The wide dominions of Bornou are peopled by a countless multitude, among whom no fewer than thir ty different languages are spoken. The language which prevails in the capital, bears a strong resem blance to that of the neighbouring negroes; but the nobles and principal families converse in Arabic. They are acquainted with the art of writing, and are taught to express the Bornou tongue in Arabic cha racters. The natives are represented as singularly courteous and humane. They will not pass a stran ger on the road without stopping to salute him ; their houses are ever open for the reception of visitants ; and their sharpest quarrels are mere contests of words. Passionately fond of the amusement of drafts, they often sit down upon the ground, and forming holes to answer the purpose of squares, supply the place of men with dates, or the meaner substitute of stones, or camel's dung. On the event of a game, they stake their whole property, sometimes even their clothes ; and as the bye-standers constantly take sides, and obtrude their advice, the whole groupe presents the most ludicrous scene of violent gesticulation and cla morous abuse. Persons of superior rank devote them selves to chess, in which they are said to be eminently skilled. The sultan of Bortiou, and his court, profess the Mahometah-faith ; but the majority of the people adhere to the idolatrous superstitions of their fathers.
The monarchy, as in the empire of Bathna, is elective ; but the election ' is confined to the royal family. On the death of a sovereign, the privilege of chusing a successor among his sons, without re gard to priority of birth, is conferred by .the na tion on three of the most distinguished men, whose age and character' for wisdom are denoted by their title of elders, and whose conduct has entitled them to the public esteem. Limited in their choice by no other restriction than the necessity of electing the most worthy, they retire to an appointed place, the avenues to which are carefully guarded by the peo ple ; and during their deliberations, the princes are confined in separate chambers of the palace. When their choice is determined, they proceed to the apart ment of the sovereign elect, and conduct him in si lence to the place where the corpse of his father, which cannot .bc interred till this awful ceremony is passed, awaits his arrival. There they expatiate freely on the character of his departed parent, and conclude with this awful ,warning, " You see before you the end of'your mortal career ; the eternal which succeeds to it, will be miserable or happy, in propor tion as your reign shall have proved a curse or a bles sing to your people." The new sovereign is then brought back to the palace, amidst the loud acclama tions of the multitude, and is invested by the electors with all the slaves, and two-thirds of all the lands and cattle of his father ; the remaining third being al ways kept as a provision for the other children of the deceased monarch.
Fatal dissensions in the royal family, are the almost inevitable consequences of this mode of election. As soon as the sovereign is invested with the ensigns of royalty, such of his brothers as have reached the age of manhood, prostrate themselves at his feet, and rising, press his hands to their lips in testimony of their alle giance. If their sincerity be doubted, either by the king or the elders, they are either removed by death, or doomed to perpetual imprisonment : when they are not suspected, they receive from the reigning monarch a liberal allotment of lands and cattle from the 'pos sessions of their father, together with presents of slaves. Such of the princes as are too young to re ceive their proper portion of their father's property, are educated in the palace, till they arrive at the.years
of maturity, at which time their respective shares of land and cattle are assigned them.. It often happens; however, that the most popular, or the most ambi. tious of the rejected princes, veiling his designs under the affectation of zealons.atfachment, creates a pow.. erful party, and, assured of foreign aid, prepares in se. cret the means of revolt. " But stained with such kindred blood," says the writer who has drawn up the account of Bornou from Mr Lucas's communi cations, " the sceptre of the victorious rebel is not lastingly secure—one revolution invites and facilitates another ; and till the slaughter of the field, the sword of the executioner, or the knife of the assassin, has left him without a brother, the throne of the sovc, reign is seldom firmly established." In Bornou, as in every Mahometan empire, the administration of the provinces is vernors appointed by the crown ; and the expences•of the sovereign are defrayed partly from his hereditary. lands, and partly by taxes levied on the people. The monarch of Bornou is not, like the sovereign of many neighbouring kingdoms, the .executioner of the cri minals whom his own voice has condemned • but com mits the• care of executions to the cadi, who directs his slaves to strike off the head of the. prisoner.
The military force of this empire consists chiefly of cavalry, armed with the sabre, the lance, the pike, and the bow, and defended by shields of hides. Fire arms, though not entirely unknown to them, are too difficult to be procured for common use. When the sultan levies an army for the purpose of taking the field, he is said to have a custom of causing a date tree to be placed as a threshold to one of the gates of his capital, and commanding his horsemen to enter the town one by one, that the parting of the tree'in the middle, when worn through by the tramp ling of the, horses; may • serve as a signal that the levy is complete.
The inhabitants of Bornou, though composing so many different nations, are alike in their appearance; having a black complexion, but features different from those of the negroes. Their dress consists of a girdle for the waist, a turban, consisting of a red woollen cap, surrounded by folds of cotton, together with a loose robe of coloured cotton, of a coarser, kind.
The only manufactures known in Bornou are coarse linen, made from the hemp of the country, and cal licoes and muslins woven in pieces of about nine inches in breadth, and varying in length from fifteen to twenty yards. Theie cotton manufactures, when enriched with the blue dye of the country, which is preferable to that of the East Indies, are valued more highly than silk. They also manufacture -a species of carpet, which they use as a covering,. for their horses ; and a coarse cloth from wool, mixed with the hair of goats and camels, of which they make tents for the use of the army. The little silver they have is converted by their own artists into rings ; and from native iron ore, they fabricate,. though un skilfully, such tools as are employed in their rude husbandry. Their articles of exportation are gold dust, slaves, hoises, ostrich feathers, salt, and civet ; in return for 'which . they receive copper and brass, which are brought to them from Tripoli, and are used as the current species of Bornou ; imperial dol lars, which are likewise brought from Tripoli by the merchants of Feizan, and are converted by the ar tists of.Bornou into rings and bracelets for their wo men; red woollen caps, which arc worn under the turban ; check linens ; light coarse woollen cloths; baize, barakans, small Turkey carpets,. and Mesurata carpets. See Proceedings of the African Association, chap. vi. and xii. ; Discoveries in Africa; and Browne's Travels in Africa. (k) .