252 
RESIDENCE AT SOCCATOO AND MAGARIA. 
see the gold ores said to be there ; that I should also see Adamawa 
and the Shari ; and that he would send me afterwards to the sea, 
by the way of a country called Kano, bordering on the sea, and 
going to the south of the province of Zegzeg, and whose sultan 
had sent a messenger a short while after I left Soccatoo on my 
former journey, wishing to open a trade with Houssa. I said that 
the sooner he could send me the better, as he would have every 
thing that he could wish from England much cheaper than he 
could have by the way of the desert. He asked me again who the 
eleven slave-dealers were that his cousin, Mohamed Ben Abdullah, 
had taken at his camp at Nyffe ; and if I knew that they were 
Christians. He said they were black; and had come from, or by 
the way of Borgoo ; and what ought to be done with them ; for 
Abdullah had seized them, and written to know what he should do 
with them. I said, he had better either take their goods, and send 
them away home, or have them brought up here ; that they were 
not Christians, but I thought natives of Dahomey, and part of the 
same gang I had seen at Wawa in Borgoo ; as it was common for the 
Mahomedans to call all persons, not agreeing with them in faith, 
Christians or Jews. After this I took leave ; and in the evening 
he sent me a fine fat sheep, and two pomegranates from his garden. 
Monday, 19th. — A courier from the Gadado arrived at Kano 
with a letter to the sultan, informing him of the defeat of the 
sheik of Bornou, and his retreat, with the loss of all his baggage, 
camels, and tents, two hundred and nine horses, and a number of 
slaves. The sultan sent me the letter to read, and the sheik’s water- 
pot, made of copper. This is an article of the first importance to a 
Mahomedan great man ; he never travels without one. It had been 
cut in three different places by a sword, not in taking it, as it was 
found in the tent, but hacked by some of them to vent their rage 
on the poor pot, as they could not do it on the sheik. 
Saturday, 24th. — At day-break the pagans whom the sultan had 
