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Barth's position at Kuka was even more unenviable than at Kano. The visit to that city was the great object of the mission, yet he appeared in it without a single companion, a dollar of money, or the means of making a present. No sooner installed at the vizier's, to whom he was at first conducted, than he was surrounded by claimants on the expedition, more especially the servants of the late Mr. Richardson. Luckily, the sultan, or sheikh, was a kind, benevolent man, and, after some detention at a city which is already known by the long detention there of a former expedition, and sundry excursions to the shores of the neighboring Lake Tsad, our traveler set off for Adamawa and the eastern branch of the Niger.

The country to the south of Kuka presented the same great peculiarity which gives to Central Negroland its fertility; a low country, in which occur numerous flat depressions, with black soil-called in Arabic, ghadir, in Kanuri, firki-and which are at certain seasons of the year so many lagoons. These plains were sometimes barren, and, for the most part, clothed with the asclepiadea, the common and characteristic weeds of the country, but at times they were interspersed with pasture grounds, with cotton plantations, fields

of corn, ngibbi (penisetum distichum), and onions, and diversified by groves of dóm-palm and tamarind-trees.

At Mangal, some twenty-four miles from Kuka, brush wood began; but at Minter, in the same parallel, there were cattle, sheep, and goats. The fertile districts of Ude and Yele, which succeeded, were followed by a swampy region, with thick forests, abounding in wild fowl, after which rich corn fields and pastures continued to alternate with swamps, which were frequented by wild boar, all through the province of Ghamerghu; the district of Uje, in the same province, being on the river Alaw, a tributary to the Tsad, is described as being one of the most fertile, densely inhabited, and best cultivated in Negroland.

This fine country, which extends some eighty miles southward of Kuka, is succeeded-in the district of Shamo, inhabited by the Marghi, a pagan tribe-by a vast forest, nearly sixty miles in extent. The principal trees were in the north; cornus-trees, Bassia Parkii, gawo and kandil, or telha; in the central portions the karagu became prevalent, and in the southern, toso, or kaderia, gonda, korawa, kabuni, sindi, and paya-paya, a species of acacia. The basis of the forest appears to have been granitic, and its

vast extent was diversified by pastures and cultivated lands, with hamlets and villages, and fine lakes abounding in fish. This forest, which was full of elephants, constituted a disputed frontier region between Bornu and Adamawa, and it is backed to the east by a mountain range, which attains an average elevation of 2,500 feet, but having peaks of 6,000 feet.

A narrow rocky pass led the way out of this forest to Uba, the northernmost Pullo place of Adamawa; and beyond was the district of Mubi, a pleasant territory of pasture-grounds, with patches of forest and corn-fields near the villages, interspersed with mountains. Crossing the Holma range, about 2,000 feet elevation, our traveler reached the district of Fali, somewhat similar to that of Mubi, and well watered by tributaries to the river of Demsa, or Mayo Tiyel (described as abounding in crocodiles)-altogether a fine and picturesque country, which is succeeded by the fertile plains of Bénuwé, and which river Barth crossed at the point of its junction with the Faro, and at a distance of upwards of 200 miles from Kuka. From this point he prolonged his journey to Yola, a further distance of twenty-five miles.

Notwithstanding the strangeness and novelty of the country traversed, this

long journey was not marked by many incidents. On one occasion some naked pagans were discovered in the bushes on the banks of a river near Kofa, and the people who accompanied Barth wished to rush upon and capture them as slaves, but were prevented doing so by a Mussulman chief of Adamawa. Adamawa, it is to be observed, is a Mohammedan kingdom engrafted upon the mixed stock of pagan tribes-the conquest of the valorous and fanatic Pullo chieftain, Adama, over the great pagan kingdom of Fumbina; and in passing through the Mussulman village of Bagma, cheerfully enlivened by cattle, and where the size and shape of the huts testified to a climate quite different from that of Sudan, Barth relates:

The news of a marvelous novelty soon stirred up the whole village, and young and old, male and female, all gathered round our motley troop, and thronged about us in innocent mirth; and, as we proceeded, the people came running from the distant fields to see the wonder; but the wonder was not myself, but the camel, an animal which many of them had never seen, fifteen years having elapsed since one had passed along this road. The chorus of shrill voices-" geloba, geloba"-was led by two young wanton Pullo girls, slender as antelopes, and wearing noth

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ing but a light apron of striped cotton round their loins, who, jumping about and laughing at the stupidity of these enormous animals, accompanied us for about two miles along the fertile plain.. The simplicity of manners of the mountaineers of Mubi seems to have been remarkable. At Mbutudi, a village situated round a granite mound, and where violets-signs of a cooler climate-peeped from herbage that grew at the foot of the deléb-palm, a deputation of the inhabitants waited on our traveler, and they would almost, perforce, have had him settle among them.

He determined to ascend the rock which commands and characterizes the village, although he was fully aware of the debilitated state of his health. He was somewhat afraid of any great bodily exertion. It was certainly not an easy task, as the crags were extremely steep, but it was well worth the trouble, although the view over an immense expanse of country was greatly interrupted by the many small trees and bushes which are shooting out between the granite blocks.

After he had finished taking angles, he sat down on this magnificent rocky throne, and several of the natives having followed him, he wrote from their dictation a short vocabulary of their

language, which they call "Zani," and which he soon found was intimately related to that of the Marghi. These poor creatures seeing, probably for the first time, that a stranger took real interest in them, were extremely delighted in hearing their words pronounced by one whom they thought almost as much above them as their god, "Fete," and frequently corrected each other when there was a doubt about the meaning of a word.

The rock became continually more and more animated, and it was not long before two young Fulbe girls, also, who, from the first, had cast a kindly eye upon him, came jumping up to him, accompanied by an elder married sister. One of these girls was about fifteen, the other eight or nine years of age. They were decently dressed as Mohammedans, in shirts covering the bosom, while the pagans, although they had dressed for the occasion, wore nothing but a narrow strip of leather passed between the legs, and fastened round the loins, with a large leaf attached to it from behind; the women were, besides, ornamented with the "kadama," which is the same as the segheum of the Marghi, and worn in the same way-stuck through the under-lip-but a little larger. Their prevailing complexion was a yellowish

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At length he left his elevated situation, and with a good deal of trouble succeeded in getting down again; but the tranquillity

GRANARY

which he had before enjoyed was now gone, and not a moment was he left alone. All these poor creatures wanted to have his blessing; and here was, particularly, an old blacksmith, although he became a proselyte to Islam, who pestered him extremely with his entreaties to benefit him by word and prayer.

They went so far as to do Barth the honor, which he of course declined, of identifying him with their god "Fete," who, they thought, might have come to spend a day with them, to make them forget their oppression and misfortunes. The pagans, however, at length left him when night came on; but the Fulbe girls would not go, or, if they left him

SANDALS

for a moment, immediately returned, and so stayed until midnight.

The eldest of the unmarried girls made him a direct proposal of marriage, and he consoled her by stating that he should have been happy to

accept her offer, if it had been his intention to reside in the country. The manners of people, who live in these retired spots, shut out from the rest of the world, are necessarily very simple and unaffected, and this poor girl had certainly reason to look out for a husband, as, at fifteen, she was as far beyond her first bloom as a lady of twenty-five in Europe.

Our traveler's feelings of rectitude would not allow him to write charms, as his less punctilious companions would have had him do, or, he says, that instead of suffering as they did, from poverty, they might all have lived in the greatest luxury and abundance. It certainly was a sore trial to a man's conscientiousness.

At length, on the 18th of June, Barth reached the scene of his great discovery-the Bénuwé, or Eastern Niger.

At an early hour he left the inhospitable place of Sulléri. It was a beautiful fresh morning, all nature being revived and enlivened by the last night's

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storm.

His companions, sullen and irritated, quarreled among themselves on account of the selfish behavior of Ibrahima. As for himself, he was cheerful in the extreme, and borne away by an enthusiastic and triumphant feeling; for that day he was to see the river.

The neighborhood of the water was first indicated by numbers of high anthills, which abound chiefly in the neighborhood of rivers: they were here ranged in almost parallel lines, and afforded a very curious spectacle. The party had just passed a small village, or rumde, where not a living soul was to be seen, the people having all gone forth to the labors of the fields, when the lively Mohammedu came running up to Barth, and exclaimed: "Gashi, gashi, dutsi-n-Alantika ké nan" ("look" look! that is Mount Alantika"). He strained his eyes, and saw, at a great distance to the southwest, a large, but insulated mountain-mass rising abruptly on the east side, and forming a more gradual slope toward the west; while it exhibited a rather smooth and broad top, which certainly must be spacious, as it contains the estates of seven independent pagan chiefs. Judging from the distance, which was pretty well known to him, he estimated the height of the mountain at about eight

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ENCAMPMENT AT WAZA.

thousand feet above the plain, or about nine thousand feet of absolute elevation. Here there was still cultivated ground, exhibiting at present the finest crop of masr, called "butali," by the Fulbe of Adamawa; but a little further on they entered upon a swampy plain (the savannas of Adamawa), overgrown with tall, rank grass, and broken by many large hollows full of water, so that they were obliged to proceed with great caution.

This whole plain is annually (two months later) entirely under water. However, in the middle of it, on a little rising ground, which looks as if VOL. X.-21

it were an artificial mound, lies a small village, the abode of the Bénuwé.

It happens but rarely that a traveler actually beholds the principal features does not feel disappointed when he first of a new country, of which his imagination has composed a picture from the description of the natives; but, although Barth says that he must admit that the shape and size of the Alantika, as it rose in rounded lines from the flat level, did not exactly correspond with the idea which he had formed of it, the appearance of the river far exceeded his most lively expectations.

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