Sudan Archive

Open the original scan

INTRODUCTION. XV the customs of the people, Captain Clapperton engaged him to accompany the party as far as the city of Eyeo or Katunga, the capital of Yourriba. Having, therefore, arranged matters with Captain Willis of the Brazen, as to sending after them the heavy baggage, and keeping up, for a certain time, a communication with them, they landed on the 29th November at Badagry ; and, under the sanction of the king, commenced their long journey on the 7th December, the details of which will be found in the following Journal.

On his arrival at the encampment of Bello, at a short distance from Soc~ catoo, Clapperton had every reason to be satisfied with his reception. While at Kano, he had received a letter from that chief, congratulating him on his first arrival there, and inviting him to Soccatoo ; and when he discovered, soon after his arrival at that city, that Clapperton had left at Kano the presents intended for the Sheik of Bornou, he again wrote to him, in a friendly manner, very civilly informing him of the impossibility of his allowing the warlike stores to be sent to one with whom he was in a state of hostility: he told him, also, that he had letters from a most respectable quarter, putting him on his guard against Christian spies. These circumstances seem, by the servant’s account, to have preyed very much on Clapperton’s mind; and that, when seized with dysentery and inflammation of the bowels, which, after thirty-six days’ illness, carried him off, Bello’s coolness and suspicion tended very much to depress his spirits and increase his disorder.

To Clapperton’s Journal is appended that of his servant, Richard Lander, giving an account of his return journey from Kano, after his master’s death, a great part of the way by a more easterly route. This journal of a very intelligent young man will be read with interest. Accompanied by two or three slaves, and a black man of Houssa, of the name (English) of Pascoe, who once belonged to a British ship of war, and had been engaged to attend Belzoni as interpreter, with a scanty supply of money, and without presents of any kind (so necessary in this country), he not only made his way among the various tribes he had to pass through, but brought with him, in safety, a large trunk belonging to his master, containing his clothes and other property; three watches, which he secreted about his person, to preserve from the rapacity of Bello; and all his master’s papers and journals, with which, after a journey of nine months, he arrived in safety on the sea-coast.

The friendship and kind feeling which Clapperton entertained for this c 2

Text produced by OCR — report an error