Chapter VII (4)

The government of Bornou has ever been, until during the last fifteen years, an elective absolute monarchy, the brother sometimes succeeding, to the exclusion of the son. Achmet Ali, who, descended from a royal line of ancestors, was sultan in 1808, contended for several years with a powerful people from the westward, called the Felatah. These people had gradually been increasing in power for more than half a century, had established themselves firmly in Soudan; where Bello their chief, assuming the government, dictated laws to a numerous and powerful black population.

Soon after the conquest of Bornou by the Felatahs, El Kanemy formed a plan for delivering that country from the bondage into which it had fallen; and, stirring up the Kanemboo to assist him by a well planned tale of having been called by a vision to this undertaking, he made his first campaign with scarcely 400 followers, and defeated an army of the Felatahs nearly 8,000 strong. He followed up this victory with great promptitude and resolution, and in less than ten months had been the conqueror in forty different battles.

He refused the offer of being made sultan; and placing Mohammed, the brother of sultan Achmet, on the throne, he, first doing homage himself, insisted on the whole army following his example. The sheikh built for Sultan Mohammed his present residence, New Birnie, establishing himself at Angornou, three miles distant, and retaining the dictatorship of the kingdom, _pro tempore_. Such a commencement was extremely politic, on the part of the sheikh; but his aspiring mind was not calculated to rest satisfied with such an arrangement.

The whole population now flocked to his standard, and appeared willing to invest him with superior power, and a force to support it. One of the first offers they made was to furnish him with twenty horses per day, until a more regular force was organized, which continued for four years[63]. He now raised the green flag, the standard of the Prophet, refused all titles but that of the “servant of God!” and after clearing the country of the Felatahs, he proceeded to punish all those nations who had given them assistance, and with the slaves, the produce of these wars, rewarded his faithful Kanemboo and other followers for their fidelity and attachment.

Even in the breasts of some of the Bornouese, successful war had raised a passion for conquest: their victories, no less a matter of surprise than delight, crest-fallen and dispirited as they were, gave a stimulus to their exertions, and they became accustomed to warfare and regardless of danger.

For the last eight years the sheikh has carried on a very desperate and bloody war with the sultan of Begharmi, who governs a powerful and warlike people, inhabiting a very large tract of country south of Bornou, and on the eastern bank of the Shary. Although meeting with some reverses, and on one occasion losing his eldest son in these wars, who was greatly beloved by the people, he has, upon the whole, been successful; and is said to have, from first to last, destroyed and led into slavery more than thirty thousand of the sultan of Begharmi’s subjects, besides burning his towns and driving off his flocks.

The late sultan of Bornou, who always accompanied the sheikh to the field, also lost his life in these wars: his death was attributable to his immense size and weight; the horse he rode refused to move on with him from fatigue, although at the time not more than 500 yards from the gates of Angala, and he fell into the hands of the enemy. He died, however, with great dignity, and six of his eunuchs and as many of his slaves, who would not quit him, shared his fate. A sultan of Bornou carries no arms, and it is beneath his dignity to defend himself: sitting down, therefore, under a tree, with his people around him, he received his enemies, and hiding his face in the shawl which covered his head, was pierced with a hundred spears.

Ibrahim, his brother, succeeded him, who is now not more than twenty-two years old. The sultanship of Bornou is but a name: the court still keeps up considerable state, and adheres strictly to its ancient customs, and this is the only privilege left them. When the sultan gives audience to strangers, he sits in a kind of cage, made of the bamboo, through the bars of which he looks on his visitors, who are not allowed to approach within seventy or eighty yards of his person.

Their dresses are extremely rich, and consist of striped silks and linens of various colours, from Cairo and Soudan. When they take the field, their appearance is truly grotesque: the sultan is preceded by six men, bearing frum-frums (trumpets) of cane, ten feet long: an instrument peculiar to royalty, but which produces a music neither agreeable nor inspiring. Their own heads, and those of their horses, are hung round with charms, sewed up in leather cases, red, green, and white; and altogether, with their wadded doublets and large heads, they would be more apropos in a pantomime than in a field of battle.

At the present moment there is but one power in central Africa to be at all compared to the sheikh of Bornou in importance,—that of Bello, the Felatah chieftain; and from the sensation created throughout the neighbourhood of Kano and Kashna, on his late defeat of the Begharmi force, I imagine he would find but little difficulty in extending his empire in that direction: he has turned all his victories to the advantage of those for whom he conquered, by attending to their improvement in moral and religious duties. His subjects are the most strict Mussulmans in all the black country, and their respect for us gradually increased on ascertaining that we really had a religion of our own, and obeyed its ordinances by praying, if not by fasting,—which they at first doubted. Our determination to travel fearlessly and boldly in our own characters, as Englishmen and Christians, mistrusting no one, so far from proving an impediment to our progress, as we were assured from all quarters it would do, excited a degree of confidence to which we may, in a great measure, attribute the success which has attended our steps.

Wherever El Kanemy has power, Europeans, and particularly Englishmen, will be hospitably and kindly received.

Bornou was always infested by robbers, who way-laid and plundered travellers within sight of the walls of the capital: such an event now never occurs, and the roads through the sheikh’s government are probably as safe as any even in happy England itself.

Although harassed by the constant wars in which he has been engaged, yet has not the sheikh been unmindful of the benefits which an extended commerce would confer upon his people, nor of the importance of improving their moral condition, by exciting a desire to acquire, by industry and trade, more permanent and certain advantages than are to be obtained by a system of plunder and destructive warfare. Arab or Moorish merchants, the only ones who have hitherto ventured amongst them, are encouraged and treated with great liberality. Several of them are known to have returned, after a residence of less than nine years, with fortunes of fifteen and twenty thousand dollars; and which might, perhaps, by a more intelligent trader, have been doubled, as the commodities with which they barter are mostly European produce, purchased at Tripoli, at prices full two hundred and fifty per cent. above their prime cost.

The usual calculation of a Moorish merchant is, that a camel load of merchandize, bought at Mourzuk for 150 dollars, will make a return, in trading with Bornou, of 500 dollars, after paying all expenses. Persons in Fezzan will send three camel loads in charge of one man, and, after paying all the expenses out of the profits, give him a third of the remainder for his labour.

From the circumstance, however, of there being no direct trade from this country with Tripoli, or, I believe, with any of the ports of Barbary, English goods (the demand for which is daily increasing amongst a population of not less than five millions), within six hundred miles of the coast, are sold at enormous prices, although frequently of the very worst description[64].

The principal return which Moorish merchants obtain for their goods consists in slaves; but Bornou is scarcely any thing more than a mart or rendezvous of kafilas from Soudan. These unhappy victims are handed over to the Tripoli and Fezzan traders, who are waiting with their northern produce to tempt the cupidity of the slave merchants of Soudan. I think I may say, that neither the sheikh himself, nor the Bornou people, carry on this traffic without feelings of disgust, which even habit cannot conquer. Of the existence of a foreign slave trade, or one which consigns these unfortunates to Christian masters, they are not generally aware at Bornou; and so contrary to the tenets of his religion—of which he is a strict observer—would be such a system of barter, that one may easily conclude, the sheikh of Bornou would be willing to assist, with all the power he possesses, in any plan which might have for its object the putting a final stop to a commerce of this nature.

Already the desire of exchanging whatever their country produces, for the manufactures of the more enlightened nations of the North, exists in no small degree amongst them: a taste for luxury, and a desire of imitating such strangers as visit them, are very observable; and the man of rank is ever distinguished by some part of his dress being of foreign materials, though sometimes of the most trifling kind. It is true that these propensities are not yet fully developed; but they exist, and give unequivocal proof of a tendency to civilization, and the desire of cultivating an intercourse with foreigners.

Every approach which the African has made towards civilization, even to the knowledge of, and the belief in, the existence of a Supreme Being, is attributable to the intrepid Arab spirit, which, despising the dread of the apparently interminable deserts that separate the Black from the White population, has alone penetrated to any extent into the country of these before unenlightened savages,—carrying with him his religion and his manners, and converting thousands to the Mohammedan faith.

The eagerness with which all classes of people listened to our proposals for establishing a frequent communication by means of European merchants, and the protection promised by the sheikh to such as should arrive within the sphere of his influence, particularly if they were English, excites an anxious hope that some measures will be adopted for directing the labours of a population of millions to something more congenial to the humanity and the philanthropy of the age we live in, than the practice of a system of predatory warfare, which has chiefly for its object the procuring of slaves, as the readiest and most valuable property to trade with, on every appearance of the merchants from the north at their markets.

Every probability is against such a barter being preferred by the African black. Let the words of the sheikh himself, addressed to us in the hearing of his people, speak the sentiments that have already found a place in his bosom:—“You say true, we are all sons of one father! You say, also, that the sons of Adam should not sell one another, and you know every thing! God has given you all great talents, but what are we to do? The Arabs who come here will have nothing else but slaves: why don’t you send us your merchants? You know us now; and let them bring their women with them, and live amongst us, and teach us what you talk to me about so often, to build houses and boats, and make rockets.” The reader will conceive with what exulting hearts we heard these words from the lips of a ruler in the centre of Africa.

The return which European traders might, in the first instance, obtain, would not, probably, be sufficient to employ large capitals, but that would annually improve; and the great profits would, in some measure, compensate for the deficiency. The propensity in the natives to war upon and plunder their neighbours, from the profit arising from such a system, would gradually subside, when other more profitable occupations were encouraged amongst them. The Kanemboos who inhabit the northern and eastern borders of the lake Tchad are a bold and hardy people, extremely expert with the spear, swift of foot, and practised hunters.

The tusk of the elephant, the horns of the buffalo, both which may be obtained at a very low price, and in exchange for English goods, are eagerly bought even at Tripoli, and at all the European ports in the Mediterranean, at high prices: the cultivation of indigo, also, of a very superior kind, might be carried to any extent, as it now grows wild, as well as senna, in many parts of the country. The zibet, or musk from the civet cat, is also to be procured, about two hundred per cent. lower than it will sell for in Tripoli.

The following are the prices in Bornou, of some of those articles which would be most esteemed in Europe, viz.—

Ostrich skins, from three to six dollars each.

Elephants’ teeth, two dollars the 100 lbs.

Raw hides may also be purchased, at about two dollars for 100 skins.

Probably the strong desire of the sheikh to improve the state of his country, and the habits of his people, cannot be better exemplified than in his having given me the designs for three coins, which he entreated might be laid before the king of England, with his request to have the stamp and apparatus for striking money, so that he might introduce a more convenient medium of exchange than the one at present in use amongst them; one of these pieces of money he intended should be of gold, a second of silver, and the third of iron. This chief, also, as well as all the principal people, entreated that some one of our party should remain in their country, “to receive,” as they said, “the English merchants that were coming.” And it was under the idea of securing to ourselves the great advantages we had gained, by so firm a footing in the very centre of Africa, as the sheikh’s friendship enabled us to boast of, that I recommended Mr. Tyrwhitt’s remaining at Kouka, with all the privileges granted to Barbary consuls, until the pleasure of His Majesty’s Government should be known.

I consider the establishment of a friendly intercourse with this potentate beyond the Great Desert, by whose means the unknown parts of Africa may at no distant period be visited, of the greatest importance, in every point of view. By encouraging a commercial intercourse, all the objects of African discovery must be advanced: not alone will the cause of science and research be benefited, but the real philanthropist must see, that an opening is now made, by means of which, with judicious arrangements, thousands of his fellow beings may be saved from slavery.

Until introduced by the Moors, the trading in slaves was little known amongst them; the prisoners taken in battle served them, and were given as portions to their children, on their marriage, for the same duties; but they were seldom sold. Even now the greater part of the household of a man of rank are free, with the exception of the women, who often die in the service of the master of their youth. They are treated always like the children of the house, and corporal punishment is a rare occurrence amongst them. I have more than once known a Bornouese, on his morning visit to my hut, say, with tears, that he had sent a slave to be sold, who had been three years a part of his family: then he would add, “but the devil has got into her, and how could I keep her after that?”

In short, it is to the pernicious principles of the Moorish traders, whose avaricious brutality is beyond all belief, that the traffic for slaves in the interior of Africa not only owes its origin, but its continuance. They refuse all other modes of payment for the articles which they bring with them; they well know the eagerness with which these articles are sought after; and by offering what appears to the natives an amazing price, tempt them to sell their brethren, to the most inhuman of all human beings, while they gain in Fezzan, Bengazi, and Egypt, sometimes a profit of 500 per cent. I am not, however, without hopes, that a more extended intercourse with Barbary might detach even the proverbially unfeeling Moor from dealing in human flesh; and it was with feelings of the highest satisfaction that I listened to some of the most respectable of the merchants, when they declared, that were any other system of trading adopted, they would gladly embrace it, in preference to dealing in slaves: knowing, too, how often we interfered to ameliorate the situation of any of these unfortunates, when they were oppressed or ill-treated, they would continually point out to us, as if to excite our approbation, how well dressed, and well fed, their own slaves were, in comparison with those of others, as we traversed the Desert, on our return to Tripoli.

D. D.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 63: Tirab, his favourite Shouaa chief, was intrusted with this duty, and acquired the name of Bagah-furby, Gatherer of horses.

A horse of the best breed in this country, which was sent by the Sheikh of Bornou as a present to His Majesty, is described by Mr. Sewell as possessing great strength, to be supple, and extremely active. He also adds, “His movements remind me strongly of the brown Dongala horse, whose picture I have.”]

[Footnote 64: The articles most in request amongst the Negro nations are:—

Writing paper, on which the profit is enormous.

Coral barrelled, and imitation coral.

Printed cottons of all kinds, with a great deal of red and yellow in
the pattern.

Coloured silks, in pieces for large shirts and shifts, of the most
gaudy patterns.

Imitations of damask, worked with gold thread, and flowers.

Common red cloth.

Green do.

White barracans, purchased in Tripoli.

Small looking-glasses.

White bornouses, purchased in Tripoli.

Small carpets, five or six feet long, purchased in Tripoli.

English carpets of the same size would sell better, and might be
bought at one-third of the price of Turkish ones.

Ornamented cheap pistols, with long barrels.

Common razors.

Red caps, purchased in Tripoli.

Turbans of all descriptions, large amber, for the Kanemboo women, and
the Shouaas.

Common China basins, much esteemed.

Coffee cups.

Brass basins, tinned in the inside.

Red breeches, made up.

Cotton caftans, striped, made up.

Pieces of striped cotton.

Handkerchiefs, and coarse white muslin.

Large shirts or tobes, ready made, of striped cottons, and white
calico.

Coarse white calico. }
} much esteemed.
Fine do. do. }

Frankincense, }
}
Ottaria, } purchased of the Jews in Tripoli,
} or Leghorn.
Spices, }

The beads most in demand, indeed the only ones that they
will purchase, are:—

H’raz-el mekka, white glass beads, with a flower.

Merjan tiddoo, mock coral.

Quamur, white sand beads.

Quamar m’zein, small black beads, with yellow stripes.

H’raz-el pimmel, ant’s head bead, with black stripes.

Contembali, red and white.

Hazam el bashaw, the bashaw’s sash.

Sbgha m’kerbub, red pebble, from Trieste.

Sbgha toweel, long bead.

H’shem battura, Arab’s nose, a large red bead.

Arms of all descriptions, of an inferior quality, will always meet
with a ready sale, as well as balls of lead, and what we call
swan-shot.

]

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PREFATORY NOTICE
TO THE
_Narrative of Captain Clapperton’s Journey from Kouka to Sackatoo._

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The Manuscript of the following Journal was placed in my hands by Captain Clapperton, on his departure from England, with a request that I would see it through the press, whenever the account of the recent mission to Central Africa should be published. In complying with this request, I have carefully abstained from altering a sentiment, or even an expression, and rarely had occasion to add, omit, or change, a single word; so that my easy task has been confined to the mere ordinary correction of the press.

Captain Clapperton, like Major Denham, as will appear from his Journal, makes no pretensions to the systematic knowledge of natural history. They were both excellent pioneers of discovery, and capable of ascertaining the latitude by observations of the heavenly bodies; and also to compute, to a certain degree of accuracy, the longitudes of the various places which they visited: and even this is no trifling advantage to geography, though it has but too commonly been neglected by travellers. By a strict attention to these points, by comparing them with the courses and distances travelled, and by Captain Clapperton’s frequent endeavours to verify the estimated results by lunar observations (though not much to be depended on by _one_ observer, _on shore_), we may now be pretty well assured of the actual and relative positions of many places, which have hitherto been wholly dislocated and scattered at random on our best maps of Africa,—all of them bad enough,—and the situation of cities and towns have also been ascertained, whose names even had never before reached us.

The only traveller of the party, who was supposed to possess a competent knowledge of natural history, was Doctor Oudney; and he was unfortunately disabled from the pursuit of it by a protracted illness, which terminated in death. As so little appears in the present volume from the pen of Doctor Oudney, and as Captain Clapperton has stated (page 5) a wish expressed by that gentleman, a short time previous to his death, that “his papers should be put into the hands of Mr. Barrow, or Professor Jameson, provided the request meets with Earl Bathurst’s approbation,” I feel it necessary to say a few words on this subject. Nothing could have been more gratifying to me than to have undertaken and executed, to the best of my power, such a task: it is quite natural that I should have willingly done so, were it for no other reason than my having been instrumental in his appointment, from the strongest testimonials in his favour which I had received from Professor Jameson, whose acquirements in natural history stand so deservedly high in public estimation, as to entitle any recommendation from him to immediate attention. Unfortunately, however, for this branch of science, Doctor Oudney, at a very early stage of their journey, caught a severe cold, which fell on his lungs, and which rendered him, on their arrival in Bornou, nearly incapable of any exertion. It will be seen from Major Denham’s Narrative, how frequently and how seriously, not to say alarmingly, ill, he became from the first moment of their arrival in Bornou. In a letter addressed to Mr. Wilmot Horton, of the date of the 12th September, 1823, Doctor Oudney says, “I send you a simple itinerary from Fezzan here; that to the river Shary, and the borders of Soudan, and my remarks on Bornou, I must leave till another time. I cannot write long; one day’s labour in that way makes me ill for a week.”

No account of these journeys to the river Shary, and the borders of Soudan, appear among his papers; nor any materials respecting them, beyond what are contained in a very general account of the proceedings of the Mission, in an official letter addressed to the Secretary of State. The papers, delivered to me by Captain Clapperton, consisted of an account of an excursion, jointly performed by these gentlemen, from Mourzuk to Ghraat, the first town in the Tuarick country:—some remarks on the journey across the Great Desert, which appear not to have been written out fair:—and the rest, of mere scraps of vocabularies, rude sketches of the human face, detached and incomplete registers of the state of the temperature, and a number of letters to and from the Consul at Tripoli, respecting the pecuniary and other affairs of the mission, wholly uninteresting, and of which no use whatever could be made.

The Journey to Ghraat above mentioned, I have caused to be printed at the end of the Introductory Chapter, with which it appears to be partly connected, omitting some trifling details, of no interest whatever; and I requested Major Denham to add a few foot-notes, chiefly geological, to his own Journal across the Great Desert. It seems to have been well known to the party that Doctor Oudney could not possibly survive the journey into Soudan; and, indeed, he was well aware of it himself; but his zeal to accomplish all that could be done, would not suffer him to remain behind. It was that zeal which led him to undertake the journey to Ghraat, which not a little increased his disorder; for, to say the truth, he evidently was labouring, while in England, under a pectoral complaint; but when I told him so, and strongly advised him not to think of proceeding (as I had before done to his unfortunate predecessor Ritchie), he, like the latter, persisted that, being a medical man, he best knew his own constitution, and that a warm climate would best agree with it. Neither of them, however, seem to have calculated on the degree of fatigue, and the sudden changes of temperature, to which they were necessarily to be exposed.

With every disadvantage of collecting, preserving, and bringing home from so great a distance, and over so dreary a desert of twelve hundred miles, specimens of natural history, it will be seen, by reference to the Appendix, that this department of science has not been neglected.

_JOHN BARROW._

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