146 
JOURNEY FROM BOUSSA TO KANO. 
wanted to buy as they would any body else. They brought boiled 
beans, fowls, pudding, goats, sheep, wood, and water, for sale. The 
young men were dressed in a very fanciful manner, with a bandeau 
of beads, red and white ; the wool cut short, and shaved in circles 
and straight lines ; round the neck strings of red and white beads, 
with pendants of white beads attached to the lowest string, and 
reaching to the upper part of the breast ; round the loins a tanned 
sheep or goat’s skin, cut into thongs, to the ends of which were 
attached beads or cowrie shells. Those who pretended to be Ma- 
hometans wore a tobe or large loose shirt ; but these were few in 
number, not more than two or three. 
The young women wore a string of large beads round the loins ; 
where they had not beads they had pieces of bone, round which 
was twisted a piece of narrow brown or blue cloth ; the beads, 
bone, or cloth, showing alternately, and hanging down about a foot 
before and behind, fringed at the end, with cowries or beads at- 
tached to the ends of the fringe. They appeared a good looking 
active set of people, but suspicious. Every two or three women 
had an armed man to attend them, and to see that they got paid 
for what they sold. By all accounts they are very ill used, both 
by their rulers and those who are not. Their wives and children 
are stolen and made slaves by every one who can seize them ; and 
rulers, whenever a demand is made on them, take them by force 
and sell them as slaves. 
Thursday, 22d. — Left Bullabulla, and travelled through planta- 
tions of grain, indigo, and cotton ; the soil and clay mixed with sand, 
and here and there large blocks of sandstone, in which were nodules 
of iron, and veins of clay ironstone ; the face of the country diver- 
sified with hills and dales ; some of the hills to the south rising 
into table-topped mounts ; the country open and clear ; every 
thing at this season looking green and gay. Halted at the walled 
town of Rajadawa, the head man of which wished me to stop in the 
