A horse, or rather pony, useful for riding is worth £5. An animal of corresponding kind in England would change owners for from £15 to £25. A polo pony should be obtained in Kano for something between £8 and £12. The English figure is £40 to £60. Kano is not a horse-breeding district. Sokoto and Katsina are the principal districts whence they come. Kano is the chief market for that stock.
The horses are generally small, I should say, from 13½ hands to 15 hands. One of 17 hands towers over nearly all it will pass in the course of a month. The animals have not the stamina of the British horse and are slower. They are entire. An experiment was made to have 17 geldings in the mounted infantry, but the animals proved dull and spiritless and were discarded as useless.
THE MAGISTRATE’S COURT IN THE MARKET.
His Worship is on the steps. ([See page 107.])
A DETACHMENT OF THE EMIR’S POLICE.
Horses are unshod and mercifully their tails are not cut short, for flies around Kano are a perpetual torment to man and beast. The rest-house (!) in which I was sentenced to live, but to which I did not go, would have been a torture in that respect. It stood in a field near where herds of cattle passed accompanied by swarms of winged insects. An ideal place, truly, to put anybody who was writing hours daily. Knowing what I now do of Kano ways, it is just what might have been looked for from one quarter.
The bit used by natives is similar to that seen in North Africa and other Arab towns. The pace of the horse is checked by the rein bearing on the bit, as a person would press a lever, the action causing the bit to press on the palate, and as the iron bar has two prongs which rise as the rein is tightened, the result is extremely painful. At times blood will trickle from the animals’ mouths, the palate having been pierced by the prongs on the bit bar. It is right to say that this bleeding will occasionally be caused by champing and not by misuse.