AFRICAN EXPLORERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. 139 
Houssa and Borglioo, and Gandja, on the frontiers of 
Ashantee. 
Outside Kiama the traveller met the Houssa caravan. 
Some thousands of men and women, oxen, asses, and 
horses, marching in single file, formed an interminable 
line presenting a singular and grotesque appearance. A 
motley assemblage truly : naked girls alternating with 
men bending beneath their loads, or with Gandja 
merchants in the most outlandish and ridiculous cos¬ 
tumes, mounted on bony steeds which stumbled at every 
step. 
Clapperton now made for Boussa on the Niger, 
where Mungo Park was drowned. Before reaching it 
he had to cross the Oli, a tributary of the Quorra, and 
to pass through Wow-Wow, a district of Borgu, the 
capital of which, also called Wow-Wow, contained some 
18,000 inhabitants. It was one of the cleanest and 
best-built towns the traveller had entered since he left 
Badagry. The streets are wide and well-kept, and the 
houses are round, with conical thatched roofs. Drunken¬ 
ness Clapperton found to be a prevalent vice in Wow- 
Wow : governor, priests, laymen, men and women, 
indulged to excess in palm wine, in rum brought from 
the coast, and in “ bouza.” The latter beverage is a 
mixture made of dhurra, honey, cayenne pepper, and 
the root of a coarse grass eaten by cattle, with the 
addition of a certain quantity of water. 
Clapperton tells us that the people of Wow-Wow are 
famous for their cleanliness ; they are cheerful, bene¬ 
volent, and hospitable. No other people whom he had 
met with had been so ready to give him information 
about their country ; and, more extraordinary still, he did 
not meet with a single beggar. The natives say they 
are not aborigines of Borgu, but that they are descen¬ 
dants of the natives of Houssa and Nyffe. They speak 
a Yariba dialect, but the Wow-Wow women are pretty, 
while those of Yariba are not. The men are muscular 
and well-made, but have a dissipated look. Their 
religion is a lax kind of Maliommedanism tinctured with 
Paganism. 
