Supplies, However, Often Fail In This Dreary Journey, A Want First Felt By The Slaves, Many Of Whom Perish With Hunger And Fatigue.

Clapperton heard the doleful tale of a mother, who had seen her child dashed to the ground, while she herself was compelled by the lash to drag on an exhausted frame.

Yet, when at all tolerably treated, they are very gay, an observation generally made in regard to slaves, but this gaiety, arising only from the absence of thought, probably conceals much secret wretchedness.

The regulations of the market of Kano seem to be good, and strictly enforced. A sheik superintends the police, and is said even to fix the prices. The dylalas or brokers, are men of somewhat high character; packages of goods are often sold unopened bearing merely their mark. If the purchaser afterwards finds any defect, he returns it to the agent, who must grant compensation. The medium of exchange is not cloth as in Bornou, nor iron as in Loggun, but cowries or little shells, brought from the roast, twenty of which are worth a halfpenny, and four hundred and eighty make a shilling, so that in paying a pound sterling, one has to count over nine thousand six hundred cowries. Amid so many strangers, there is ample room for the trade of the restaurateur, which is carried on by a female seated on the ground, with a mat on her knees, on which are spread vegetables, gussub water, and bits of roasted meat about the size of a penny; these she retails to her customers squatted around her.

Enter page number Go  Previous Next
Page 464 of 1124
Words from 126526 to 126791 of 309561