The home of the Kanawa (people of Kano), whose industry is famed from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, one would naturally expect to find their numbers in the ascendant. Keen-featured men of business, women with elaborate coiffures resembling pictures of old Assyrian helmets, their cheeks often disfigured by exaggerated “beauty spots” daubed on with lead or antimony. Other Hausas, visitors from Katsina, Gober, or Daura, each with the distinguishing facial mark of his clan, six strokes with a dot for Katsina, two for Daura, and so on. Pale-complexioned Fulani from the country, the women wearing their straight hair in ringlets, with silver earrings and gentle eyes. The Nupe, with his characteristic headgear of red, black, and yellow straw. Thick-lipped Kanuris from Bornu. Tall, lithe Tuareg from distant Sokoto, or Asben. The Arab merchant, arrogant and intriguer, making his way through the market to the “Arab quarter,” a quarter of the city remarkable for its Moorish architecture and unpleasantly notorious for its smells.
Each trade has its quarter. Beneath the shelter of the booths vendors sit cross-legged, their wares spread out before them. Cloths of every hue and texture under the sun, it would seem, absorb one whole quarter, and form, perhaps, the most important article of sale, although the more valuable clothes are seldom seen, for the Kano market is essentially a retail one, transactions in objects of more costly worth taking place within the shelter of private houses. You will see enough in the cloth quarter, however, to appreciate the diversity of quality and design, from the beautifully embroidered Kano riga (a sort of hoodless cloak universally worn by the better classes, covering the body from neck to knee) to the common shirting of Manchester, the white bullan or gown from Bornu, the arigiddi, or woman’s cloth from Zaria, the faringodo, or plain white cloth from Ilorin, the majai, or webbing made by the pagan tribes of Bauchi, and used by the Fulani for girths. The products of native looms from towns hundreds of miles distant, enjoying special renown for some attractive peculiarity, are purchasable here, together with the manufactures of Europe. The former are almost infinite in diversity, and each has its particular uses. Black, white, and blue gowns, brocade, striped brocade, striped shirting, white shirting, shirting with a red border, white and black checks, drill, red baft, cloths for turbans, caps, fezzes, expensively embroidered trousers, sleeveless under-vests, velvet—all in endless variety.
In the leather quarter you will find great quantities of saddlery from Tripoli, and also of local manufacture, highly ornamented bridles, stirrup-leathers, despatch-bags, Korans in leather cases, purses, red slippers, sandals, quilted horsecloths, undyed goatskins and cowhides, swords in scabbards, many of them admirable in workmanship. An examination of the latter will disclose the interesting fact that the blades of the most expensive specimens bear the Sölingen mark, a curious example of the conservatism of this interior African trade, for as far back as the middle of the last century Sölingen sword blades were imported into Kano across the desert. Passing out of the leather quarter you will find silver, brass, and tin ware; among the former necklaces and earrings which would not disgrace a London jeweller’s shop-window, ruder bangles and anklets, partly tin, partly silver; brass urns and bowls, and glass bracelets from Bida. Necklaces of beads, Venetian and local, of agates imported from Tripoli and polished and cut at Bida, of cheap European coral, of different kinds of bright-coloured local seeds. Rough pottery, but often of elegant design, such, for example, as the small lamps used for burning ground-nut oil, in the manufacture of which mica enters.
Sheds and stalls, in addition to the booths, are devoted to the sale of numerous merchandise. The store of an elderly white-turbaned Hausa contains a mass of rough silk mixed up with the cocoons; these are produced by the silkworm, which feeds on the tamarind tree. The rigas made from it are very dear, and also very pleasant to the touch, resembling in that respect and in colour tussore. Here is a stall containing the products of the local smithy, stirrup-irons, locks for doors, every kind of agricultural implement used by the native farmer, axes, knives, and skin-scrapers used in preparing goat and sheep skins for export. There a stall filled with native herbs used as medicines, from the tafarnua for rheumatism to the karijiji for colds, the kula and passakori much used by women after child-birth. Much space is taken up by the sellers of foodstuffs, mostly vegetable, such as guinea-corn and millet in variety, beans, yams, sugar-cane, sweet potatoes (in variety), pepper, onions, the fruit of the tamarind, the red flowers of the tobacco plant, cassava, and ginger.
ONE OF THE GATEWAYS TO KANO CITY, SHOWING OUTER WALL.
ANOTHER OF THE ENTRANCES TO THE CITY.
In another direction you will observe on sale European salt and native potash in cakes and cones, zana-mats, firewood, native rope, roofing, sticks with branches, guinea-corn and millet stalks for fencing, native beds, doors made of palm sticks, baskets, mats in great diversity of size and colouring. Round about the booths and sheds on every side sit men and women (mostly the latter) selling articles of local or European origin; by their side, and, apparently, no more carefully watched than the articles themselves, small piles of cowries and sometimes the new nickel coinage we have introduced, and threepenny bits represent the takings of the day. Among such articles are to be observed indigo, antimony, ground-nuts, the inevitable kola-nut, shea-butter, spices, cow-dung in small packets (very precious), raw cotton, henna (lelli) for staining hands or feet, fresh honey, cakes and sweetmeats (of a fearful and wonderful composition), native soap from Nupe (sabouni), bobbins, shuttles, and other necessities of the national industry, cigarettes, red wool, green wool, crochet-thread, water-pots, and sundry cheap trinkets from Europe. The butchers’ quarter it is best to pass by swiftly; unsavoury in Europe, the flies and tropical sun do not improve it in Africa. Long files of cattle, donkeys, sheep, and goats can be seen winding their way to the cattle market, where many thousands are daily on sale.