“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 Lander, who was younger and better-looking than Clapperton; but she had passed her twentieth year, was fat, and a perfect Turkish beauty, just like a huge walking water-butt.  All her arts were, however, unavailing on the heart of Lander; she could not induce him to visit her at her house, although he had the permission of his master.

This gay widow appeared by no means disposed to waste any time by making regular approaches, like those by which widow Wadman undermined the outworks, and then the citadel of the unsuspecting uncle Toby, but she was determined at once to carry the object of her attack by storm.

The widow Zuma attempted in the first place to ingratiate herself with the Europeans, by sending them hot provisions every day in abundance, during their stay at Wawa.  She calculated very justly, that gratitude is the parent of love, and therefore imagined that as the Europeans could not be otherwise than grateful to her, for the delicacies, with which she so liberally supplied them, it would soon follow as a natural consequence, that their hearts would overflow with love; at all events it was not to be supposed, that both master and man could remain callous to the potency of her corporeal charms.  Finding, however, that the hearts of the Europeans were much like the rocks of her native land, perfectly impenetrable, she had recourse to another stratagem, which is generally attended with success.  In the enlightened and civilized country of Europe, or at least in that part of it called England, it is by no means an obsolete custom, for an individual, who wishes to ingratiate himself with the object of his affections, to bestow a valuable present on the waiting woman or abigail, who is a great deal about her person, and the eulogiums which she then passes upon the absent lover, are great and exuberant in proportion to the extent of the bribe.  A female, whoever she may be, whether a Middlesex virgin, or a Wawa widow, delights not only to have some one to whom she can speak of the object of her attachment, but who will be continually speaking to her of him, and as it appears that the female character is very nearly the same in the interior of Africa, as in the latitude of London, it is by no means a matter of surprise, that the amorous widow enlisted Pascoe, the black servant of Clapperton, in her cause, by offering him in the way of a bribe, a handsome female slave as a wife, if he would manage to bring about an interview at her own house, between either Clapperton or Lander, expressing herself at the same time not to be very particular as to which of the two this interview was obtained with.  Clapperton it appears