176 
FROM KANO TO SOCCATOO. 
the camels several times sunk up to their bellies, when they had 
to be unloaded. I constantly rode behind them, both for the 
safety of myself and horse, as also to render that assistance and 
encouragement to my servants which w r as necessary, who certainly 
suffered much, having to wade by the side of the camels the 
whole way. Thank God! not one fell sick, or uttered the least 
complaint. I sent the Kano messenger on a- head, as I heard the 
gadado was on his way to Kano, and only a day or two distant 
from me, to request he would detain the governor of Adamowa 
until my arrival, as that person had only left Kano a few days be- 
fore me with his retinue; and, in the event of my joining him, I 
should not have any occasion to wait at the town of Torri for an 
escort to conduct me through the woods of Goudami. At 11. 30 
passed the town of Duncamie ; after which the roads were the worst 
1 have ever seen, or rather, in fact, there were no roads at all. Every 
where the surface was a swamp, the men sometimes up to their 
middies in water for half an hour at a time ; the path leading through 
fields of millet and doura. Thus the road continued until 5. 30, when 
it came on to rain, thunder, and lighten. My servants stripped to 
the buff, and put their shirts under the hides that covered the bag- 
gage, to preserve them dry until they halted. I got wet to the skin, 
yet had a burning thirst — at times hardly able to sit on horseback, 
until relieved by vomiting. I would gladly have lain down any 
where, but there was not a spot clear of water. In this condition 
myself, my men, and animals continued until 6. 30 P. M. when I 
arrived, and halted at the town of Jaza, in the province of Ivashna, 
where I lay down by a fire in the house of the head man of the 
town, after being assisted off my horse. At no time am I possessed 
of a sweet and passive temper, and when the ague is coming on me 
it is a little worse. The head man made a great many difficulties ; 
1 gave it to him in all the Houssa language I possessed ; but it was all 
lost on him. These Kashna bears are rude, and though they pride 
