Note 191 — LEMLEM.

It must not be supposed that Yemyem is the native name of any country or people south of Kanó: it is a foreign term applied with more or less vagueness to the inhabitants of that region. The misery and degradation of a people marked out especially as the prey of the slave hunter, exposes them to the imputation of cannibalism, which draws on them fresh injuries. Lander (Clapp. Second Exped. p. 292), on his way southwards from Kanó to Funda, saw at Fali-n-dúshi (the White rocks) for the first time, a people completely naked and ready to sell their offspring. But the natives of Zamfara also go nearly naked (Clapp. p. 178): the Kombori in Kotú-n-kúra, are still treated as Demdem (id. p. 146), and the pagan negroes near the desert (id. p. 334) are certainly not placed in circumstances more secure or favourable to civilization than the Baúwa further south. The change effected in Houssa by Mohammedism, and the influx of strangers, may be learned by comparing together the descriptions of that country by Clapperton and Leo Africanus. The latter writer (pt. VII. c. 11) knew of no city named Kachenah; the villages of the country so called were small and of the meanest construction; the people were of the deepest black, with noses and lips disproportionately large. He speaks of the people of Zamfara (c. 13) in still less flattering terms, concluding that “they are rather brutes than men.”