A Labyrinth of Kingdoms

by Steve Kemper

  To pass the days he strolled around town. He admired the big limes and papayas in the market, and talked with a man who had accompanied Clapperton on his second journey from Kano to Sokoto. He also dressed down a tormentor who called him a kaffir, an insulting term for an infidel. This led, as it often did with Barth, to a theological discussion that ended in religious détente. He never backed off from a debate about religion, and his Muslim opponents invariably ended by admiring his knowledge not only of his religion but of theirs. In this instance Barth acknowledged that Islam was “somewhat purer than the creeds of most of the Christian sects.” His opponent conceded that Barth and the English were not kaffirs, but insisted on keeping Russians in that category.

  After idling in Katsina for a week, Barth was anxious to go. He asked Muslim friends in the caravan for a loan to buy more gifts for the emir. They obliged with 31,000 cowries. They also suggested that he use the money to buy quantity, not quality, and offered to shop for him. They bought a velvet caftan, a carpet, a waistcoat, and a shawl. Barth, “to give the whole a more unpremeditated, honorary, and professional appearance,” added a pencil, a bit of frankincense, and two doses of Epsom salts.

  The emir surprised them all by replying that he no longer expected any gifts. Nevertheless he would honor Barth by keeping the caftan and the carpet. And on second thought he wouldn’t refuse a generous gift of medicines, with a tutorial by Barth on their uses. In return, he would send the explorer a horse and saddle. Barth put together a small package of powdered quinine, tartar-emetic, and acetate of lead (for diarrhea, fever, inflammation, and conjunctivitis), plus a small bottle with a few drops of laudanum. He presented the package the next morning and spent two hours explaining the medicines. Almost satisfied, the emir requested something “to increase his conjugal vigor.” Oh, and some fireworks. Barth regretted that he could supply neither.

  Despite these disappointments, the emir kept his word, in his fashion. The next morning he sent Barth an unsightly nag with a matching saddle. “I exulted in my good fortune,” wrote Barth. That nag was his ticket away from Katsina and its avid emir. On January 30, Barth passed through the city’s southeastern gate, in the direction of Kano. He would have been astonished to hear that in two years he would be back. At the moment, his future lay to the east. “It was as if I had just escaped from a prison,” he wrote, “and I drew my breath deeply as I inhaled the fresh air outside the wall.”

  BARTH CALLED THE country between Katsina and Kano “one of the finest landscapes I ever saw in my life.” The undulating terrain was adorned with stately trees—figs, tamarinds, shea-butters, doum palms, the stupendous cotton-silk, or kapok, tree. Singing birds filled them. These groves alternated with fields of cotton and grain, indigo and tobacco. Herds of white lyre-horned cattle grazed in pastures. Bees made honey in hollow logs affixed to giant baobab trees. Barth marveled at women carrying their produce to local markets in half a dozen enormous calabashes stacked on their heads.

  The pastoral calm was sometimes broken by troops of armed cavalry and infantry, hurrying past on their way to join the newest war against the pagans of Maradi. In the evenings Barth’s small camp was swarmed, as always, by “hucksters and retailers” who pestered him even into his tent. The area teemed with thieves, so Barth posted watchmen at night. But such inconveniences couldn’t dampen his mood.

  He was now traveling separately from the salt caravan. His little group consisted of three servants, a camel, a mare, a pack-ox, the emir’s nag, and “one half-barbarized European.” Everyone was excited by the prospect of Kano, “the celebrated emporium of Negroland.” The road grew increasingly crowded with travelers heading to and from the city. On the evening of February 2, after three days of travel, they saw Kano’s famous two hills, Dala and Goron Dutse, rising from the plain.

  By the time they passed through one of the city’s fourteen gates, set into a clay wall 30 feet high, darkness had fallen. They had some difficulty finding their quarters. But Barth’s spirits were unsinkable: “Kano had been sounding in my ears now for more than a year; it had been one of the great objects of our journey as the central point of commerce, as a great store-house of information, and as the point whence more distant regions might be most successfully attempted. At length, after nearly a year’s exertions, I had reached it.”

  THIS BUBBLE POPPED the following day. Barth learned that his stock of goods was worth far less than expected in Kano’s markets, which put his future in jeopardy. The present wasn’t rosy either. The agent in charge of his goods in Kano, a man recommended by Gagliuffi, turned out to be a blatant chiseler who refused to advance him any money against the sale of his goods. Barth didn’t have “a single farthing in cash.” He had to borrow money to eat and live. Meanwhile he was hounded every day by creditors for expenses incurred on the road and in Katsina.

  Kano’s emir, like Katsina’s, considered Barth a prize to be squeezed. He wouldn’t hear of departure. To meet the emir’s expectations would wipe out his goods, so Barth played for time. This put him in poor graces with the emir. Richardson inadvertently worsened Barth’s circumstances by sending the emir a letter from Zinder, promising to visit with a gift once he was resupplied. But the letter didn’t even mention Barth, which made the emir wonder whether this visiting Christian was a loner without the means to make generous presents—a dangerous status for an infidel stranger in the Sudan.

  Adding to his misery, Barth’s lodgings were dim and dreary, and his roommates were lively throngs of mice and vermin. Then fever knocked him down. Characteristically he decided to cure himself through willed exertion. He roused himself and ventured into Kano on horseback. The city’s vitality revived him.

  He estimated its population at 30,000, perhaps double that during the busy trading season, plus 4,000 domestic slaves. The city bustled and lazed, delighted and appalled. He glimpsed naked slaves, gaudy Arabs, lovely women, luxury, poverty, pleasure, distress. “So different in external form from all that is seen in European towns,” wrote Barth, “yet so similar in its internal principles.” London, he pointed out, had more in common with Kano than it suspected.

  Barth knew that comparing Africa’s way of life to Europe’s would surprise his readers, so he illustrated the similarities at length in one of his best passages. Unlike the European racialists and nationalists whose views would soon devastate Africa, Barth was interested in connections and world history. His description goes beyond exotic details, reaching across cultures and continents to find a common humanity:

  Here a row of shops, filled with articles of native and foreign produce, with buyers and sellers in every variety of figure, complexion, and dress, yet all intent upon their little gain, endeavoring to cheat each other; there a large shed, like a hurdle, full of half-naked, half-starved slaves torn from their native homes, from their wives or husbands, from their children or parents, arranged in rows like cattle, and staring desperately upon the buyers, anxiously watching into whose hands it should be their destiny to fall. In another part were to be seen all the necessaries of life: the wealthy buying the most palatable things for his table; the poor stopping and looking greedily upon a handful of grain: here a rich governor, dressed in silk and gaudy clothes, mounted upon a spirited and richly caparisoned horse, and followed by a host of idle, insolent slaves; there a poor blind man groping his way through the multitude, and fearing at every step to be trodden down; here a yard neatly fenced with mats of reed, and provided with all the comforts which the country affords—a clean, snug-looking cottage, the clay walls nicely polished, a shutter of reeds placed against the low, well-rounded door, and forbidding intrusion on the privacy of life, a cool shed for the daily household work—a fine spreading alleluba-tree, affording a pleasant shade during the hottest hours of the day, or a beautiful gonda or papaya unfolding its large, feather-like leaves above a slender, smooth, and undivided stem, or the tall date-tree, waving over the whole scene; the matron, in a clean black cotton gown wound round her waist, her hair neatly dr
essed in “chokoli” or bejaji, busy preparing the meal for her absent husband, or spinning cotton, and, at the same time, urging her female slaves to pound the corn; the children, naked and merry, playing about in the sand … or chasing a straggling, stubborn goat; earthenware pots and wooden bowls, all cleanly washed, standing in order. Farther on, a dashing Cyprian, homeless, comfortless, and childless, but affecting merriment or forcing a wanton laugh, gaudily ornamented with numerous strings of beads around her neck, her hair fancifully dressed, and bound with a diadem, her gown of various colors loosely fastened under her luxuriant breast, and trailing behind in the sand; near her a diseased wretch covered with ulcers or with elephantiasis.

  Now a busy “marina,” an open terrace of clay, with a number of dyeing pots, and people busily employed in various processes of their handicraft: here a man stirring the juice, and mixing with the indigo some coloring wood in order to give it the desired tint; there another, drawing a shirt from the dye-pot, or hanging it up on a rope fastened to the trees; there two men beating a well-dyed shirt, singing the while, and keeping good time; farther on, a blacksmith busy with his rude tools in making a dagger … or the more estimable and useful instruments of husbandry; … close by, a group of indolent loiterers lying in the sun and idling away their hours.

  Here a caravan from Gonja arriving with the desired kola-nut, chewed by all who have “ten kurdi” [cowries] to spare from their necessary wants, or a caravan laden with natron, starting for Nupe, or a troop of A’sbenawa going off with their salt for the neighboring towns, or some Arabs leading their camels, heavily laden with the luxuries of the north and east … ; there, a troop of gaudy, warlike-looking horsemen galloping toward the palace of the governor to bring him the news of a new inroad of Serki Ibram. Every where human life in its varied forms, the most cheerful and the most gloomy, seemed closely mixed together; every variety of national form and complexion—the olive-colored Arab, the dark Kanuri with his wide nostrils, the small-featured, light, and slender Ba-Fellanchi, the broad-faced Ba-Wangara (Mandingo), the stout, large-boned, and masculine-looking Nupe female, the well-proportioned and comely Ba-Haushe woman.

  Kano’s vast market, the largest in Central Africa, astonished Barth, as it had Clapperton. Then as now, the market sprawled in the center of town near the filthy elongated pond called the Jakara. Rows of stalls and sheds lined a labyrinth of narrow alleys. Everything under the sun could be found there, organized in sectors like a department store: every local fruit, grain, and vegetable; livestock of all varieties; slaughterhouses and butcher shops, with the meat temptingly displayed, sometimes with a dab of sheep’s wool stuck to a goat’s leg to trick the gullible into buying it for mutton; stacks of animal fodder; calabashes, spoons, baskets, and other domestic utensils; cakes and breads; savory dishes; refreshing drinks and fresh water; scissors, knives, and swords; beads of glass, coral, and amber; jewelry and amulets; kohl and antimony; gold, silver, copper, zinc, and iron; frankincense, cloves, and other spices; kola nuts, a mild stimulant “as necessary as coffee or tea to us”; herbal medicines and charms. Some merchants hired musicians to attract buyers to their stalls.

  Many of the shops sold Kano’s most famous product: fine cotton cloth, beautifully dyed in many shades of indigo, in solids and patterns. Kano cloth and the garments made from it were in demand as far north as Tripoli, as far west as Timbuktu, and as far east as Lake Chad—essentially everywhere in north-central Africa where people wore clothes. As soon as he could afford it, Barth bought a Kano “guinea-fowl” shirt with a speckled pattern of small blue and white squares for about £1.50.

  The city was also renowned for its leather goods, especially sandals. Other important items included salt, slaves, and natron (sodium carbonate, found in saline deposits, and used as a cleaning agent, preservative, and bleach). Barth estimated that 5,000 people were sold for the coastal slave markets every year, plus a greater number for domestic slavery.

  He was especially struck by the abundance of European goods in the market. He found calicoes from Manchester, silks and sugar from France, red cloth from Saxony, beads from Venice and Trieste, mirrors and needles from Nuremberg, razors from Austria. Sword blades for sale came from Solingen, Germany, famous for its steel. He estimated that 50,000 such blades reached Kano every year, where blacksmiths set them into hilts. Barth saw Solingen blades, sometimes at uncomfortably close range, everywhere he went in Africa, from the Sahara to Lake Chad to Timbuktu.

  The Kano market also sold paper with the tre lune watermark, made in Italy; it was ubiquitous in north-central Africa. (Paper was precious in the Sudan, and profitable in the markets. Barth wrote several letters and dispatches from Kano on the backs of printed stationery from the Bordeaux & Cette Railway Office in London that informed the recipient about an upcoming board meeting: in short, scrap paper.)

  The oldest part of Kano, inhabited since the sixth century, was Dala, a steep flat-topped hill of hard red earth, about 1,700 feet high. Barth climbed it and sketched the city below. To the north the sky was hazy with windblown sand from the Sahara. To the south lay the emir’s palace, a walled thirty-acre compound within the city’s walls. Built in the fifteenth century, the compound contained (and still does) living quarters for the emir and his wives, concubines, children, and royal slaves, as well as reception halls, courts, forests, and grazing lands. The emir’s army consisted of 7,000 cavalry and more than 20,000 infantry.

  To pay for all this he levied heavy taxes, starting with a per capita tax. He also taxed every hoe, dye pot, and palm tree. He collected a tax on everything sold in the market, from vegetables to slaves. And of course every caravan and merchant that passed through the city or did business there was required to honor the emir with extravagant gifts. No doubt Barth’s European readers noticed these similarities to their lives as well.

  BARTH HAD BEEN stuck in Kano for a month. He needed to leave for Kukawa, the capital of Bornu, to meet Richardson and Overweg. His Muslim friends had been interceding for him with the emir, a stout, handsome man of thirty-eight whom Barth found intelligent but lazy. Eventually, as always, a bargain was struck. The emir agreed to honor his Christian visitor by accepting a load of presents: an elaborate black burnoose with silk and gold lace worth 60,000 cowries, a red cap, a white shawl bordered with red, a length of white muslin, cloves, rose oil, a razor and scissors, an English clasp-knife, and a large German mirror. In return the emir granted Barth permission to leave.

  Unfortunately he had sold everything else he owned to buy gifts and pay debts, and couldn’t afford the expense of getting to Kukawa. One of his Muslim friends shamed the emir into sending Barth a gift of 60,000 cowries. Of this, 6,000 went to the friend, 6,000 to the officer who delivered the shells, and 8,000 to clear the last of Barth’s debts. With the remainder he bought two camels and some provisions. He couldn’t find a guide. Everyone was afraid of the territory between Kano and Kukawa. On March 9, he finally left the city, accompanied by three teenaged servants.

  “There was no caravan,” he wrote, “the road was infested by robbers; and I had only one servant upon whom I could rely, … while I had been so unwell the preceding day as to be unable to rise from my couch. However, I was full of confidence; and with the same delight with which a bird springs forth from its cage, I hastened to escape from these narrow, dirty mud-walls into the boundless creation.”

  He sprang forth, he added, on his “unsightly black four-dollar nag.” In this bedraggled yet cheerful fashion he started for Kukawa and the empire of Bornu, the expedition’s goal. There he expected to reunite with his European companions and be resupplied with money and merchandise.

  13

  An Ending

  SOON AFTER LEAVING KANO, BARTH’S GROUP JOINED THE SMALL family caravan of a wealthy Arab trader. They traveled together for a few days. The trader was accompanied by his veiled concubine, her three female slaves, six natives, and six pack-oxen. One of the Arab’s servants, a black African, surprised Barth by speaking to him in mod
ern Greek—the man had spent twenty years in Istanbul. The trader, refined and educated, entertained Barth with fine pastries and coffee. Barth, nearly destitute, could contribute only a couple of onions in return.

  The contrast deeply embarrassed him. It inspired one of his occasional peevish outbursts about his constant lack of means, outbursts that shrink him to normal human dimensions: “The barbarian and the civilized European seemed to have changed places,” he wrote. “Really it is incredible what a European traveler in these countries has to endure; for while he must bear infinitely more fatigue, anxiety, and mental exertion than any native traveler, he is deprived of even the little comfort which the country affords, has no one to cook his supper and to take care of him when he falls sick, or to shampoo him.”

  On March 12 a passing caravan from Kukawa told Barth that no Christian had arrived in that city or been heard of. This puzzled him. Richardson had expected to reach Kukawa by late February.

  Four days and 85 miles after leaving Kano, Barth came to Gumel, on the western frontier of Bornu. It was a flourishing town with narrow streets and a busy market with 300 stalls. Barth’s habitual questions led him to a man who had been Clapperton’s servant on the first expedition.

  But Gumel delighted Barth most for another reason. March 15, he wrote, was “a most fortunate and lucky day for me”: he received his first mail in ten months. Nothing lifted an explorer’s spirits as much as correspondence from home, or depressed him more than feeling forgotten. Barth luxuriated in letters from England, Germany, and Tripoli. Their praise and encouragement reinvigorated him. Equally important, one of them, from Gagliuffi, contained 2 Spanish dollars, the refund from an accounting error. “It was the only current money I had at that time,” wrote Barth, “and they were certainly more valuable to me than so many hundreds of pounds at other times.”