48 



compelled to pay tribute, and are kept in perfect subservience by the 

 strong arm of power, and by that alone. The importance of Kano, so 

 celebrated for its metallic and cloth manufactures, may be judged 

 from the fact of its governor sending 10,000 cowries fer diem for the 

 head Sultan's household at Sakatu, as revenues derived from its market 

 customs. 



I was for some time puzzled to understand whether it was the 

 instinctive thu'st for human blood, natural to man in his uncivilized 

 state, or the urgings of ambition for extent of territoiy, that drove the 

 Filatahs to a life of plunder. And I believe it to be more these causes 

 combined than any truculent fanaticism for the propagation of the 

 Mahommedan creed. Of the first there occurred an example in the 

 countries bordering on the Tshadda during our late ascent. The king- 

 doms of Igbarra and Bassa occupy the territory reaching from the con- 

 fluence to Dagbo, the limit of former exploration in Laird and Oldfield's 

 expedition of 1833, and the commencement of the Filatah country in 

 Doma. Some people living at Ousha, in the direction of Doma, and 

 heretofore tributary to Adamo, king of Bassa, refused to pay him any 

 more. To punish them Adamo invited or employed a band of Filatahs 

 from Zaria, the capital of Zeg-Zeg, which is a province within Doma, to 

 come down and beat the Ousha people for him. When they had done 

 this to Adamo s content, they must have thought it was hardly worth 

 their while to journey so far on such a trifling business, and so they 

 picked up a quarrel with Senani, the brother of Adamo, who was governor 

 of a place called Apata, in the Bassa country. In spite of Adamo's 

 remonstrances, they burned Apata, and, having dispossessed Senani, 

 actually turned upon Adamo himself to lick him for daring to curb or 

 put a limit to their lawlessness. Thirst for blood increasing by what it 

 fed upon, led them to make a complete subjugation of the Bassa and 

 Igbarra kingdoms ; and so they dethroned Adamo ; drove him from his 

 capital, Ikeriko, which they burned ; took many of his subjects away 

 for slaves ; and, in the extremity of their truculence, went on to 

 Pandah, which they destroyed in hke manner, killing its monarch. 



The absence of freemasonry in their savagery, is also evident from 

 what has been recorded to me of the foundation of the kingdom of 

 Zhibu (in the Kororoofa district), whose capital of the same name 

 is situated on the left side of the Binue, and where its present King, 

 Saraki Tumbadee, resides. The story goes, that in times gone by, and 

 of which chronology here gives no record as to date, a band of Filatahs 

 made a descent from Sakatu upon Wukari, the capital of Kororoofa, 

 with a design to depose its governing head, and hold it in subjugation. 



