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Updated: May 25, 2025
The writer therefore gave it as his opinion, that the European travellers should immediately be put to death. An alarm indeed had been spread through Sockatoo, that the English were coming to invade Houssa. The sultan irritated doubtless at the shameful result of his grand expedition against Coonia, felt also another and more pressing fear.
Bello's army was on its march to attack Coonia, the capital of the rebels of Goobur. Nothing could be more disorderly than the march, horse and foot intermingled in the greatest confusion, all rushing to get forward; sometimes the followers of one chief tumbled amongst those of another, when swords were half-drawn, but they ended in making faces at each other, or putting on a threatening aspect.
They had one musket in Coonia, and it did wonderful execution, for it brought down the foremost of the quilted men, who fell from his horse like a sack of corn thrown from a horse's back at a miller's door, but both horse and man were brought off by two or three footmen.
They soon arrived before Coonia, the town not being above half a mile in diameter, nearly circular, and built on the banks of one of the branches of the liver, or lakes. Each chief, as he came, took his station, which, it was supposed, had been previously assigned to him.
In the evening this valiant army retired to their camp, when the Coonia force managed to cut off the water from the stream which supplied it, and then an alarm was raised that they were about to make an attack. On this the whole army, horse and foot, tumbled over each other pell-mell, trying who should get the soonest out of danger.
Kano being nearly mid-way between Bornou and Sockatoo, Clapperton left his baggage there, to be conveyed to the former place on his return, and set out for the capital of the sultan Bello, bearing only the presents destined for that prince. On his way he found numerous bands mustering to form an army for the attack of Coonia, the rebel metropolis of Ghoober.
He saw bodies of troops on their way to attack Coonia; the soldiers had a peculiar appearance as they passed by the lakes formed by the river Zurmie; he thus describes the scene: "The borders of these lakes are the resort of numbers of elephants and other wild beasts.
The army, amounting to 50,000 men, under the sultan's command, surrounded the walls of Coonia.
There were three Arabs, armed at all points, one of whom was struck by the Coonia musket, but the others kept carefully behind the sultan. The most useful and bravest person was an old female slave of the sultan, who, mounted astraddle on a long-backed horse, rode about with half a dozen gourds filled with water, and a brass basin, from which she supplied the wounded and thirsty.
They had one musket in Coonia, and it did wonderful execution; for it brought down the van of the quilted men, who fell from his horse like a sack of corn thrown from a horse's back at a miller's door, but both horse and man were brought off by two or three footmen.
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