Narrative of travels and discoveries in Northern and Central Africa, in the years 1822, 1823, and 1824Denham, Dixon
History
Narrative of travels and discoveries in Northern and Central Africa, in the years 1822, 1823, and 1824
Denham, Dixon
Africa, Central -- Description and travel; Africa, North -- Description and travel; Natural history -- Africa, North
I may here observe, that besides occasional presents of bullocks,
camel-loads of wheat and rice, leathern skins of butter, jars of
honey, and honey in the comb, five or six wooden bowls were sent
us, morning and evening, containing rice, with meat, paste made of
barley flour, savoury but very greasy; and on our first arrival,
as many had been sent of sweets, mostly composed of curd and honey.
In England a brace of trout might be considered as a handsome present
to a traveller sojourning in the neighbourhood of a stream, but at
Bornou things are done differently. A camel-load of bream, and a
sort of mullet, was thrown before our huts on the second morning
after our arrival; and for fear that should not be sufficient,
in the evening another was sent.
We had a fsug, or market, in front of one of the principal gates of
the town. Slaves, sheep, and bullocks, the latter in great numbers,
were the principal live stock for sale. There were at least fifteen
thousand persons gathered together, some of them coming from places
two and three days distant. Wheat, rice, and gussub, were abundant:
tamarinds in the pod, ground nuts, ban beans, ochroes, and indigo;
the latter is very good, and in great use amongst the natives, to
dye their tobes (shirts) and linen, stripes of deep indigo colour,
or stripes of it alternately with white, being highly esteemed by
most of the Bornou women: the leaves are moistened, and pounded
up altogether when they are formed into lumps, and so brought to
market. Of vegetables there was a great scarcity—onions, bastard
tomatoes, alone were offered for sale; and of fruits not any: a
few limes, which the sheikh had sent us from his garden, being the
only fruit we had seen in Bornou. Leather was in great quantities;
and the skins of the large snake, and pieces of the skin of the
crocodile, used as an ornament for the scabbards of their daggers,
were also brought to me for sale; and butter, leban (sour milk),
honey, and wooden bowls, from Soudan. The costumes of the women,
who for the most part were the vendors, were various: those of Kanem
and Bornou were most numerous, and the former was as becoming as the
latter had a contrary appearance. The variety in costume amongst the
ladies consists entirely in the head ornaments; the only difference,
in the scanty covering which is bestowed on the other parts of the
person, lies in the choice of the wearer, who either ties the piece
of linen, blue or white, under the arms, and across the breasts,
or fastens it rather fantastically on one shoulder, leaving one
breast naked. The Kanemboo women have small plaits of hair hanging
down all around the head, quite to the poll of the neck, with a roll
of leather or string of little brass beads in front, hanging down
from the centre on each side of the face, which has by no means an
unbecoming appearance: they have sometimes strings of silver rings
instead of the brass, and a large round silver ornament in front of
their foreheads.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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