156 
TKAVELS IN AFEICA. Chap. XXVI. 
given me great surprise in Kano. When lying 
one day in a feverish state on my hard couch, I 
heard myself saluted in Eomaic or modern Greek. 
The man who thus addressed me had long whiskers, 
and was as black as any negro. But I had some 
difficulty in believing him to be a native of Negro- 
land. Yet such he was, though by a stay in Stam- 
bul of some twenty years, from his boyhood, he had 
not only learned the language perfectly, but also 
adopted the manners, and I might almost say the fea- 
tures, of the modern Greeks. 
In such company we continued pleasantly on, 
sometimes through a cultivated country, at others 
through underwood, meeting now and then a motley 
caravan of horses, oxen, and asses, all laden with 
natron, and coming from Miiniyo. Once there was 
also a mule with the other beasts of burden ; and on 
inquiry, on this occasion, I learnt that this animal, 
which I had supposed to be frequent in Negroland, is 
very rare, at least in these parts, and in Kan6 always 
fetches the high price of from sixty to eighty thou- 
sand kurdi, which is just double the rate of a 
camel. In Wangara and Gonja the mule seems to be 
more frequent. But there is only one in Kdkawa 
and in Timbuktu, the latter belonging to one of the 
richest Morocco merchants. 
Animated scenes succeeded each other : — now a 
well, where the whole population of a village or zango 
were busy in supplying their wants for the day ; then 
another, where a herd of cattle was just being 
