JOURNEY FROM BOUSSA TO KANO. 
159 
twentieth is exacted from the merchants as a duty ; and they dread 
halting at Zaria, from the rapacity of the inhabitants, who are all 
Fellatas, and often keep travelling by secret paths through the 
woody country, to evade the city, until they enter the province of 
Guari. The house of the governor is north of the great mosque, 
and is surrounded by a high clay wall; inside this wall are large 
coozies, or huts, surmounted by ostrich eggs, and some single rooms 
of a square form, with a flat roof. The houses of the principal in- 
habitants are much the same. Of the number of inhabitants I can 
form no estimate : they say there are more than in Kano, which I 
should suppose to contain 40 or 50,000 at least. They are mostly 
all F ellatas ; a great many of them from F oota Fonda and F oota 
Torra, and know the French and English well they say; but I am 
sorry to add, that they have not improved by their acquaintance. 
They rattle over the names of the towns between Sierra Leone, or 
the Senegal, and Timbuctoo, like a, b, c, then sit down, and will 
not start until they get something. These fellows are generally 
armed with French fusees. They prefer the guns of the Frencli 
and the powder of the English. The late governor was a native 
of Foota Fonda: so that the Foulahs and the Fellatas are the 
same people. Foota Fonda, Foota Torra, &c. they call Meli. 
They now possess Jinnee, near Timbuctoo, and I think will soon 
have the whole of the interior. Inside the walls there are a 
great number of shady trees, which are pruned every year for fire- 
wood ; they look at a distance like immense poplars : swamps, corn 
fields, and green plats, make up the rest of the town. Date trees, 
palm oil trees, papas, melons, plantains, Indian corn, millet, dourra, 
rice, yams, sweet potatoes, &c. are in abundance, particularly rice. 
They say they raise more and better rice than all the rest of Houssa 
put together. Horses, sheep, and horned cattle abound in every 
part of the province inhabited by the Fellatas. Game is also in 
abundance ; such as antelopes of all the different kinds. Guinea 
