ACCOUNT OF THE CITY. 
61 
deal of herbage and wood is found in the depres- 
sions of the plain. It is not surprising, therefore, 
that this much-talked-of capital is nothing but a 
large village, as indeed are all the other places 
of Aheer, with the exception of Asoudee. Ag- 
hadez, which is mentioned by Leo Africanus, is said 
by tradition to have been founded or enlarged by 
settlements from the north, consisting of a people 
called Arabs, but probably Berbers, since expelled 
by the Tuaricks. It serves as a sort of rendezvous 
between the Kailouees and the tribes to the south 
and west. A peculiar language (Emghedesie) is 
spoken by the inhabitants in their private inter- 
course; but Haussa is the idiom of trade. There 
are about seven hundred inhabited houses scattered 
among the ruins ; and of fifty thousand people who 
must previously have lived within the walls, scarce 
eight thousand remain.* The inhabitants are partly 
artizans, partly merchants ; but few caravans now 
* This is Dr. Barth's statement, which I have introduced from 
his own account. It will have been seen that Mr. Richardson (see 
vol. i. " Note on the Territorial Division of Aheer," ) makes a much 
lower estimate. I may here remind the reader, that even when in his 
diary Mr. Richardson inserts two different and contradictory state- 
ments, I do not undertake to select one and suppress the other, except 
in the case of an obvious slip of the pen. Nor have I thought it 
necessary to burden the page by indications of slightly different asser- 
tions. A diary must necessarily abound with imperfect observations, 
which correct or complete one another; and perhaps the general im- 
pression left on the mind of the reader — who accompanies, as it were, 
the writer in receiving its various elements— is more like truth than 
it would be after the perusal of one absolute dogmatic statement. — 
Ed. 
