here in crowds during the dry months from all parts of Africa, from the Mediterranean and the Mountains of the Moon, and from Sennar and Ashantee. The city is rendered very unhealthy by a large morass, which almost divides it into two parts, besides many pools of stagnant water, made by digging clay for building houses. The house gutters also open into the street, and frequently occasion an abominable stench. On the north side of the city are two remarkable mounts, each about 200 feet in height, lying nearly east and west from one another, and a trifling distance apart, They are formed of argillaceous iron-stone, mixed with pebbles, and a rather soft kind of marl. The city is of an irregular oval shape, about fifteen miles in circumference, and surrounded by a clay wall thirty feet high, with a dry ditch along the inside, and another on the outside. There are fifteen gates, including one lately built up. The gates are of wood, covered with sheet iron, and are regularly opened and shut at sunrise and sunset. A platform inside, with two guardhouses below it, serves to defend each entrance. Not more than one fourth of the ground within the walls is occupied by houses : the vacant space is laid out in fields and gardens. The large morass, nearly intersecting the city from east to west, and crossed by a small neck of land, on which the market is held, is overflowed in the rainy season. The water of the city being considered unwholesome, women are constantly employed hawking water about the streets, from the favourite springs in the neighbourhood. The houses are built of day, and are mostly of a square form, in the Moorish fashion, with a central room, the roof of which is supported by the trunks of palm trees, where visitors and strangers are received. The apartments of the ground floor open into this hall of audience, and are generally used as store-rooms. A staircase leads to an open gallery overlooking the hall, and serving as a passage to the chambers of the second story, which are lighted with small windows. In a back courtyard there is a well and other conveniences. Within the enclosure in which the house stands, there are also a few round huts of day, roofed with the stalks of Indian com, and thatched with long grass. These are usually .very neat and clean, and of a much larger size than those of Bomou. The governor’s residence covers a large space, and resembles a walled village. I t even contains a mosque, and several towers three or four stories high, with windows in the European style, but without glass or frame-work. I t is necessary to pass through two o f these towers in order to gain the suite of inner apartments occupied by the governor. The soug, or market, is well supplied with every necessary and luxury in request among the people of the interior. I t is held, as I have mentioned, on a neck of land between two swamps; and as this site is covered with water during the rainy season, the holding it here is consequently limited to the dry months, when it is numerously frequented as well by strangers as inhabitants : indeed, there is no market in Africa so well regulated. The sheikh of the soug lets the stalls at so much a month, and the rent forms a part of the revenues of the governor. The sheikh of the soug also fixes the prices of all wares, for which he is entitled to a small commission, at the rate of fifty whydah or cowries, on every sale amounting to four dollars or 8,000 cowries, according to the standard exchange between silver money and this shell currency. There is another custom rer gulated with equal certainty and in universal practice: the seller returns to the buyer a stated part of the price, by way of blessing, as they term it, or of luck-penny, according to our less devout phraseology. This is a discount of two per cent, on the purchase money; but, if the bargain is made in a hired house, it is the landlord who receives the luck-penny. I may here notice the great convenience of the cowrie, which no forgery can imitate; and which, by the dexterity of the natives in reckoning the largest sums, forms a ready medium of exchange in all transactions, from the lowest to the h 2
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