from Bilhna. The Arabs told me, it consisted of three thousand camels.

I had a visit from the Governor's eldest son, a stupid fellow, who was afraid to taste a cup of tea with which I presented him. He bluntly told me, I possessed the power of changing people into rats, cats, dogs, and monkeys. I made a servant drink the tea he had refused, and then remarked, "Thank God, neither I nor any one else is able to work such wonders, otherwise both of us probably had been long ago metamor

phosed into asses, and compelled to bear burdens on our backs." He affected to blame the people of the town for these reports, and told me, they were further persuaded, that, by reading in my book, I could at any time turn a handful of earth into gold. I easily refuted this absurdity, by asking him why I applied to Hadje Hat Salah for money, if I knew such a secret? He now became somewhat tranquillized, and sipped a little of the tea, but with fear and trembling.

Two massi dubu, or jugglers, came to my door, Two snakes were let out of a bag, when one of the jugglers began to beat a little drum. The snakes immediately reared themselves on their tail, and made a kind of sham dance. The juggler afterwards played various tricks with them, sometimes wreathing them round his neck, coiling them in his bosom, or throwing them among the people. On pointing his finger at their mouth, they immediately raised themselves up in an attitude to spring forward; but after having exasperated them to the utmost, he had only to spit in their face to make them retreat quite crest-fallen. I measured one of them: it was six feet three inches long; the head large, flat, and blunted, and along the neck a kind of gills full two inches in breadth, and five inches in length, which they elevated when angry. The back and belly were of a dull white, and the sides of a dark lead colour. Between the gills there were five red stripes across the throat, decreasing in size from the mouth downwards. The venomous fangs had been extracted; but still, to guard against all possible injury, the fellow who played tricks with them, had a large roll of cloth wound round the right arm. Their bite is said to be mortal, and to prove fatal to a horse or a cow in half an hour.

All the date trees, of which there is a great number, as well as the fig and papaw trees, &c., together with the waste ground, and fields of wheat, onions, &c., bordering on the morass, belong to the Governor. The date trees bear twice a year, before and after the annual rains, which fall be

tween the middle of May and the end of August.

Cotton, after it is gathered from the shrub,is prepared by the careful housewife, or a steady female slave, by laying a quantity of it on a stone, or a piece of board, along which she twirls two slender iron rods, about a foot in length, and thus dexterously sepa rates the seeds from the cotton wool. The cotton is afterwards teased or opened out with a small bone, something like an instrument used by us in the manufacture of hat felt. Women then spin it out of a basket upon a slender spindle. The basket always contains a little pocket mirror, used at least every five minutes, for adjusting or contemplating their charms. It is now sold in yarn, or made into cloth. The common cloth of the country is only three or four inches broad. The weaver's loom is very simple, having a fly and treadles like ours, but no beam; and the warp, fastened to a stone, is drawn along the ground as wanted. The shuttle is passed by the hand. When close at work they are said to weave from twenty to thirty fathoms of cloth a day. Kano is famed over all central Africa for the dyeing of cloth; for which process there are numerous establishments. Indigo is here prepared in rather a different manner from that of India and America. When the plant is ripe, the fresh green tops are cut off, and put into a wooden trough about a foot and a half across, and one foot deep, in which, when pounded, they are left to ferment. When dry, this indigo looks like earth mixed with decayed grass, retains the shape of the trough; and three or four lumps being tied together with Indian corn-stalks, it is carried in this state to market. The apparatus for dyeing is a large pot of clay, about nine feet deep, and three feet broad, sunk in the earth. The indigo is thrown in, mixed with the ashes of the residuum of a former dyeing. These are prepared from the lees of the dye-pot, kneaded up and dried in the sun, after which they are burned. In the process of dyeing, cold water alone is used. The articles to be dyed remain in the pot three or four days, and are frequently

stirred up with a pole; besides which they are well wrung out every night, and hung up to dry till morning, during which time the dye-pot is covered with a straw mat, After the tobes, turkadees, &c., are dyed, they are sent to the clothglazer, who places them between mats, laid over a large block of wood, and two men, with a wooden mallet in each hand, continue to beat the cloth, sprinkling a little water from time to time upon the mats, until it acquires a japan-like gloss. The block for beating the tobes is part of the trunk of a large tree; and when brought to the gates of the city, the proprietor musters three or four drummers, at whose summons the mob never fails to assemble, and the block is gratuitously rolled to the workshop.

The women of this country and of Bornou, dye their hair blue, as well as their hands, feet, legs, and eyebrows. They prefer the paint called shunee, made in the following manner :-They have an old tobe slit up, and dyed a second time. They make a pit in the ground, moistening it with water, in which they put the old tobe, first embedded in sheep's dung, and well drenched with water, and then fill up the pit with wet earth. In winter the fire for domestic purposes is made close to the spot, and the pit remains unopened for ten days. In summer no fire is required; and after seven or eight days the remuants of the old tobe, so decayed in texture as barely to hang together, are taken out and dried in the sun for use. A little of the paint being mixed with water in a shell, with a feather in one hand and a lookingglass in the other, the lady carefully embellishes her sable charms. The arms and legs, when painted, look as if covered with dark blue gloves and boots..

They show some ingenuity in the manufacture of leathern jars, fashioning them upon a clay mould out of the raw hide, previously well soaked in water these jars serve to contain fat, melted butter, honey, and bees'

wax.

They are also acquainted with the art of tanning; in which they make

use of the milky juice of a plant called in Arabic, brumbugh, and in the Bornouese tongue, kys. It is an annual plant, and grows in dry, sandy situations to the height of five or six feet, with a stem about an inch in diameter. It has broad thick leaves, and bears a small flower, in colour and shape not unlike a pink. The fruit is green, and larger than our garden-turnip. It contains a fine white silky texture, intermixed with seeds like those of the melon, and becomes ripe some time before the rains commence, during which the plant withers. The juice is collected in a horn or gourd, from incisions made in the stem. It is poured over the inner surface of the skin to be tanned, which is then put in some vessel or other; when, in the course of a day or two, the smell becomes extremely offensive, and the hair rubs off with ease. They afterwards take the heans or seeds of a species of mimosa, called in Arabic, gurud. These, when pounded in a wooden mortar, form a coarse black powder, which is thrown into warm water, wherein the skin is steeped for one day; being frequently well pressed and hard wrung, to make it imbibe the liquor. It is then spread out in the sun, or hung up in the wind, and when half dry, is again well rubbed between the hands, to render it soft and pliant for use, To colour it red, they daub it over with a composition, made of trona and the outer leaves of red Indian corn, first beaten into a powder and mixed up with water.

The Negroes here are excessively polite and ceremonious, especially to those advanced in years. They salute one another, by laying the hand on the breast, making a bow, and inquiring, "Kona lafia? Ki ka kykee. Fo fo da rana?" How do you do? I hope you are well. How have you passed the heat of the day?" The fast question corresponds in their climate to the circumstantiality with which our honest countryfolks inquire about a good night's rest.

Both men and women colour their teeth and lips with the flowers of the gourjee tree, and of the tobacco-plant. The former I only saw once or twice; the latter is carried every day to inar

ket, beautifully arranged in large baskets. The flowers of both these plants, rubbed on the lips and teeth, give them a blood-red appearance, which is here thought a great beauty. This practice is comparatively rare in Bornou.

Chewing the goorah nut, or snuff mixed with trona, is a favourite habit. This use of snuff is not confined to men, as is the case in Bornou, where the indulgence is not permitted to women. Snuff is very seldom taken up the nostrils, according to our custom. Smoking tobacco is a universal practice, both of Negroes and Moors. Women, however, are debarred this fashionable gratification. The practitioners of the healing art in this country, as formerly in Europe, officiate likewise as barbers; and are, at least, very dexterous in the latter capacity.

Blindness is a prevalent disease. Within the walls of the city, there is a separate district, or village, for people afflicted with this infirmity, who have certain allowances from the Governor, but who also beg in the streets and market-place. Their little town is extremely neat, and the coozees well built. With the exception of the slaves, none but the blind are permitted to live here, unless on rare occasions a one-eyed man is received into their community. I was informed the lame had a similar establishment; but I did not see it.

Every one is buried under the floor of his own house, without monument or memorial; and among the commonalty, the house continues occupied as usual; but among the great there is more refinement, and it is ever after abandoned. The corpse being washed, the first chapter of the Koran is read over it, and the interment takes place the same day. The bodies of slaves are dragged out of the town, and left a prey to vultures and wild beasts. In Kano they do not even take the trouble to convey them beyond the walls, but throw the corpse into the morass, or nearest pool of water.

I waited on the Governor at seven in the morning. He informed me that the Sultan had sent a messenger express, with orders to have me con

ducted to his capital, and to supply me with every thing necessary for my journey. He begged me to state what I stood in need of. I assured him that the King of England, my master, had liberally provided for all iny wants; but that I felt profoundly grateful for the kind offers of the Sultan, and had only to crave from him the favour of being ́ attended by one of his people as a guide. He instantly called a faircomplexioned Felatah, and asked me if I liked him. I accepted him with thanks, and took leave. I afterwards went by invitation to visit the Governor of Hadyja, who was here on his return from Sackatoo. I found him a black man, about fifty years of age, sitting among his own people at the upper end of the room, which is usually a little raised, and is reserved in this country for the master of the house, or visitors of high rank. He was well acquainted with my travelling name; for the moment I entered, he said laughing, "How do you do, Abdullah? Will you come and see me at Hadyja on your return?" I answered," God willing," with due Moslem solemnity. "You are a Christian, Abdullah?" "Yes.” "And what are you come to see?" "The country." "What do you think of it?" "It is a fine country, but very sickly." At this he smiled, and again asked, "Would you Christians allow us to come and see your country?" I said, "Certainly." "Would you force us to become Christians?" By no means, we never meddle with a man's religion." "What!" says he, " and do you ever pray?" "Sometimes; our religion commands us to pray always; but we pray in secret, and not in public, except on Sundays." One of his people abruptly asked, what a Christian was. Why, a Kafir," rejoined the Governor. "Where is your Jew servant?" again asked the Governor; you ought to let me see him." "Excuse me," said I," he is averse to it; and I never allow my servants to be molested for religious opinions." "Well, Abdullah, thou art a man of understanding, and must come and see me at Hadyja.” I then retired, and the Arabs afterwards told me he

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