142 
JOURNEY FROM BOUSSA TO KANO. 
deep, sometimes in the house, sometimes in the threshold of the 
door, and sometimes in the woods : the corpse is placed in a sitting 
posture, with the wrists tied round the neck, the hams and legs 
close to the body : a hole is left at the mouth of the grave, and 
the relations and acquaintances leave tobes, cloth, and other articles 
at the small round hole, and telling the dead persons to give this 
to so and so : these things are always removed before the morning 
by the priest. The majority of the inhabitants of Ivoolfu profess 
to be Mahometans, the rest Pagans, whose mode of worship I never 
could learn, except that they, like the inhabitants of the other towns 
in Nyffe, attended once a year in one of the southern provinces, 
where there was a high hill, on which they sacrificed a black bull, 
a black sheep, and a black dog. The figures on their houses of 
worship are much the same as in Yourriba: the lizard, crocodile, 
the tortoise, and the boa-serpent, with sometimes men and women. 
Their language is a dialect of the Yourriba, but the Houssa tongue 
is the language of the market. Their houses and court are kept 
very clean, as also the court-yard, which is sprinkled every morn- 
ing with water, having the shell of the bean of the mitta tree 
boiled in it, which stains it of a dark brown colour; and each side 
of the doors of the coozies or huts are stained with indigo and 
ornamented with figures. The women have the stone for grinding 
the corn, pepper, &c. raised on a clay bench inside the house, so 
that they can stand upright while they grind the corn ; an im- 
provement to be seen in no other part of the interior, or in Fezzan, 
the women having to sit on their knees when grinding corn. Their 
gourd dishes are also of the first order for cleanliness, neatness, and 
good carving and staining, as also their mats, straw bags, and baskets. 
They are civil, but the truth is not in them, and to be detected 
in a lie is not the smallest disgrace, it only causes a laugh. They 
are also great cheats. The men drink very hard, even the Maho- 
