thousand inhabitants. It is surrounded with a good high
clay wall and dry ditch, and is one of the neatest, most compact, and
best walled towns that had yet been seen. The streets are spacious
and dry; the houses are of the coozie form, consisting of circular
huts connected by a wall, opening into an interior area. The
governor's house is surrounded with a clay wall, about thirty feet
high, having large coozies, shady trees, and square towers inside.
Unlike their neighbours of Kiama, they bear a good character for
honesty, though not for sobriety or chastity, virtues wholly unknown
at Wawa; but they are merry, good natured, and hospitable. They
profess to be descended from the people of Nyffee and Houssa, but
their language is a dialect of the Youribanee; their religion is a
mongrel mahommedism grafted upon paganism. Their women are much
better looking than those of Youriba, and the men are well made, but
have a debauched look; in fact, Lander says, he never was in a place
where drunkenness was so general. They appeared to have plenty of the
necessaries of life, and a great many luxuries. Their fruits are
limes, plantains, bananas, and several wild fruits; their vegetables,
yams and _calalow,_ a plant, the leaves of which are used in soup as
cabbage; and their grain are dhourra and maize. Fish they procure in
great quantities from the Quorra and its tributaries, chiefly a sort
of cat-fish. Oxen are in great plenty, principally in the hands of
the Fellatas, also sheep and goats, poultry, honey, and wax. Ivory
and ostrich feathers, they said, were to be procured in great plenty,
but there was no market for them.

It was at this place that Clapperton had nearly, though innocently,
got into a scrape with the old governor by coquetting with a young
and buxom widow, and, in fact, Lander himself experienced some
difficulty in withstanding the amorous attack of this African beauty;
for she acted upon the principle, that, as she could not succeed with
the master, there was no obstacle existing that she knew of, to
prevent her directing the battery of her fine black sparkling eyes
against the servant.

"I had a visit," says Clapperton, "amongst the number, from the
daughter of an Arab, who was very fair, called herself a white woman,
was a rich widow, and wanted a white husband. She was said to be the
richest person in Wawa, having the best house in the town, and a
thousand slaves." She showed a particular regard for Richard La