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.

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