y
day, and by the executioner alone: no other person dare go there, for if
he do he must die!" I certainly began to feel sick myself at the recital
of various horrors perpetrated at this place by the executioner, and
don't know whether, if any one had offered me some great reward, I would
have ventured to place my feet upon this accursed spot of mother earth.
Never in my life did I feel so sick at heart--so revolted at man's
crimes and cruelties. The tree itself was a true picture of death--a
tree of dark, impenetrable foliage, with a great head, or upper part
larger than the lower one, and this head crowned with fifty filthy
vultures, the ministers of the executioner, which eat the bodies of the
criminals! The number of executions here performed is very great--some
two or three hundred in a year. Since we have been here a man has been
butchered in the night, scarcely a hundred yards from my house; so that
I am in a pleasant neighbourhood, what with the executions and what with
the hyaenas. The people pretend that for a small offence the Sultan
inflicts capital punishments: for example, merely speaking bad language.

Turning from these disagreeable scenes, we went to see the dens of the
hyaenas, which are beneath the rocks, extending far under ground. Here
we saw bones and dung enough. The scavengers of Zinder are, therefore,
the vultures and hyaenas: the former wing the air and dart on their prey
by day, and the latter prowl the streets by night.

In the evening we refreshed our fancies by witnessing the kanga, or
drums beating to the dances of the maidens of Zinder. It is always the
same thing, two or three fellows thumping upon their drums, dancing
round them occasionally themselves, and the maidens approaching these
drummers with timid steps. To-night they had a sort of hopping-dance, on
one leg, keeping time to the beating of the drums. These coy maidens
soon approached, or rather ran at me, and touched me with the hand; this
done, they claim the right of a present. It is considered a favour to be
so distinguished.

CHAPTER XIII.

Brother of the Sultan--Trade of Zinder--Prices--The Sarkee drinks
Rum--Five Cities--Houses of Zinder--Female Toilette--Another Tree of
Death--Paganism--Severity of the Sultan--Lemons--Barth and
Overweg--Fire--Brother of the Sarkee--Daura--Shonshona--Lousou--Slaves
in Irons--Reported Razzia--Talk with the Shereef--Humble
Manners--Applications for Medicines--Towns and Villages of