from Malta.  But the busiest scene is the slave market, composed of two long ranges of sheds, one for males and another for females.  These poor creatures are seated in rows, decked out for exhibition.  The buyer scrutinizes them as nicely as a purchaser with us does a horse, inspecting the tongue, teeth, eyes, and limbs; making them cough and perform various movements, to ascertain if there be any thing unsound, and in case of a blemish appearing, or even without assigning a reason, he may return them within three days.  As soon as the slaves are sold, the exposer gets back their finery, to be employed in ornamenting others.  Most of the captives purchased at Kano, are conveyed across the desert, during which their masters endeavour to keep up their spirits, by an assurance, that on passing its boundary, they will be set free and dressed in red, which they account the gayest of colours.  Supplies, however, often fail in this dreary journey, a want first felt by the slaves, many of whom perish with hunger and fatigue.  Clapperton heard the doleful tale of a mother, who had seen her child dashed to the ground, while she herself was compelled by the lash to drag on an exhausted frame.  Yet, when at all tolerably treated, they are very gay, an observation generally made in regard to slaves, but this gaiety, arising only from the absence of thought, probably conceals much secret wretchedness.

The regulations of the market of Kano seem to be good, and strictly enforced.  A sheik superintends the police, and is said even to fix the prices.  The dylalas or brokers, are men of somewhat high character; packages of goods are often sold unopened bearing merely their mark.  If the purchaser afterwards finds any defect, he returns it to the agent, who must grant compensation.  The medium of exchange is not cloth as in Bornou, nor iron as in Loggun, but cowries or little shells, brought from the roast, twenty of which are worth a halfpenny, and four hundred and eighty make a shilling, so that in paying a pound sterling, one has to count over nine thousand six hundred cowries.  Amid so many strangers, there is ample room for the trade of the restaurateur, which is carried on by a female seated on the ground, with a mat on her knees, on which are spread vegetables, gussub water, and bits of roasted meat about the size of a penny; these she retails to her customers squatted around her.  The killing of a bullock forms a sort of festival at Kano; its horns are dyed red with henna, drums are beaten, and a crowd collected, who, if they approve of the appearance and condition of the animal, readily become purchasers.