286 
FROM SOCCATOO TO DUNRORA. 
camels for 15,000 cowries each, and discharged their keeper, Maddie. 
Not having sufficient money to purchase fresh camels, provisions, 
and presents for the chiefs on my way to Fezzan, I was necessitated 
to take a different route ; and for that purpose purchased a horse 
and two asses. Bello had not forgotten to mention in his letter for 
Hadji Hat Sallali to send back Pascoe to Soccatoo, on his arrival at 
Kano. I begged of him, however, to let me take him as far as 
Coulfo, in Nyffe, which he at first refused; but giving him two 
yards of scarlet damask, two pairs of scissors, two dollars, a large 
knife, and two yards of blue damask, the old Arab seemed to relax 
in his determination ; and calling Pascoe to him, gave him leave 
to accompany me to Coulfo, but cautioned him to return the mo- 
ment he arrived, on pain of having Jerrub (the devil) sent after him. 
The old man came to me just after in great trepidation, every mem- 
ber of his body trembling like an aspen leaf, and gave me to under- 
stand, as well as he was able, the conversation he had had with 
Hadji Hat Sallah, and in consequence thereof, his great reluctance 
to quit Kano with me. I did all I could to laugh him out of his 
superstitious fears, but it utterly failed of the desired effect ; the 
name of Jerrub being enough to put him in a fever. I had given 
the slave that Hadji Hat Salah had sold me to Pascoe as a wife. 
I told him that, unless he accompanied me, he should not have her. 
As soon as he learnt he was to be parted from the girl, all his 
scruples vanished, and he consented to go to Coulfo, but no farther, 
he having left a wife at Soccatoo, where he much wished to go. 
This woman, whom I had seen several times as Ben Gumso’s slave, 
was remarkably ugly, and had had before marriage a male child, by 
a blind fiddler belonging to Sultan Bello’s band at Soccatoo. On 
my asking what had induced him to marry so frightful an object, 
he replied, in a tone full of tenderness, it was because she loved 
him very much, and made the best tuah he had ever tasted : these 
powerful recommendations were irresistible to a man of Pascoe’s 
