The interior of the place was not quite without its charms, the whole of the town being intersected, from north to south, by the broad and shallow bed of a torrent, which exhibited fine pasture-grounds of fresh succulent herbage, while it was skirted on both sides by a dense border of exuberant vegetation, which altogether is much richer in this place than either in Sókoto or Wurno, being surpassed only by the fine vegetable ornament of Kanó. The rains are extremely plentiful in Gando, causing here quite an exceptional state in the productive power of the soil; and to this circumstance we have partly to ascribe the fact that very fine bananas are grown here in considerable quantity: and the fruit being just ripe at the time, formed a very pleasant variation to my usual food. The onion of Gando is remarkable for its size and quality, compared with that of all the neighbouring districts; and it is well for the traveller, in whatever direction he may intend to go, to lay in a supply of this wholesome article. But the place is extremely dull, and the market very insignificant—a fact easily to be explained by the desperate state of the provinces around, although the situation of the capital, as a central place for commerce, is rather favourable. But the town of Jéga has not yet lost, in this respect, the whole of its former importance, and is still the great entrepôt for that coarse kind of coloured silk which is imported from the north, and which, notwithstanding its very inferior character, is nevertheless so greatly sought after by the natives for adorning their leatherwork. It is, perhaps, in consequence of the little trade which is carried on, that the people of Gando have applied themselves with more industry to supplying their own want of cotton cloth—and no one can deny that their cotton strips are of first-rate quality: their dyeing, on the contrary, is very coarse, and they seem quite unable to give to the dyed cloth that lustre which so eminently distinguishes the manufactures of Núpe and Kanó; but nevertheless this cloth of Gando is in great demand as far as Libtáko.