“We will sit here, we will watch in silence.”
“Do not you make (of) moving.”
“Beast that it is with a bad wound, we will follow it.”
The natives secured at Kano completed my personnel for hunting—Sakari and Mona being available for gun-bearing, bag-carrying, and skinning, Outa as horse-boy, and John as cook and caretaker of his master, for he had already attached himself to me with the sincerity of a faithful servant and was now watchful of my welfare, especially taking upon himself to warn me when he detected any “slim” manœuvring over camels or food or gifts by cunning characters that came about camp or were met on our wayfaring.
Delays always seem to dog the start of a prearranged journey—the more anxiously planned, the more sure some fateful hitch at the last moment—and my experience at the “end of the line” in Nigeria was no exception. At Kano the large quantity of stores of food and hunting accessories that were to carry me through barren country for about a year lacked almost all gun and rifle ammunition and an important crate of apparatus for entomological work; all of which had missed the steamer at Liverpool; which advice I received in due course.
However, as the neighbourhood of Kano had been unworked by collectors, it was not unprofitable to make a beginning there, while observations alone would give me a good ground work to go on as I moved further north, for by being familiar with species that inhabited the Kano region of Northern Nigeria, I could the more surely detect types peculiar to localities or given latitudes as I encountered them in the Sudan.
Therefore I did not stay many days in Kano while waiting the arrival of the lost supplies, and with the aid of native carriers moved out with all my baggage to camp about six miles north of the town near to a small village named Farniso.
My experiences there need not be unduly dwelt on. The country-side was for the most part thickly populated and well cultivated, and collecting was not of an exciting order. There were no antelope in the neighbourhood, and jackals and foxes were the largest animals I collected. Jackals were very plentiful, and I have seen their dens even in the walls of Kano.
Reports reached me that there were a few lions in low-lying country on the Hadeija river, where it passes through N’gourou, and also that there was some good big-game country east of Kano towards Maidugari (nearing Lake Chad territory), and I have no doubt but that such reports were true, although I had no opportunity of hunting in those localities. I judge that the big-game hunter who journeyed to Kano would not find his hunting there, but would seek it some days away to the east or the west or the north. I know not the territory any great distance east and west, but I know something of it northwards, and anon will explain where game lies where I have seen.
Though collecting in the neighbourhood of Kano was not exciting, bird life was attractive and abundant, as were small mammals, and my days were well filled hunting in the early morning or late afternoon during the hours of feeding and movement of the creatures of the underbush, who dislike as much as humans do the intense heat of an overhead sun, and skinning and setting specimens all through the day, and after dark at night, in camp. During the few weeks I remained camped near Farniso I collected 207 birds and 83 mammals, and also a quantity of butterflies and moths.