two or three women attended by an armed companion to see fair play; the men and women dressed in the same gay style as usual; upon the whole they were a fine, active, clean-looking people: most of the men had a bastard kind of greyhound following them, whose necks were ornamented with colours and strings of cowries. Every man working in the plantations, as I came along, was armed, owing, they say, to the frequent inroads of the Fellatas. At sunset all our visitors left us, and we had a severe storm of rain, thunder, and lightning. Wednesday, 28th.—For the last five days we have been travelling through a rich and beautiful valley and over woody hills, and arrived at Womba. The capital of this province is called Kotonkora, and distant from Womba, north, thirty miles. Before the Fellatas took Haussa and its dependencies, Womba belonged to the province of Kashna; and at the death of Bello’s father, it, along with the rest of the Towias, threw off the yoke of the Fellatas, declared its independence, which it still maintains, and joined the Towias, or confederation, against their conquerors. All the caravans from the east and west halt a day or two at this town, and pay for each loaded ass or bullock five hundred cowries; besides, the head man of each caravan makes a present, for which he receives, in return, a dish or two of cooked meat, or a sheep. The town is in latitude 10° 35′, and longitude 7° 22′. It is situated on a rising ground, having a commanding rocky hill of granite to the east, one on the south, and another to the north, all bare of vegetation except a few patches here and there; to the west is an open valley. A small stream of water runs past the western gate, from which the town is supplied with water. The valleys for two miles round are cleared, cultivated, and planted with millet, doura, yams, cotton, &c., as is likewise every spare space within the walls this year, as there is a scarcity of grain this season throughout the whole of the eastern interior, owing to last year’s rains being very scanty, and they fear this may be the same. The town is walled round; the wall is also in good repair, and has a dry ditch on the outside; its height between twenty and thirty feet. It has four gates, which are shut every night at sunset. The inhabitants may amount from ten to twelve thousand souls; they possess plenty of sheep, oxen, and horses, the latter apparently a cross from the large Bornou and the small native African, and are a strong, hardy race, like what in Scotland are called highland ponies, but not quite so tall.