No Zaki salute—on the knees and with head to the ground—comes from these men. Meeting you when they are mounted, they may—one in a 100—raise the right hand from the elbow—tantamount to taking off the hat in Continental Europe—or, passing you on foot, they may, in the same proportion, render a slight token of military salute. As a rule they give no sign beyond a side scrutiny, as one does at an unusual visitor from another country They convey to you that they know too much of the world to look upon you—you and each of you—as a great leader, a chief, a Zaki.
They are not as the Moslem who has never been out of Hausaland and who knows you only by the prowess and governing ability of your countrymen there. These cosmopolitan Arabs appraise differently. They tell you, by looks, that chance has given you the upper hand. So be it. They care not. Let them go on with their trading and they are utterly cold as to who rules. There is no common, fellow-feeling between these men and those among whom they move. No feeling of patriotism unites them. There is a link, however, stronger, more potent, one that would draw as a magnet millions of Moslems in Africa and beyond. It is their religion. Let us beware.
You may not like these Arab merchants from the north and from the east. You may regard them as prepared to trade in anything for gain. You may believe them to have been the moving spirit of the former slave-hunting days. But they are picturesque, and if you are not satiated with sightseeing you must turn and look at them.
These Arabs, who are principally from Morocco, from Algeria and from Tripoli, bring European goods—wools, cloths, beads, scents—and take back chiefly skins and ostrich feathers. They formerly came, and some still do, by camel caravan from the north, traversing the sandy wastes of the Sahara. The journey occupies 6 months in the wet season and 4 months in the dry.
EX-SERGT.-MAJOR DOWDU.
A Beri-Beri from Bornu.
AN ARAB MERCHANT
Who trades from the shores of the Mediterranean to Kano. ([See page 101.])