travellers reached the limit which divides the Mohammedans from the
heathens—civilization (imperfect and undeveloped, if you will, but not
wholly without a respect for law and order) and barbarism. As Dr. Barth
advanced, he seemed to pass from spring to winter; cultivation
disappeared; villages ruined and silent bore witness to the desolating
work of war; and it was only by the cattle browsing in the scanty
pastures that he knew the land was not entirely deserted. At Zekka, a
town of some importance, with wall and ditch, he separated from the
ghaladima, and, through a dense forest, pushed forward to the ruins of
Moniya. He had intended to halt there, but an armed force had encamped
at Moniya on the preceding evening, and he retreated into the shelter of
the forest until the morning. A day’s march brought him to Zyrmi, a
considerable town, the governor of which was formerly chief of the whole
province of Zanfara.
On the 31st of March, he stood on the border of the Gúndúmi Desert, of
the passage of which Major Clapperton has left so exciting a narrative.
It is passable only by a forced march. Dr. Barth began by striking too
far to the south, and lost valuable time in the midst of an impervious
jungle. Recovering the direct track, he marched all that day, all that
night, without seeing any sign of human life, and until the middle of the
following day, when he met some horsemen who had been sent forward to
meet him, with vessels of water. Two miles further, and he could see the
village where the Emir Aliyú had pitched his camp; he was then at war
with the people of Gober. For thirty hours he and his followers had
marched without a halt; they were completely spent, and the men, in their
absolute weariness, fell prostrate upon the ground. The intrepid Barth
rallied his energies; his excitement dispelled the sense of fatigue; and
he searched his baggage for some valuable gift to the Emir, who was to
depart on the following day, for upon him and his favour the success of
his enterprise wholly depended. The day glided by, and he had begun to
despair of being admitted to an audience; but in the evening the Emir
sent him an ox, four fat sheep, and four hundred parcels of rice, and a
message to the effect that he awaited his visit. It must be owned that
some of these barbaric potentates do things right royally!
Dr. Barth entered the august presence. The Emir immediately seized him
by the hand, made him sit down, and interrupted him when he began to
excuse himself for not having visited Sokotó before he went to Kúkáwa.
His two requests, for the Emir’s safe-conduct as far as Timbúktu, and a
royal letter guaranteeing the lives and property of Englishmen visiting
his territories, he received very favourably; affirming that his sole
thought was for the welfare of humanity, and, consequently, he desired to
promote the friendly intercourse of all nations. Next day Barth had
another interview, and offered a second supply of presents. He describes
the Emir as a strongly built man, of average stature, with a round, full,
but not unpleasant face.
On the 4th of April, with the royal letter, of which he had dictated the
terms, and a hundred thousand kurdis which the prince had generously sent
to him to defray his expenses during his absence, he took up his
residence at Vurno, the Emir’s usual abode. The unsavoury condition of
the town, which was traversed by a _cloaca_ more disgusting even than
those of Italy, surprised and shocked him. Outside the walls, the
Gulbi-n-rima formed several basins of stagnant water in the middle of a
plain, where the traveller’s camels sadly pined for pasture. The
frontiers of three provinces—Kebbi, Adar, and Gober—meet in this arid
plain, which, however, after the rainy season, wears a completely
different aspect.
The town became more and more deserted; daily its notables departed to
join the Emir; though, as a rule, these warriors cared only for their own
pleasure, and would sell their weapons for a dram of kola-nut wine. In
no part of Negroland did Dr. Barth see less military ardour or more
physical depression. Meanwhile, he amused himself by collecting
topographical details, studying the history of the country, and making
excursions in the neighbourhood; among others to Sokotó, on the river
Bugga. It was not until the 23rd of April that the Emir returned to his
capital, after an expedition which, if not glorious, had been at least
successful. Always generous towards Dr. Barth, he had invited him to
meet him, and king and traveller went together to the palace. On the
same day, Barth made him a present of a musical box, which appears to be
the prize most eagerly coveted by African potentates. The Emir, in his
rapture, summoned his grand vizier to see and hear the marvel; but the
mysterious box, affected by the climate and the length of the journey it
had undergone, refused to pour forth its melodious treasures. However,
after a day or two’s labour, Dr. Barth succeeded in repairing it, and
releasing its imprisoned streams of music. Who shall describe the Emir’s
excess of joy? He proved the sincerity of his gratitude by immediately
giving Dr. Barth a commendatory letter to his nephew, the chief of Gando,
and the long-expected permission to depart.
Leaving Vurno on the 8th of May, Dr. Barth reached Gando on the 17th. It
was the capital of another Fulbi chief, scarcely less powerful than the
Emir, whose protection was of the greatest importance to the traveller,
because both banks of the Niger were within his territory. It was not
obtained without persevering effort—and many gifts, besides frequent
bribes to an Arab consul, who had contrived to make himself indispensable
to the feeble prince.
On the 4th of June our indefatigable explorer entered the deep valleys of
Kebbi, which, in the rainy season, are converted into extensive
rice-fields. At Kombara, the governor hospitably sent him all the
constituents of a first-class Soudanian repast, from the sheep to the
grains of salt and the Dodua cake. Gaumaché, formerly a thriving town,
is now a village of slaves. A similarly fatal change has passed over
Yara; formerly rich and industrious, rank weeds now grow in its silent
streets. But life and death lie cheek by jowl in these fertile regions;
and to the ruined towns and deserted villages immediately succeed
prolific rice-fields, shaded by clumps of trees.
The whole country was overshadowed by the thunder-clouds of war; yet the
traveller passed continuously through plantations of yams, and cotton,
and papyrus, whose fresh green foliage waved above the walls. He halted
at Kola, where the governor could dispose of seventy matchlocks and the
men who handled them; an important personage in the disturbed condition
of the country, whom it was politic to visit. The sister of this lord of
warriors presented Dr. Barth with a fine fat goose—an addition to his
dietary which rejoiced him greatly. As he approached Jogirma, the three
sons of its chief came forth to salute him in their father’s name. It
proved to be a much more considerable town than the traveller had
expected, and the palace was a spacious and even imposing building, in
its architecture recalling the characters of the Gothic style. The
population numbered seven to eight thousand souls, whom civil discord had
reduced to a pitiful extremity. It was with no little difficulty that
Dr. Barth obtained even a supply of millet.
On the 10th he entered a beautiful forest, where the air was heavy with
the sweet odours of flowering trees; but the place is noted for its
insalubrity. Dr. Barth was compelled to remain there for twenty-four
hours, one of his camels having gone astray; and this circumstance
appeared so extraordinary, that the neighbouring peasants were in the
habit of referring to him as “the man who passed a whole day in the
deadly desert.”
On a quadrangular eminence, about thirty feet high, in the valley of
Fogha—an eminence built up of refuse—stands a village with some
resemblance to the ancient town of Assyria. The inhabitants extract salt
from the black mud out of which their little hillock rises. There are
other villages of a similar character. The condition of the population
is most wretched; they suffer continually from the forays of the robbers
of Dendina.
After a march of two or three miles over a rocky soil, sprinkled with
bushes and brushwood, Dr. Barth, with intense satisfaction, caught the
glimmer of water, as if the sun were lighting up a broad mirror, and
rapidly pushing forward, came, in an hour’s time, to Say, a ferry on the
great river of the Soudan—the river which has divided with the Nile the
curiosity of geographers, and attracted the enterprise of the
adventurous; the river which, perhaps, surpasses the Nile in its promise
of future commercial industry; the river which we associate with the
names of so many heroic travellers, from Mungo Park to Cameron,—the
Niger.
III.
The Niger—all the various names of which (Joliba, Mayo, Eghirrau, Isa,
Kuara, Baki-a-rua) signify one and the same thing, _the River_—is about
seven hundred yards broad at the Say ferry, and flows from
north-north-east to south-south-west with a velocity of three miles an
hour. The left bank has an elevation of about thirty feet; the right
bank is low, and crowned with a town of considerable size. The traffic
is incessant; Fulbis and Sourays, with their asses and oxen, continually
pass to and fro. The boats in use are constructed of two hollow trunks
of trees, fastened together, and measure a length of forty feet and a
breadth of four feet and a half. With feelings of a mingled character
Dr. Barth crossed this stately river, the exploration of which has
necessitated the sacrifice of so many noble lives, and entered the busy
town of Say. Its walls form a quadrilateral of fourteen hundred yards;
the houses of the inhabitants, all built of reeds except the governor’s,
are scattered in groups over the area they enclose. In the rainy season,
a hollow or valley, which cuts across it from north to south, is filled
with water, which impedes communication, and renders the place
insalubrious. When the river is flooded, the town is entirely inundated,
and all its inhabitants are compelled to migrate. The market of Say is
not well provided: the supply of grain is small, of onions _nil_, of rice
_nil_, though the soil is well adapted to their cultivation; of cotton,
however, there is always a large quantity; and Say will prove an
important position for Europeans as soon as the great river route of
Western Africa begins to be utilized.
Dr. Barth was told by the governor—who had the manners of a Jew, but was
evidently born of a slave-mother—that he should welcome with joy a
European vessel bringing to the town the many articles its inhabitants
needed. He was astonished to find that the traveller was not a trader;
and believing that only some very powerful motive could induce any man to
undertake such an expedition, he grew alarmed at the possibility of
treacherous and insidious designs, and requested him to leave the place.
Dr. Barth was by no means unwilling, and on the following day left behind
him the Niger, which separates the explored regions of Negroland from the
unexplored, and eagerly directed his course towards the mysterious zone
which stretched before him.
He had crossed the low swampy island occupied by the town of Say, and the
western branch of the river, at that season entirely dry, when a great
storm of thunder and rain broke upon him, and his progress was arrested
by the rolling clouds of sand which the wind accumulated in his path.
After a halt of three hours his march was resumed, though the soil was
flooded with water to a depth of several inches. The country through
which he passed had been colonized by the Sourays; it is a dependency of
the province of Guinea, and the natives were at war both with the
colonists and the Fulbi. Thence he entered a well-cultivated district,
where the Fulbi, who regard the cow as the most useful member of the
animal world, breed large herds of cattle. The scenery was varied by
thickets of mimosas, with here and there a baobab or a tamarisk. More
attractive to the traveller, because more novel, were the numerous
furnaces, six or seven feet high, used for casting iron.
The ground broke up into great irregularities; ridges of rock ran in all
directions; formations of gneiss and mica schist predominated, with rare
and beautiful varieties of granite. There, through banks of twenty feet
in height, picturesque and rocky, flowed the deep waters of the Sirba.
To effect the passage, Dr. Barth’s followers could obtain only some
bundles of reeds; the chief and all the inhabitants of the village
sitting calmly on the bank, and watching their operations with lively
interest. The men had expressive countenances, with effeminate features;
long plaited hair, which fell upon the shoulders; a pipe in their mouths;
and, for attire, a blue shirt and wide blue trousers. The women were
dumpy and ill proportioned; they wore numerous collars, and pearls in
their ears; their bosom and legs were naked.
Another storm overtook the travellers, and converted the jungles through
which they wound their way into a wide expanse of water. The
solitariness of the land was broken at one point by a village, charmingly
enclosed within a quickset hedge; fields of maize were succeeded by a
tract of forest; then they entered a populous district, where the loaded
camels laboured heavily through the clayey soil. At Sibba, where the
governor, standing at the gate, was explaining to his people certain
verses of the Koran, Dr. Barth was handsomely lodged in a hut newly
built, with walls excellently polished, and quite an attractive and
refreshing appearance. But, in life, there is always a flavour of
wormwood in the cup of joy; appearances are proverbially deceitful; and
Dr. Barth’s beautiful abode proved to be a nest of ants, which committed
wholesale depredations on his baggage.
The day after his arrival chanced to be the last of the great Mohammedan
feast of the Ramadan. That it was to be a day of festival was announced
at earliest dawn by the sound of merry music; the Fulbi streamed forth
from their houses, clad in white chemises, as a sign of the white purity
of their faith; and the governor paraded through the town at the head of
a _cortége_ of forty horsemen. As the cadi showed an inclination to
represent Dr. Barth in the unwelcome capacity of a sorcerer, he deemed it
prudent to distribute a largess among the people of the procession.
He arrived at Doré, the chief town of Libtako, on the 12th of July. The
soil is dry, and troops of gazelles frolic about the arid plain which
borders on the market-place. The market, on the occasion of Dr. Barth’s
visit, was frequented by four or five hundred persons, who were buying or
selling salt, and cotton stuffs, and copper vessels, and corn, and
kola-nuts, and asses. The inhabitants of Doré are partial to ornaments
made of copper; and Dr. Barth noticed two young girls wearing in their
hair a copper device of a horseman, sword in hand and pipe in mouth. The
pipe, be it observed, is in great request among the Sourays, who seem to
be of the opinion of Lord Lytton, that “he who doth not smoke hath either
known no great griefs, or refused himself the softest consolation, next
to that which comes from heaven.”
Beyond Doré the country was a network of rivers and morasses. Buffaloes
were exceedingly numerous. A venomous fly, very rare to the east of the
Soudan, seriously annoyed Dr. Barth’s cattle. It was the wet season;
rain descended perpetually, as if the floodgates of heaven had been
opened, and water was everywhere—in front, in rear, on either side;
water, water, water! For quiet English gentlemen, living at home at
ease, or occasionally indulging in a railway journey of a few hundred
miles, in a comfortable carriage, through fields well cultivated and well
drained, where rivers seldom break their bounds, or if they do, never
accomplish greater injury than the overflowing of a green meadow or two,
it is almost impossible to conceive the difficulty, and even danger, of
traversing the African plains in the rainy season, of conveying heavy
baggage through leagues upon leagues of swamps, which the unloaded camel
finds it laborious to cross. More than once Dr. Barth was afraid that
his horse, in spite of its robust vigour, would fail to extricate its
limbs from the deep mud, and sink with its rider in the slough. So
tremendous are the rains, that in a single night they have been known to
sweep away the fourth part of a large village, and in one house eleven
goats have perished.
Hitherto Dr. Barth had maintained his quality as a Christian; but on
entering Dalla, a province belonging to the fanatical chief of Masina,
who would never have permitted “an infidel” to traverse his territories,
Dr. Barth thought it advisable to assume the character of an Arab. But a
dispute which he had with his host, respecting a pack of dogs that showed
a decided unwillingness to give place to a stranger, indicated no great
religious fervour on the part of the population. Good Mohammedans have
no liking for the canine race. The Fulbi will not employ them even as
guides for their cattle, which they direct by the voice. All the dogs
were black; the poultry were black and white. Dr. Barth observed that
the crops suffered greatly from the ravages of a large black worm, which
he had not met with since his expedition into Bagirmi.
On the 5th of August he entered into a region of swamp and morass, and he
was glad when, to relieve the monotony of the landscape, he caught sight
of the picturesque Souray villages and the fantastic outline of the chain
of the Hombori mountains. The various forms of this singular range, none
of the peaks of which rise more than eight hundred feet above the level
of the plain, can hardly be imagined; they irresistibly attract the
traveller’s eye. On a gentle slope, composed of masses of rock, is built
a perpendicular wall, the terraced summit of which is inhabited by a
native race who have ever maintained their independence. That these
heroic hillmen sometimes descend from their fastnesses is shown by their
flocks of sheep and crops of millet. Starting from this point, a twofold
range of remarkable crests extends along the plain, with a curious
similitude to the ruins of mediæval castles.
Refused admission at Boná, and afraid to enter Nuggera, well known to be
a hot-bed of fanaticism, Dr. Barth solicited the hospitality of some
Towaregs, who were encamped in the neighbourhood. Their chief, a man of
agreeable physiognomy, with fine features and a fair complexion, placed
one of his huts at the traveller’s disposal, and sent him some milk and a
sheep ready cooked. Next day, his tents of canvas figured in the midst
of those of his host, and he was besieged by a number of very stout
ladies, all importunate for gifts. At Bambara, a considerable
agricultural centre, surrounded by the canals and affluents of the Niger,
he resided for several days. It is situated upon a backwater (mariyet)
of the river, which, at the time of Barth’s visit, was almost dry. In
the ordinary course of things, it ought, in three weeks, to be crowded
with boats, going to Timbuktú by Oálázo and Saráyamó, and to Dirá by
Kanima. The prosperity of the town depends, therefore, on the rains; and
as these had not begun, the whole population, with the Emir at their
head, implored the pretended Arab doctor, whom they chose to regard as a
great magician, to exercise his powers to obtain from the skies a copious
benediction. Dr. Barth eluded the request for a formal ceremony, but
expressed a hope that Heaven would listen to wishes so very reasonable.
As it happened, there was a slight fall of rain next day, which drew from
the inhabitants the sincerest gratitude; but, for all that, Dr. Barth was
very glad to put some distance between himself and Bambara.
On the 1st of September, at Saráyamó, Dr. Barth embarked on one of the
branches of the Niger, and sailed towards Timbuktú. The stream was about
a hundred yards wide, and so thick with aquatic plants that the voyagers
seemed to be gliding over a prairie. Moreover, in its bed the asses and
horses obtained the chief part of their sustenance. In about two miles
and a half they entered open water, and the boatmen, whose songs had rung
the praises of the Julius Cæsar of Negroland, the Sultan Mohammed ben
Abubakr, carried them, from winding to winding, between banks clothed
with cucifers, tamarinds, and rich grasses, on which sometimes cattle
were feeding, and sometimes the gazelle. The presence of alligators was
a sign that they approached a broader water, and the channel suddenly
widened to two hundred yards; its banks alive with pelicans and other
water-birds, while men and horses went to and fro. The curves and bends
of the stream increased, and the banks assumed a more defined and regular
formation; wider and wider became the water-way, until it reached three
hundred and forty yards. Some fires shone out against the evening
shadows. At the bottom of a little creek clustered a little village. In
no part of the course could any current be discerned; it was a kind of
lagoon which the voyagers were crossing, and sometimes the wave flowed in
one direction, sometimes in another. After two centuries of war, its
shores, once so animated, have sunk into silence; and Gakovia, Sanyara,
and many other villages have ceased to be. There, on the edge of the
bank, towered aloft a clump of graceful trees, the haunt of numerous
bees; here, a patch of greensward brightened with the colours of many
blossoms. The river now flowed from south-west to north-east, with a
noble expanse of six hundred yards; its majestic flood rolling like a
volume of silver in the moonlight, with the reflection of stars sparkling
thickly on the crests of its waves.
After a pilgrimage of eight months’ duration, Dr. Barth arrived at
Kabara, the river-port of Timbuktú; and was lodged in a house on the
highest ground, which contained two large and several small rooms, and a
first floor. The inner court was occupied by a numerous and varied
assortment of sheep, ducks, pigeons, and poultry. At early dawn, on the
day after his arrival, our traveller, almost suffocated, left his room;
but he had scarcely begun his walk before a Towareg chief interrupted
him, and demanded a present. Receiving a prompt refusal, he coolly
announced that, in his quality as a bandit, he could do him a good deal
of harm. Dr. Barth, in fact, was _hors la loi_, and the first wretch who
suspected him of being a Christian might slay him with impunity. He
succeeded, however, in getting rid of the Towareg. Meanwhile, the house
was crowded with visitors from Timbuktú, some on foot, some on horseback,
but all wearing blue robes, drawn close to the figure by a drapery, with
short breeches and peaked straw hats. All carried lances, while some had
swords and guns; they seated themselves in the courtyard, overflowed the
chambers, staring at one another, and asking each other who this stranger
might be. In the course of the day, Dr. Barth was “interviewed” by fully
two hundred persons. In the evening, a messenger whom he had despatched
to Timbuktú returned, accompanied by Sidi Alawat, one of the Sultan’s
brothers. Dr. Barth confided to him the secret of his Christian
profession, but added that he was under the special protection of the
sovereign of Stamboul. Unfortunately, he had no other proof of his
assertion than an old firman dating from his former residence in Egypt;
the interview, however, passed off very agreeably.