The doctor, who was somewhat vexed at first at this
turn of his course, no longer thought of complaining when
he caught sight of the city of Kouka, the capital of Bornou.
He saw it for a moment, encircled by its walls of
white clay, and a few rudely-constructed mosques rising
clumsily above that conglomeration of houses that look
like playing-dice, which form most Arab towns. In the
court-yards of the private dwellings, and on the public
squares, grew palms and caoutchouc-trees topped with a
dome of foliage more than one hundred feet in breadth.
Joe called attention to the fact that these immense parasols
were in proper accordance with the intense heat of
the sun, and made thereon some pious reflections which it
were needless to repeat.
Kouka really consists of two distinct towns, separated
by the "Dendal," a large boulevard three hundred
yards wide, at that hour crowded with horsemen and foot
passengers. On one side, the rich quarter stands squarely
with its airy and lofty houses, laid out in regular order;
on the other, is huddled together the poor quarter, a miserable
collection of low hovels of a conical shape, in which
a poverty-stricken multitude vegetate rather than live,
since Kouka is neither a trading nor a commercial city.
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