By the Same Author

WILD LIFE IN CANADA

With numerous Photographs by the Author. Second Impression.

THREE YEARS OF WAR IN EAST AFRICA

With a Foreword by Lord Cranworth. Illustrated by Photographs and Drawings from the Author. Second Impression.

A selection of Press Opinions of the above will be found at the end of this book

OUT OF THE WORLD

EXPLORATION OF AÏR
OUT OF THE WORLD
NORTH OF NIGERIA

BY ANGUS BUCHANAN, M.C.
AUTHOR OF “THREE YEARS OF WAR IN EAST AFRICA,” AND
“WILD LIFE OF CANADA”

WITH NUMEROUS PHOTOGRAPHS BY THE AUTHOR
AND A MAP

LONDON
JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1921

All Rights Reserved

TO
MY FATHER
A THOROUGH SPORTSMAN OF
THE FINE OLD SCHOOL

PREFACE

A narrative of an odd undertaking to a foreign land. Odd, in the first place, insomuch that for the greater part of a year a man’s tongue was mute to the language of his race, for the land where he travelled was native: first to the Hausa people; later to Hausa, Beri-Beri, Fulani and Tuareg; and later still to Tuareg alone; while over all there was a mere handful of French Europeans, who were the military administrators of law and order.

The country was that known as the Territoire Militaire du Niger of the Western Sudan, wherein, remote and in the midst of desolate seas of sand, lies the wild brooding mountain country of Aïr or Asben—which was the traveller’s goal.

It might be said that the traveller was a rude man, for he was untutored in the deep studies of the scholar of many languages, as in a measure might be expected and understood of one whose occupation called him from day to day to don rough clothing and shoulder a rifle and march outside the frontiers of civilisation.

Clumsy, therefore, were his beginnings in speech with the people of the land; clumsy also his studies and understanding of all things new and strange which unfolded before his eyes in that amazing succession of novelty that taxes a balanced capacity of observation when one stands spell-bound at the entrance of an unexpected wonderland. Nevertheless, day by day, confusion became less; small words came of many tongues; piece by piece threads of understanding became woven into something durable and of the character of trustworthiness.

So that to-day I—for, alas, I must use that personal pronoun which is hateful to me, and admit that I am the traveller, so that I may shoulder the full responsibility as to the faithfulness of this narrative—have taken courage to tell my story with all its shortcomings, but at the same time with an earnestness that may in the end reveal, perhaps, the greater part of the picture of a strange land as it appeared to me.

And I would tell you that it is a wholly pleasant task to sit at home—Home, with all its repose and sweetness, neither sun-exhausted nor limb-weary, and with a full repast at hand—and look backward on the trail through the Sahara, and hear in imagination the fierce wind that brings a blinding sandstorm on its billows, and only have to write about it all.

But, though thus it is to-day, to-morrow or the day after I may be gone once again to the uttermost corners of the world—for such is my calling.

Some of my countrymen might envy me my to-morrow, some might pity me; but to all I would say neither one thing nor another. Such adventurings have their rare hours of pleasure and excitement and their long weary periods of trial and endurance. He is wise who knows the hazard of life stripped of all its romance and does not expect to find either great compensation or great gladness in strange lone lands—in the same way as they are seldom to be found in any man’s labours of the commonplace day.

It is deep satisfaction to me to know that, so far as the collections brought back are concerned, my labours have not been in vain, for it is one of my greatest desires, and the desire, I am sure, of many loyal-hearted men, to see Great Britain ever striving to continue to hold the honourable and prominent place in the development of the Natural History of the World which she has held in the Past. A year or two ago there were numerous and able rivals in the field, and Germany and America appeared to be on the verge of leading the world in all scientific research. Though a set-back to the former has occurred through the unfortunate circumstance of war, rivalry of nations will undoubtedly continue in the labyrinths of research, and, I trust, will be welcomed from any quarter as a healthy element that will ever give incentive to the students and scientific workers of this country to hold their own, and offer inducement to public-spirited people to encourage and support their commendable efforts.

The humble work, which in the following pages I venture upon, is not in any way a treatise on Natural History, but is a narrative descriptive of strange scenes and peoples in Out-of-the-World places in which Aïr has prominent position. And Aïr, in the centre of the Sahara, is unknown, or virtually unknown to English-speaking people. The German explorer Dr. Barth, in his travels in Central Africa, 70 years ago (1850-1), on behalf of the British Government, passed through Aïr, and in his Travels in Central Africa gave some brief discursive description of the country, which is, so far as I am aware, the only account of Aïr that we have in modern English literature.

But to return to my first remark, there are other reasons than that given in the first place for terming this an odd undertaking, and they are that the journey, which totalled some 1,400 miles of camel-travel, led to a land that was almost virgin to exploration of any kind, and of which nothing was known; while by force of circumstances it was decided for me that I must go on my long journey alone if I wished to undertake it; and therefore, perforce, I set out without the two or three good comrades that can help so greatly to lighten burdens, real or imaginary, on long uncertain trails.

The primary object of the Expedition, which was undertaken in the interests of the Right Honourable Lord Rothschild, was to link up the chain of Zoological Geography across that portion of Central Africa which lies between Algeria in Northern Africa and Nigeria in West Africa. Previous research had advanced from the south as far afield as Kano in Nigeria, and from the north to the Ahaggar Mountains in the Sudan southwest of Fezzan. There remained a great intermediate space unexplored by naturalists, wherein are the French possessions known as the Territoire Militaire du Niger and the unsettled mountainous region of Aïr or Asben; and it was through those said countries that the expedition proposed to journey.

With regard to the term Aïr or Asben which is applied to the great range of mountains which lie north of the region of Damergou, I think it is a pity that there should exist the seeming doubt of correct designation which the double title implies, and for my own part I propose, through my narrative, to refer only to the country as Aïr, which is the correct name in the language of the Tuaregs who inhabit the region, whereas Asben is a Hausa name, and would appear to have no particular claim to recognition since it is not Hausa country in the present era, whatever it may have been in the distant past, when tribal and religious wars were continually forcing territories to change hands.

The altitude readings, which I note during the narrative, since many of them have not been previously recorded, were taken with an aneroid barometer set to sea level before starting on the expedition.

Although the expedition was to a French colony, I feel that it was foreign only so far as concerned the difference of language, for the few officers I encountered, who so ably helped me on my way, if help I needed, were big-hearted men of the Lone Places among whom one could not feel a stranger. To all I owe thanks for such success as I gained, and gladly give it should any old comrade of the open road read this humble work.

I am indebted, also, to the administrative officials in charge of the Kano district who kindly rendered me many services ere I set out to cross the boundary.

Collecting in the field is one side of Natural History research, but there is, as you are aware, another side—the painstaking study of the specimens after they are unpacked on the museum benches at home. And I am much indebted to Lord Rothschild, Dr. Hartert, and the British Museum for having most kindly furnished me with the full results of the skilled studies of research to which the collections have been subjected since my return, for in so doing they have placed most valuable records at my disposal, so that I may draw from that large fund of knowledge when desired and enhance the value of this work.

Angus Buchanan.

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

INTRODUCTION

Ever since Dr. Hartert[1] came to Tring, twenty-nine years ago, I have been keenly interested in the isolated mountains of Asben or Aïr in the middle of the Sahara, and the country surrounding them. This was chiefly owing to Dr. Hartert’s account of his interview with some Tuareg traders who had come down into Nigeria to sell salt. This interest was intensified by our own explorations in Algeria and “Les Territoires du Sud,” and Geyr von Schweppenburg and Spatz’s journeys in the Ahaggar Mountains, all of which yielded many zoological treasures. Therefore, Dr. Hartert and I felt much satisfaction when, after his strenuous labours in the war in East Africa, Captain Angus Buchanan fell in with our views and undertook to explore Asben and the country between it and Kano, in North Nigeria, the terminus of the new railway. The eleven months occupied in the undertaking have proved most fruitful, for, besides the interesting ethnological and other facts recorded in the subsequent pages of this book, the zoological results have been most valuable. These latter results have been published in Novitates Zoologicæ, the journal of the Tring Museum, in a series of articles by Messrs. O. Thomas and M. A. C. Hinton,[2] Dr. Hartert and myself.

The number of new species and sub-species is very large, especially among the Mammals; Mr. Thomas indeed says that he has never known a collection of Mammals, from a limited area such as this, with so large a proportion of novelties. Among the new Mammals, the most interesting are undoubtedly the “Gundi” (Massoutiera), the Rock-Dassy (Procavia), and the “Mouflon” (Ammotragus), because of the immense stretches of desert which separate them from allied species and sub-species.

Among the Birds, one of the most interesting is the beautiful goatsucker (Caprimulgus eximius simplicior), for, although a slightly different subspecies, it illustrates once more the fact that many species inhabit a belt south of the Sahara from N.E. Africa across the African Continent to West Africa, while most of the forms north and south of that belt do not show such a wide range from east to west.

Among the Lepidoptera, the most interesting species are all true “desert” forms, with a wide range reaching through Arabia into India, although several new species and sub-species of butterflies and moths of great interest are also in the collection.

From a zoo-geographical point of view the collection is most valuable, for we now know zoologically a complete section of the “Great Saharan Desert,” with the exception of the small portion between the Ahaggar Mountains and Asben, and although the region of the Sahara south of the former is undoubtedly tropical, and not palæarctic, in its fauna, it is very remarkable what a large number of palæarctic species and genera are still to be found there. Unlike most of the collecting-grounds of the Old World, which can still yield new and undescribed forms, Asben and its neighbourhood were absolutely virgin soil zoologically, and Captain Buchanan’s specimens are the first to reach the hands of scientific workers. Considering the long journey by camel and the fact that Captain Buchanan was working absolutely single-handed, the collecting of over 1,100 Birds and Mammals and over 2,000 Lepidoptera, in a region notorious for its paucity, both of species and individuals, is a remarkable achievement, and proves him to be a most efficient explorer and naturalist.

Rothschild.

Tring Museum,

March 22nd, 1921.

OUT OF THE WORLD

CHAPTER I
ENGAGING BOYS—LAGOS

It was at Seccondee on the Gold Coast that “John” came aboard. Do not mistake me!—he was not a first-class passenger nor an acquaintance. Far from it; he was one of a motley crowd of jabbering natives which, with an extraordinary conglomeration of hand-carried household belongings, were put aboard from surf boats and herded on to the open after-deck—already stacked with sacks of Kola nuts from Sierra Leone—like so many head of frightened sheep.

No! John was certainly not of a race or rank to claim intimate acquaintance. In the first place he was as black as the ace of spades, which in itself for ever barred him from any claim to equality or kinship—a hard plain fact which any old colonial on “The Coast” or anywhere in Africa would endorse, while with grave misgivings regretting the extraordinary policy and laws that grow, from what sane source is past understanding, more and more lenient in their evident stiffness of opinion to release native inhabitants of our colonies from the slightest restraint of a dominant European rulership; policy that is reacting— surely not with short-sighted blindness?—to bring about the downfall of the fine old decorum of the white man’s prestige which natives naturally observed in every respect in the past. And it would be well to remember, those singular innovations which are being brought in on the tide of European civilisation are being entrusted to natives who are endowed by nature with characteristics of a different race type to ours and which are irrevocably unchangeable at the line of their limitations. European education and European laws along certain well-chosen, sure-set lines can cultivate those characteristics of the native to a certain standard—but not one step further. It is the logic of Nature: up to a point, with many creatures and plants and even matter, artificial cultivation is possible and beneficial; but over-experiment with the material, over-nurture and Nature steps in and calls a decisive halt in this tampering with her creations, and death or decline is thenceforth observed.

It is difficult for anyone to foresee the Future— that word of wonderful depth which is the most awesome in the English language—into which men may cast the biggest venturings of experiment in the world; and generations watch them rise and flourish if they be right, or flounder and go under if they be wrong. And surely it shall never be— this would-be blending of two entirely opposite races to a semblance of equality, though it is for the present this ugly threat which is often before the “Coaster” and the men on the bush stations to-day.

But to return to John, for John has importance in the narrative, which African politics have not, the ship had hauled anchor and cleared Seccondee for Lagos, and I stood solitary by the taffrail of the upper deck looking idly on the low line of typical African shore that lay indistinctly in the north. The deck, for the moment, was free of passengers, for it was in the quiet afternoon hours, when almost everyone on board retired to indulge in a pleasant book or a snooze, as is the after-lunch habit in hot enervating climates like Africa.

But, suddenly, I was not alone, and a native, who had no doubt watched his chance to break the bounds of the lower-deck, stood beside me waiting permission to speak.

“What do you want?” I asked, somewhat curiously. “You have no right to be on this deck.”

“I want I make work for you, sir,” replied the native. “My massa, he live for back, him go England. I plenty glad work for you, sir.”

“But,” I warned, “suppose I want a boy? I am a hunter. I am not going to live in a town or station in Nigeria where the duties of cook-boy or house-boy are ordinary. I am going to travel far in a strange land north of Kano; work will be hard and plenty; good boys will catch good pay; bad boys will go home quick and catch nothing. You are a coast boy, and I do not think you are fit for bush in far country.”

But the boy was not so easily discouraged, either he wanted employment urgently or was ignorant of the full purport of my “white man talk,” for he answered in his pigeon English, with a broad grin of hopefulness: “Dat be all same same, sir! I no fit savvy dat bush now, dat’s true, by-n-bye I plenty fit to look him. I want work for you—I good boy, sir!”

To which what could one do but smile? But, nevertheless, I now looked the boy over more attentively.

His thick-set bulldog head was excessively ugly and unprepossessing in all its features. Any face is dull which has no attraction in the eyes or in the mouth, and those of this negro native had none, for the soiled whites of his eyes rolled alarmingly, and the large mouth had lips rolled into one that would have served three ordinary men adequately. Moreover, he was an Awori native of the Coast, and had profuse tribe marks on his face: three small deep-stamped marks over the cheek-bones, and a line of fourteen marks of the same stamp between the eye-corners and ears, while on the centre of the forehead he had a sort of square and compass scroll more lightly branded than the rest. He was clad, not in the picturesque nakedness of the aboriginal, but, after the fashion of the majority of “boys” on the Coast, in the cast-off clothing of some late master—even to a tweed cap, which sat with ridiculous incongruity on his black woolly head. Altogether he was a regular dandy in “rig-out.” But he was no exception in that respect, for the comical and audacious dress of house-boys of his kind, who are inordinately full of personal swagger, has ever been a source of much amusement to colonials and strangers alike.

It did not take long to size the native up and note those brief somewhat unfavourable characteristics. But at the same time I had appraised the thick-set, sturdy build of the boy, so that the conclusions I finally arrived at were: “An ugly devil—not over intelligent, no doubt—but strong and healthy, and should stand up through plenty of hard work—and he looks honest.”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“John, sir!” he replied. “John Egbuna,” he added, by way of giving his full name; for it was no less a person than he who had come aboard at Seccondee.

“All right,” I said, moving towards the deck smoking-room. “Come to me when we dock at Lagos and you can work for me.”

Thus John made his appearance. By keen watchfulness he had risked the abuse of ship’s officers and stolen a chance interview, and taking him on in this way was a chance shot, but time proved it to be a lucky one, for John went right through the whole expedition, ever faithful as a dog to his master, while his companions, one by one, fell out.

The ship docked at Lagos after she had come in over the bar on an early morning tide, and steamed slowly inshore and up the wide river-like tidal lagoon of muddy water disfigured with surface-floating green slime-like vegetation and white froth, which escaped, no doubt, from some swamp bank further inland. It was a lagoon which was nevertheless picturesque and novel, with a light morning haze upon waters from which protruded the poles and loosely hanging nets of many fish traps, past which, or about which, up and down the lagoon, plied long lithe dug-outs, and odd-shaped craft of many kinds, single-sailed, or pole-driven, or paddled, and paintless and dark as their negro occupants, except where the gay colour of a cotton garb caught the eye on a boatman more extravagant than his brethren, who were generally rag-clad or naked to the waist.

At Lagos, when I had landed, I made the disconcerting discovery that there was no hotel—a circumstance strange in a port of importance and modern in nearly every other way. I had natives to engage in Lagos for my forthcoming travels, and other business, and therefore it was necessary to stay a few days in the place. Lagos, being a crowded town, was not the sort of place one could pitch a tent in, or that would have been quickly done; but I finally overcame the difficulty by interviewing the purser on the ship, who kindly allowed me to retain my berth on board while the ship unloaded her cargo.

And in that little cabin, in the course of events, some strange interviews were entered on. I had an old-country friend on shore, and with true Coast courtesy he sent his head-boy out into the native town to carry the news that there was a white man on the ship who wanted natives to go north with him, but that, “he want to look boy fit to skin fine fine.”

Native news travels fast even in modern Lagos, and soon boys of various races and types began to come aboard armed with their pass-books and letters testifying character—in some cases letters which were truly from past masters, in others, false and flattering documents borrowed for the occasion were tendered, such is the unscrupulous craftiness of some castes.

The outcome of two days of interviewing natives was not very encouraging, since no boy was discovered who could skin birds or animals with practical skill. However, at the end of the second day I had selected three boys and dismissed the rest, despite their clamourings to be heard further and reluctance to leave the ship.

One of the natives held over for further examination was an extraordinary individual, with all smooth face features absolutely obliterated by the mass of seared vertical lines of tribe marks which ornamented his entire face. He was of middle age, lean, and hard-looking, and obviously the hunter and tracker that he claimed to be. What this individual proposed, when an engagement was broached, was that he be allowed to go to his tribe in the first place to take the news of his departure to his people, and then return and catch up with my caravan wherever I might be. Inquiry revealed that his home was distant a whole month’s travel by canoe along the coast. It would take him two months to go and return, and after that he would have to find my camp “somewhere” north of Kano. Yet he appeared to think nothing of such distance and to take to travelling as a duck to water, and declared with conviction that he would meet “master” anywhere, if he would but employ him. I had met this type of tireless hunter among natives before, and they are invariably very good if you can secure them. But, all things considered, taking the man on in faith of fulfilment of merely verbal promises, and advancing him some money to provide for his wives in his absence, savoured too much of bad business; and as he would not pack up and come along as he stood, he was finally allowed to go, with the understanding that if he hurried to his tribe and caught up with the expedition north of Kano, he would then be taken on at good wages, and his “back-time” made good.[3]

The other two boys were Hausa natives, the tribe that I had been strongly advised by men of experience to get my boys from if possible. They were both young—20 to 23—and had been selected from the crowd as being in appearance the most intelligent, for as it was of the utmost importance to secure some help in dressing specimens in the field, it was my intention to teach them to skin if in early practice they should show any aptitude for the work.

Hence one of them was sent ashore to the market in Lagos with instructions to buy a pair of tame pigeons, which would suffice for my purpose in lieu of a specimen dropped to the gun.

Thereafter, down in the hot narrow cabin, while the ship lay at anchor, I gave an object lesson on bird skinning—a necessary but not very edifying proceeding. To begin with, there was a ridiculous familiar pillow-cushion aspect about those dead tame pigeons which robbed one at once of any æsthetic enthusiasm, no matter how solemnly I was prepared to set about the delicate operation of skinning; and a glance from the work-table to my pupils, great loutish curly-headed negroes, with no appreciable sign of dawning understanding as my handiwork proceeded, made me much more inclined to laugh than to be serious.

When the lesson for the day was over, I sent the boys home with money to buy each a pigeon, which they were to try to skin in their homes in the way I had shown, and bring their handiwork on the morrow.

In due course they came aboard again with their “specimens”: one poor skin in rags and with half the plumage gone, the other not so heavily handled, and showing some signs of painstaking work. On that day the lesson in my cabin was repeated, and then independently at home, and the result was that, on the eve of starting north to Kano, one boy—Sakari by name—was engaged, since he had shown some intelligence and skill over his skinning lessons, and the other dismissed as useless, as he had developed no aptitude for the work.

It may not be out of place to say here, while on the subject, that in spite of reports one hears at times of natives who have become expert at preparing specimens—doubtless exceptions—I would advise no collector to rely on local skill to any great extent, for I have always found them most difficult to educate, and skilful and careful only up to a certain point. For my own part I have never employed a native on such work who, when the skin was separated from the carcass, I could allow to apply the coating of preservative and reset the specimen in the natural, faultless repose which is essential to a finished skin required for scientific purposes. For straightforward skinning, however, good natives are procurable, and with practice can save much of the collector’s time by doing the preliminary work.

Meantime, while hunting preparations were progressing, I had spent some time on shore each day in the native quarters of Lagos. The port at which a traveller disembarks in a land which is foreign always holds the lively interest of novelty, if nothing more, and Lagos had much that was novel. Notwithstanding the fact that the outward aspect from the lagoon is almost entirely European, Lagos is, broadly speaking, a great native city; and it is on that account that it is so attractive to the curious stranger. The European section, which runs chiefly in a line along the long shores of the lagoon, is as a rampart between the sea and the great area of native town which lies hidden behind the solidity and imposing stature of the commercial and domestic buildings of the white man. And it is behind those colonial buildings that one must pass to gain entrance to the true city of primitive native hutments which bears the aspect of the historic antiquity and primitive character of the people who inhabit it. So turning from the main street which runs along the water-front, and walking up one of the side-streets, one finds oneself immediately among curious scenes and curious people in narrow streets which are lined with irregular closely packed native huts on either side—huts of every imaginable shape, and built, for the most part, with a most nondescript collection of materials which owners appear to have gathered together with little or no cost to their pockets. The walls of the huts are of mud, but the roofs, if they are not thatched, and the little dog-kennels of bazaars which are in front of almost every dwelling, are made up with old crate-boards, planks, corrugated iron, pieces of tin, old sacks, canvas— anything; paintless, untidy squalor for the most part, and the sun-basking places of countless lizards that come out from behind the shady cracks.

Were the huts and the streets deserted of human life, Lagos would indeed be a dismal place, and little short of one huge rubbish heap; but it is entirely otherwise, for the scene is crowded— even overcrowded—with life and colour, and hence attractive and sometimes very beautiful, and down the hot dusty streets, which in many instances are very narrow, and in and out of side lanes, one may pass for hours and never be clear of the brilliant cotton-clad throng; every individual of which, whether Yuroba, Egba, Hausa, Arab or Kroo, seems intent on selling or buying something in a veritable hive of trading and industry.

It is an uncommon sight, and a wonderfully picturesque one, to view those busy streets of native Lagos—their fullness of motion and rich, almost Oriental colouring of native dress, worn as a rule with all the grace of perfect physique; bazaars bright with wares exposed for sale; children toddling by the doors; and goats and chickens, at risk of their lives, tripping and feeding among the throng. Time without number, as I passed curiously through those streets, my eye was arrested by little gleams of perfect colouring in a perfect natural native setting—lovely pictures without one single act of preparation or posture—and I confess I sighed and moved on, regretting I was not an artist with genius to catch such scenes, and hold them in all their beauty and simplicity, so that I might show them also to my fellow-men, less fortunate in their freedom to travel.

Wherefrom it may be gathered that I much enjoyed my brief sojourn in Lagos, where I would fain have stayed longer, had not my duties called me to hurry on to Kano.

THE AUTHOR.

VIEW OF KANO CITY.

CHAPTER II
KANO, NORTHERN NIGERIA, THE COMMERCIAL METROPOLIS OF THE WESTERN SUDAN

Twice a week a mixed passenger train runs from Lagos to Kano, which, despite its crude discomfort, must serve the traveller who wishes to go north, for there is no other way for the present.

When the time came for me to set out upon that journey, to say I was astonished at the crowds of natives at the station and at the confusion would be to put it very mildly. Drowning the sound of clanking trucks and blasts of engine whistles in the station, arose the deafening cries of instruction and abuse of a highly excited, hustling mob about to board the train, after bidding demonstrative farewells to two or three generations of relations and friends. Din and confusion reigned supreme; there was no calm eddy there, no steady head or hand to order silence or orderliness. One might be forgiven if, for the moment, one thought, as I did, that I had mistaken my direction and had entered a native market-place, in which a great sale was going on and the bidding eager and heated, in a volcanic atmosphere of excitement.

Patience was necessary, I assure you, to carry master and boys and baggage through the jostling of some hundreds of people, past the ticket-desks of distracted native clerks, who were being overwhelmed by a fiercely gesticulating, clamouring mob, that know, by force of primitive environment, only their rude desires and nothing of manners. And when the train had finally been boarded and the journey begun, I found it was necessary to keep hold on patience throughout, for many stations on the way held something of the same fearful din and disorder.

Much could be done by strict measures on the part of the railway authorities to “tone down” and regulate such native shortcomings, which white men would surely welcome, for it is little less than unchecked raw exuberance that is prevalent among them—perfectly good-natured, as a rule—which interferes with the quick and systematic disposition of the service, and which is not in keeping with the fitness of things in modern travel.

But such circumstances are among the drawbacks which unprecedented prosperity has brought in its wake. Nigeria, rich beyond all possible estimate in natural resources, has come, and is coming, into her own; no longer gradually and steadily as cautious and perhaps wise men might wish, but by leaps and bounds in keeping with the impatient spirit of the age. So that laggards are apt to be left behind, or things which are primitive become out of date; and that is what has happened with the Nigerian railway, which was built, no doubt, and run for the little needs of the colony as they existed a few years ago, but which is not now an adequate nor well regulated service, and fails sadly to fall in line with the astonishing progress of present-day commerce. Hence, in part, the cause of the congestion and confusion at the stations which is so prevalent to-day.

Nigeria urgently needs more railways, more railway facilities, throughout the width and breadth of the land: a land that has few equals in untouched natural wealth; a land of immense possibilities, provided wise laws conserve its native labour and cease to over-educate and over-wean it, and bring it back to the natural conditions from which it has been swept in a whirlwind of haste to clutch Prosperity and let everything else go by the board. Meantime it is bottled up in its vast interior for lack of outlets, while it is struggling like a thing unborn to break loose from bondage.

It is only a very little of the awakening, of the struggling, which one sees at almost every station “up the line,” but every sign, little or great, is a sure forecast of a dawning and, perhaps, wonderful new era in West Africa.

The three days’ wearisome journey to Kano need not be dwelt on at length. Throughout it was through a country rich in forest and bush, with no great change in geographical aspect or in altitude. The change in appearance begins in the Kano region, at the end of the railway, where the sub-deserts of the north come down in places to the fringe of the bushland and grade one into the other. The elevation of Kano is 1,700 ft., and this comparatively small change in altitude over the long distance from the coast to Kano—a distance of 704 miles—takes place gradually, so that the country, with small exceptions, appears flat throughout. There are great dense belts of oil palms and coco-nut palms in from the coast, which in time, as you proceed up-country, give place to more varied tropical forests of tall stately trees growing from jungle undergrowth; while further on again, toward the north, the growth is less prolific, and there is much acacia bush, which is open or dense in patches, and of no imposing height.

To step from the train at Kano and shake oneself free from the discomforting heat and dust of the carriage and know that the journey was at an end was a cause for rejoicing with me. Civilisation now lay behind; here would I gather together my caravan of camels and natives and set out on the open road with all the freedom of a nomad.

And as a starting-off point, I learned, on close acquaintance, that Kano was ideal, for it proved to be a place of the frontiers and of the outdoors that harboured a host of wayfarers that passed to and fro from the great and historical market-centre of the north.

The ancient city of Kano is situated on an extensive plain of cleared and cultivated bushland, which is not completely bare and waste nor treeless, but which, nevertheless, bears a distinctive change from the country further south, and has much of the appearance of sub-desert in the dry season, for it holds the palest of colouring—that true buff shadeless neutral tint common to desert lands which oceans of wind-lain sand and ranges of dry prairie grass give to a sun-parched, rain-thirsty country. But only in colour and sand-winds of the Harmattan has it great resemblance to desert, for, beside the scattered trees and bush, the level stretches on closer inspection are found to be largely lands that have been cultivated during the short rainy season and are now waste-grown over a very sandy soil, which is dry and cracked and powdered to fine dustiness on the surface. One of the common and best-known ground plants amongst the dead vegetation on the sandy soil is that named “Tafasa” by the Hausa people (Sesbania sp. Leguminosæ). It is a straw-yellow, long-stalked underbrush, with long thin bean-pods, and known to everyone about Kano, for it grows about 2 ft. high in considerable extent, and crackles noisily in brittle dryness as one brushes against it in passing. Another well-known plant there, and everywhere in the bushland, is that which the natives call “Karengia” (Pennisetum Cenchroides Rich.), and which is a very annoying burr-grass that adheres to any part of one’s clothing, and which is a terrible pest to the hunter.

It was the season of the Harmattan when I reached Kano, for it was the month of December, and the driving winds from the Sahara had already set in. The Harmattan (often designated “Hazo” by Hausa natives, which means mist) is a season of hot, dry, dust-filled winds that blow from the desert interior steadily day after day, but seldom with the abandoned fierceness of a sandstorm. At that period the early mornings are cool even to coldness, and fresh and vigorous with the stirring of strong wind, which bears down with the coming of day, and brings with it a fine mist-like haze which envelops the whole country. But the haze is not an atmosphere of laden dampness, such as is familiar to England; quite the contrary, for it is dry with the intensity of a white heat, and mist-like only because the wind is so full of fine sand particles from the tinder-dry desert in the north, which it carries and lays in a carpet of fine penetrating dust wherever it passes.

The dryness in the land at this season is unbelievable if you have not experienced it; moisture is dried up as if the flame of a furnace was licking at it; ink, for instance, dries as fast as each letter of the alphabet is penned, and the clogging pen-nib is almost unmanageable: writing-paper, books—even the stiff book covers—everything of the kind curls up and becomes unsightly; boots that fitted with comfort in England shrink to such an extent that they are useless; nothing escapes, not even one’s person, lips crack, and nostrils and eyes sting; and altogether one has days of intense personal discomfort. Moreover, the fine almost invisible sand-dust searches into everything, and very soon both my watches were affected; next my camera shutter went wrong, and later on a rifle and gun. These latter were the greatest mishaps to befall me during Harmattan, and they were serious enough at the onset of an expedition.

Thus it will be seen that at Kano there is already something of sand and bleakness, and, to a considerable degree, it is therefore relative to the boundless Sahara to the north, while the advent of the Harmattan and driving sands bring to one the very atmosphere of the great lone wastes of the hinterland. And in keeping with such impressions, and enhancing them, stands the strange, and ancient, and powerful city of Kano, which in its unique earth-built aspect has all the character of a city of the mystical northern desert and little or none of the character one is accustomed to see in Nigeria. Perhaps, most of all, Kano impressed me with its atmosphere of age: the gigantic ramparts around it, and many of the quaint mud dwellings were obviously time-worn, in that inimitable manner of things that are unmistakably ancient, and carry about them for ever the rudiments of the craftsmanship of strange races that have passed and gone for all time.

And though we may know from hearsay that great powers in race and religion have lived within the walls of Kano to fight and struggle for power and existence through ages of History—as is the destiny of kingdoms—it is difficult to realise how slowly time has advanced in this secluded back-eddy, and how very close the past is to the present, until you have walked within the ancient walls and fallen under the spell of the old-world character of the people, and their dwellings, and their customs.

Undoubtedly this atmosphere of the Past which hangs so closely about Kano remains there because the town so long lay out of the way of the ever-hurrying feet of that advancing, engulfing “civilisation” of our age which is the ruling “God” of the white man in his own land, whereso ever that be, or in any other land that he has fallen heir to through the honourable, or mayhap—be it whispered—dishonourable enterprise of a bygone grandparent.

It was as late as 1902 that the white man came before the gates of Kano, demanding admittance, and since the aggressors were the great “Bature,” and had many rifles (a few arms collectively are invariably construed as many by timid, untaught natives), the Hausa inhabitants, who were at discord with the Fulani, who were their masters at the time, and deserted by the cowardly Emir Alieu, forthwith bowed before Destiny with true Negro fatalism, and accepted British rule without serious dispute, and without making any kind of stout-hearted defence against the undermanned punitive expedition that was sent out at the time; a fact to their discredit, for they were in their thousands.

It would appear, from records, that the pact between conqueror and vanquished was a friendly one, and of such wisdom that the change of rule was not a drastic one and brought no tyranny; in fact, the hands of the Crown’s Trustees were laid so lightly upon the people in directing their administration, that they (the natives) lost none of their ancient characteristics or pride of race at the time of small beginnings of acquaintance with Europeans; so that almost up to the present day Kano remained to all intents and purposes completely native and original, and a great and powerful centre of the Hausa people and of Mohammedanism. It is at the present time that the careless breath of civilisation has swept inevitably—for it is useless to expect to gainsay Destiny—in from the South, and has cast a blight upon the simplicity of the natives, with unnatural consequences to their frail character.

In 1911 the Nigeria railway was laid down to Kano. In 1914—about six years ago—there was less than a score of Europeans within the British segregation about a mile east of the Hausa City, and at the time of my journey, early in 1920, somewhere about six score; the former a barely perceptible number amongst the vast native population; the latter just enough to have started the swing of the pendulum of commerce and speculation which already promises to change a fine old world that is rare to a new world that will grow commonplace. I treasure old things, as I fancy we all do, and therefore cannot refrain from regret when I see something that is dear totter on the brink of destruction—so often it cannot be saved by reason of circumstances or environment, and it goes out for ever, for the passing of the Old is just as inevitable as the coming of the New beneath the propelling will of Destiny.

The population of Kano is a fluctuating one, on account of the nomadic propensities of many of the people, and I think I am right in saying that there are on that account no exact statistics concerning numbers. There is said to be an average population of about 80,000 inhabitants in Kano, which dwindles to about 60,000 in the “off season,” and rises to about 100,000 in the height of the trading season, when ground-nuts are marketed.

The province of Kano, of which the City of Kano is capital, has a population of 2,871,236,[4] which is a much greater number than that contained within any other province in Nigeria, its nearest competitor having barely half that total.

Those few figures may serve to proportion the extent of the importance of Kano; but let me lay statistics aside henceforth, for I would fain wander back in random fashion within the old gaunt walls of the city and examine the quaintness and the rudeness wherever dust-lain mysterious lanes may lead me.

Within the walls of Kano the city is composed of thousands of diminutive hutments, which crouch low and are huddled together as if to gain each from the other strength, and companionship, and protection, which is indeed the intention in a land which suffers from the sting of driving, biting sandstorms, and knew in the Past the swoop of attacking enemy.

The huts, and the enclosure walls about them, are built with reddish clay-soil taken from pits in the neighbourhood, and, with the addition of water and plant fibres, kneaded into a plaster which, after it has been applied, sets very hard. Dwellings so built are cool and weather-worthy for the greater part of the year, but at the time of the Rains some damage is usually wrought by the heavy wash of water, and repairs are necessary thereafter.

In appearance the dwellings are stoutly built at the hands of patient, careful labour (for the natives are not a little skilled in their work), and, though they have seldom ornament of any kind, their simple lines and odd and primitive planning have an attraction, and a novelty that is peculiar, apparently, to the walled-towns on the northern borders of negro-land.

Kano, like most native towns, has grown upon no preconceived lines, with the result that it is to-day a happy-go-lucky jumble of dwellings that in many cases appear to just save themselves from complete imprisonment by the number of lanes that provide, by the genius of necessity, a way of escape to the encompassed dwellers. Throughout the whole city runs an amazing network of street-lanes, zigzagging and turning and twisting in every conceivable direction and holding to no true course for any appreciable distance, which is the outcome of the numerous den-builders having built their little dwellings wherever an open space or a corner was available, without preconceived attempt to form the whole in any kind of symmetrical plan.

From the outside the openings in the severe lane walls—which are 8 to 10 ft. high—do not invite a stranger to enter freely into the privacy of these native dwellings, but, not wishing to miss anything, I one day plucked up courage and asked of an aged woman, who was squatted on the ground at a doorway in a lane, if she would show me the interior of her house?

But before making my request I tactfully gave her the long formula of Hausa greeting:

Self:—Sanu sanu! (good day!)

Aged woman:—Sanu kaddai! (thank you!)

Self:—Sanu da aiki! (blessings in your work!)

Aged woman:—Sanu kaddai! (thank you!)

Self:—Enna lafia? (how are you?)

Aged woman:—Lafia lau! (very well!)

Self;—Enna gajia? (how is weariness?)

Aged woman:-Babu gajia! (none!)

Self:-Enna gidda? (how is your house?)

Aged woman:—Lafia lau! (very well!)

Self:—Madilla![5] (thank God!)

Aged woman:—Madilla! (thank God!)

which formula the Hausa native dearly loves to be greeted with, since it is the habitual form of friendly salutation; and it now brought me good-natured bidding to enter.

Across the door-opening in the wall I stepped from the lane into the yard or compound—a small open space with high walls on all sides— which was clean, though earthen and dusty, and contained a few naked infants that played about the hut doors in company with a pair of young goats of an age to be nursed and nourished at home, while a few bantam-sized African fowls scratched for pickings where wooden mortar stools and pestle poles on the ground told that the industrious women of the house had lately been crushing grain for the forenoon meal. There was not, contrary to the usual custom, any tree or bush preserved within the narrow limits of the yard for sun-shelter.

The yard I had entered contained two huts built of the same clay-soil material as the outside walls, and, bending almost double, I entered the low dark doorless opening which gave admittance to the home of the old woman, and stood then in dim light in a tiny den which had only a few feet of space altogether. Indeed, such dwellings contain area of so little extent that if a long woodframed couch is placed therein, or a grass mat for reclining upon is laid upon the floor, one full side of the room is taken up. No window lit the interior—though there are sometimes one or two narrow loopholes near the ceiling in huts of this type—and but a dim light filtered indoors from the sun-shadow that fell athwart the low doorless opening; the hard-baked floor was of the same red clay-soil as the rest of the dwelling and of the colour of the ground outside; the flat ceiling— which showed the ant-proof dum palm beams and the spans of grass matting between, which carried the weight of earth that composed the roof overhead—was densely hung with cobwebs and black with the wood-smoke from years of night-fires and cook-fires, which had also dimmed the rough red walls. There was no furniture in the hut, nothing that had the purpose of an ornament, for though the Hausa people are excessively fond of ornament on their persons, strangely enough no such taste is reproduced in their dwellings. Upon the floor lay a clean grass mat, whereon the inhabitants are wont to crouch around the food-bowl at meal-time, or individuals recline in sleep in the heat of the height of the day; a few calabash drinking-bowls and bowls for drawing well-water hung from the ceiling and from the wall, where also a well-used bow and a buck-skin sheath of arrows hung from a peg.

From this room a short dark passage led to the other hut, which was of exactly the same character and aspect as the first, except that therein two comely women, in bright cotton garb, had taken refuge in shyness of the white stranger—wives, no doubt, of the proprietor, who was not for the moment at home. A few Hausa words to them in friendliness and a coin to the old woman, and I passed outside into the daylight again and on my way, followed by the grateful “Na gode, na gode! (thank you, thank you!) of the old woman, who was much flattered over the advent of a white man to her humble “gidda” (abode).

Therein I have described one native home in Kano, and in describing one have portrayed the type, for, except in minor details, they are all very similar. They are, in fact, when all is said and done, but the simple primitive shelters of an outdoor people of an old world, who are content for the most part to make shift, somewhat in gipsy fashion, with the rude necessities of life like unto the wild things about them.

Of course there are, in addition to the mass of dwellings, the Mohammedan mosque, and Sultan’s Palace, and market-stalls, which have importance and peculiarities of their own and complete the city as a whole; but the great novelty of the place lies along the lanes and about the mud huts of the crowded populace, and upon the rampart walls that stand stalwart guards through the ages.

In the Past it would appear the natives of Kano lived almost altogether within the ramparts of the city, as was the defensive custom of rival centres throughout the territory; for tribal wars were continual in those days, one group fighting another, one city besieging another to such an extent that safety was only to be found behind stout walls and lines of archers, while, in times of disturbance, the bush outside remained a deserted no-man’s-land.

Thus to withstand siege Kano had more than its crowded streets of dwellings within the walls that enclosed an area of 7¼ square miles; there was open ground where goats and cattle and camels could be herded and fed for a time when threat of attack should drive them in from the outside; there were ponds and pits of water, even in the dry season, where beasts could be watered, and deep wells to supply the people. So that with their herds of animals to slaughter for meat, and secreted grain stores, and abundant water, the inhabitants were in a strong position to withstand siege in the good old days of high adventure—days not long removed so far as they are concerned.

Within the walls, also, are the twin hills Goron Dutse and Dalla, outstanding though not massive in area, but most notable because they are the only hills in view on any side over the distance of cleared land and bushland of the surrounding country, so that they are like sentinel posts and fortresses to outside eyes.

Lastly, and most striking feature of all in this place of strange reflection of ancient customs, there are the great ramparts which completely surround the city. They are the very embodiment of strength, towering above all else—of great width and height, and one solid mass of welded clay-soil. Indeed, the whole enclosure is so colossal that one cannot but be filled with amazement when endeavouring to conceive an imaginary estimate of the labour and enthusiasm that the masters and their subjects and their slaves must have put into the work. At some time or other one can easily imagine that countless thousands of naked natives swarmed upon those walls, intent on one great purpose, like so many droves of tireless working ants. The walls are 40 ft. wide at the base, and rise, tapering to 4 to 6 ft. width at the top, to a height of 30 ft. and more. The parapet is punctuated with regular openings to accommodate the drawn bows of archers when kneeling on the ledge or pathway which is on the inside of the top of the wall. The great wall which encircles the city is no less than 11 miles around its circumference, while there are thirteen tunnel-like gloomy entrances, through the great width at the base, on main roadways that diverge from the city, so that exit or entrance can be made from any side. In the side walls of the tunnel entrances there are room-like cavities excavated which apparently accommodated the guard in time of war.

The hour to enter Kano by one of these gates is in the cool of the late afternoon, for at that time you will find that the somnolence which the excessive heat of noonday lays upon the easy-going inhabitants has lifted and that there is a great stir of joyous life about the city. The earth streets and lanes are filled with natives bent on one occupation or another, for Kano is at heart a regular hive of industry—“the great emporium of Central Africa,” as Dr. Barth described it on his travels in 1850. It is the principal hour in the market-place, and women and men pass thereto with baskets of wares carried with easy grace upon their heads; laden donkeys, dun-coloured or grey, pass marketwards too; and long-gaited camels, and sometimes lean-ribbed, big-boned oxen, all converging into Kano in the one direction, whence issues the hum of many voices telling where a multitude has already gathered.

A STREET-LANE IN KANO.

AN ENTRANCE IN THE MUD WALLS OF KANO.

The market is comprised of long streets of low, roofed-in open stalls, wherein the wares are exposed upon the ground within an allotted space, while the gown-clad Hausa merchants kneel behind them with becoming solemnity and do business. You may see upon some stalls British cotton, and British ironmongery, and British cigarettes which have been imported, and a few other things; but for the most part the wares are native, and you can single out baskets of raw cotton, bobbins of home-spun thread, and stout Kano Cloth—which is renowned in Nigeria—the weaving and dyeing of which is a large industry. Also the sale of hides, and leather-work, and basket-work, and pottery are local industries of importance that bring wares to the market; while tailors and blacksmiths flourish at their trades. There are food-stalls, where such staple foods as millet, and guinea corn, and maize, and beans (whole or ground to flour) are exposed for sale in calabash bowls or grass-woven baskets; and tomatoes, onions, yams, sugar-canes, and the pepper and plant-leaves that go to make up the local pottage condiments. The meat market is set apart, which is wise, for it is fly-ridden and odoriferous, and beef and mutton and choice parts of offal (of which natives are particularly fond) are there exposed for sale.

The merchants of the stalls are principally of the Hausa race, and there are a few Arabs. But in the cattle-market, which is also on one side, the natives are often Fulani and Beri-Beri, who have brought in cattle, sheep, goats, and camels from distant bush where their herds roam.

There are some horses for sale in the cattle-market; high-mettled, Arab-like beasts that are often very attractive, but which, very unfortunately, are almost invariably gone at the houghs through the stupid native habit of throwing a galloping horse suddenly back on its hindquarters on hard ground to make a dramatic halt before an audience or a king’s house, by means of pressure on the locally-made cruel bit-iron which projects on to the roof of the mouth.

It may be gathered at this stage that the local market of Kano is well equipped to supply the wants of the primitive people. Moreover, the whole interchange of trading is so extensive, that there is a very wholesome buying and selling within its own circle which employs almost everyone and makes the city doubly self-supporting and self-sufficient.

This market within the old city, in its entirety, is the everyday mart of the inhabitants and does not greatly concern the white traders, who buy, at their own warehouses in the European segregation outside the walls, their stacks of hides and tons of ground-nuts and beans, which are the rich exports from the place. There is also some European trade in cattle and sheep, which are railed for the consumption of people at “down country” stations and on “the Coast.”

But it is now time to pass on from the market-place and return to quarters, though the loitering crowd that presses about the stalls is so dense that it is difficult to pass through it, and the din of the eager voices is deafening. However, once clear of the congestion and noise, it is very pleasant walking or riding slowly home under the spell of a closing day. Hundreds of natives are still on the dusty roads, arriving joyfully at the journey’s end with burdened animals, from distant parts, or coming from the fields or villages near-by when the work of the day is finished; all gladly and contentedly returning home, or coming to a haven of rest, while the sound of pounding pestle-poles in their mortar stools resounds methodically in the still air to declare to all ears that industrious housewives are preparing the evening meal.

You may hear also, about this time, the monotonous tom-tom of small drums arising from the direction of a group of hutments, and the loud voice of a functionary raised in peculiar declaration to call forth neighbours; from which it may be understood that there is gaiety afoot in some quarter where a wedding-dance is starting. Such sounds on the evening air are very pleasant, as are all sounds close to nature when they are explanatory of familiar living things and joy of life to anyone who is overtaxed with the silence of the lone places, as are many men of the caravans and of the bush who drift into Kano from afar.

Passing through a shadowed gateway, named “Nassarawa,” in the eastern wall, you may leave the strange old city behind in the dusk and take the straight road to the white man’s town while snow-white flocks of Cattle Egrets fly gracefully and softly across the eve-lit sky to their night grounds, and satiated vultures and kites clamber heavily to their roosting-perches on gnarled old solitary trees to gather on each one in colonies.

CHAPTER III
HAUSA, CURRENCY, CAMELS, TRAVELLING

At Kano I picked up two more natives to accompany me on my journey, a Hausa youth named Mona and a half-caste named Outa, while the interviews with applicants were not without amusement, since conversation was carried on in my somewhat amateur Hausa, with John privileged to look on, and give his comical but shrewd opinion of the character of his probable fellow-travellers—and he had his strong likes and dislikes, though he judged his subjects solely by eye, for he could not speak Hausa, as is the case with many natives of other tribes, and in particular with coast boys.

Languages are very numerous in Africa, and to know them all would be a great task, but every European on the West Coast knows and makes use of the amusing native patois termed “Pigeon English,” which is the crude English that natives learn to speak who come much in contact with white men. And when one begins to form sentences in Hausa, and troubles to translate them literally into English, it is amusing what peculiar phrasing is arrived at, and how similar it is to the patois of the natives. Thus here are some literal translations of some of the Hausa sentences I used:

Interrogating native hunter.

“You, you make king of hunting in your town?”

“I make journey, I reach Aïr, after so I return within Kano when my work I finish. You agree you come far together with me?”

“Money how much you wish you do work with me moon one one?”

“You agree you do month ten (with me)?”

Consulting a chief for information of local hunting-ground and local hunter.

“I want I may collect birds and animals of bush.”

“I want I may flay them and I look inside of them.”

“I wizard am. I carry them and I show them to white men wizards in land (of) Europe.”

“Not I wish I make journey quick because I want I catch them all.”

“I want I may make hunting where grass it makes tall.”

“I want I may make hunting where rivers they make many: a place of lake and marsh.”

“You are able you give me a hunter, he come along with me: he point out to me a bush good?”

Translation of Hausa speech to natives when camping and hunting.

“We shall alight here.”

“Perhaps we sit here days ten and four.”

(Or in opposite case): “We shall sit here little little, not we shall delay place this. I will go I make hunting at (this) night. You it is necessary you sit; you look (my) camp. Do not you sleep.”

“I will take (my) gun, I will go, I will make of hunting now.”

“You bring trap of iron.”

“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.

In due course the lost ammunition arrived and a great anxiety was lifted from my mind, for new regulations with regard to arms and ammunition being exported from England were so complicated at the time, that long delay, or even loss of authorisation was possible if not probable; and I would have been in a nice predicament and completely crippled without this item, which was so indispensable to me on my journey. I assure you I could have shouted with sheer joy when I saw the small weighty business-like boxes coming into camp on the heads of carriers that were groaning under their loads.

The arrival of ammunition stores left me free to begin the camel journey northward over the boundary into French territory, though I was still short of the crate of entomological apparatus— which did not reach me till more than a month later, forwarded by courtesy of the French officials.

In departing from Kano I would say good-bye to the last post that boasted of civilisation and pass “out of the world,” for there are surely few places on the face of the earth more remote and God-forsaken than the interior Sahara of Central Africa—as in due course I was to learn; though in this I was to some extent prepared by study of bare incomplete maps, and in finding how difficult it was to glean any information of the country in England before sailing. But I was not prepared to find how little was known of the country at Kano, where I had calculated I would probably learn much about my journey ahead, whereas, in fact, I gained practically no information from the few white men there, and very little from natives, who were much given to reticence with strangers, or, if free-spoken, to wild exaggerations. I did not meet a single Englishman or Scot in Kano who had been across the boundary into French territory as far as Zinder, which is a ten days’ camel journey north, and it is strange but really true that almost as little is known of the Territoire du Niger in Nigeria as in England, though the two former are next-door neighbours. But so far as travelling to Zinder is concerned, apart from Zinder being in French Territory, it can be readily understood why British Europeans do not make the journey from Kano if one can realise the desolation of the country and the exhausting heat of the African sun, which makes such a trip, merely for the sake of sight-seeing, altogether uninviting.

By reason of preparing to enter this land that knew the sadness and solitude of “the lone places” rather than even the rudiments of civilisation and commerce, I had perforce to carry all stores necessary to life; and I must carry money also—not a little, but a quantity sufficient to last me over a protracted period. Therefore, my last act on the eve of departing was to ride into Kano to draw money from the bank. And through the kindness of the manager of the Bank of British West Africa, who rightly viewed my task in the light of one of national importance and not one of trade, I was enabled to have the large quantity I required issued to me in silver; which was a generous concession on his part, and of the utmost value to me, for silver was at that time at a premium, and one could purchase at least 25 per cent. more with coin than with paper-money, which found ill-favour with the natives.

There are two reasons why notes, which, at the time of my visit to West Africa, were causing much inconvenience and concern to traders in Nigeria and to the military officials in the French colony, are disliked. In the first place, many of the natives are unable to read the value printed on paper-money, both the actual figures and the wording being in English, so that when it is tendered in purchase, they are sometimes doubtful of the value they are receiving; whereas with coin they can easily judge the different values by the variety of size. Secondly, it is the habit of the natives to conceal their wealth in a secret hole in the walls of their huts or in the ground, and paper-money is not adapted for such a purpose, since it is not impervious to damp in the rainy season, nor the ravages of white ants or mice at all times. Furthermore, the “brown paper” shilling currency is a poor affair at best, and not durable to the large amount of outdoor handling which money receives at the hands of the natives, and whenever a note becomes torn, it is looked upon as valueless among themselves, and quickly reaches the white man’s store, where it is known it will be accepted and taken off their hands.

So, with knowledge of the drawbacks of paper, I gleefully returned to camp with my supply of silver, and that night secreted the major portion of the coin in various ammunition boxes in the hope that it would in that way escape detection and plunder on my long journey. Silver in quantity is very heavy to transport, but that was fully compensated for—for had it not the power to put one on good terms at once in all dealings necessary with natives? Further, I found it unnecessary to make exchange to French coin once I had crossed the Frontier, since the English shilling and two-shilling piece were acceptable everywhere.

I secured ten camels for my journey to Zinder, and not, in a limited time, since it was ground-nut season, when transport animals are in great demand, being able to obtain the full number required to transport my loads, which weighed close on 4,000 lbs., I had to fall back on oxen to complete the complement, taking four of the latter to carry loads equivalent to that which two camels could carry. Camels can load 300 to 400 lbs.

The camels of Hausaland and the Territoire Militaire du Niger are the one-humped race that are named “Rakumi” in Hausa and “Alum” in Tamāshack, and they are the outstanding transport animals of the country. Indeed, without camels it is difficult to see how the inhabitants of the interior Sahara could subsist, for they are, in essentials, the only animals truly adapted to long journeys in barren land, where water and food are often very scarce. The distance they can travel with 300 to 400 lbs. loaded on their backs, and their uncomplaining endurance is altogether marvellous, and it would be a man of poor appreciation indeed who knew their habits and had not praise for them.

Donkeys and oxen are two other animals of transport which are used on routes that are not too severe, and donkeys in their patience and endurance have some of the commendable traits of camels, and are capable of accomplishing long journeys if not too heavily loaded—100 to 150 lbs. is a fair load—though they are slower in getting over the ground. Oxen, on the other hand, are of secondary value as transport animals, and are seldom satisfactory on a journey of any length, for they do not harden well to their work, and often break down tamely under a prolonged burden. This is because the heat of day is very trying on them when en route, while it has little effect on either camels or donkeys.

As Aïr, and the section of the Territoire Militaire through which my journey led me is the home of the camel, and since I travelled hundreds of miles with those fine animals, perhaps a few remarks concerning them would not be out of place.

The market-price of camels in 1920 at Kano and Agades was about £8 for a young beast 4 years old, and about £15 for a full-grown animal 9 to 15 years old. Those prices, even though they have risen considerably since the war, like everything else even in such remote parts, must appear small if it is taken into consideration that camels require to be nourished and reared for 8 to 10 years before they have reached maturity and are really fit to join the caravans and bring recompense to the owner. On one occasion I saw a young camel of 4 years, small and still with a semi-calf look about it, being ridden by a Tuareg who was a lightweight; but to break a camel at that age is quite exceptional, if not foolish, for in all probability this early labour, before bones are hardened and muscles full and set, spoils the ultimate development of the animal. Some camels are considered developed enough for short journeys when 6 years old, though they are seldom fully matured until 8, 9, or 10 years, while they reach their prime about the age of 15 years; afterwards they begin to lose a little ground, but are often quite useful and strong up to and over 20 years. At an age of 30 years a camel may be said to be altogether beyond work.

In colour there is considerable range among camels, the most common variety in this territory being light buffish-brown, somewhat resembling sand, while piebald and brindled camels are also numerous, the latter having random patches of white on a surface that is chiefly dull lead-like blackish-grey. Those piebald and brindled beasts are reputed to be an Aïr race, but how far that is true I had no opportunity of proving, though I can vouch for having seen among the Aïr mountains more camel-calves of that colour than any other. Moreover, it is a splendid protective colour against the mountain background of blackish rock and pools of sand, so that the claim has at least that in its favour. A colour that is not very common among camels is pure white, while one that is quite rare is rich tawny reddish buff. I have seen a score of animals of the former colour, but only two of the latter.

A HAUSA NATIVE RIDING AN OX, KANO

CATTLE OF HAUSALAND.

In selecting camels to make up a caravan, it is problematical whether you get good-tempered or bad-tempered beasts, and one should be optimistic enough to accept the bad with the good and put up with the annoyance of saddling and loading cantankerous individuals, for there is no caravan was ever without them. But if you wish to use a camel for hunting—and they are exceedingly good for the purpose, being very noiseless of foot—great care in selection should be exercised, and only a tried animal should be used which is good-tempered and taught that it must not roar as you dismount to commence your stalk on sighting game. The awkward and somewhat wooden appearance of camels does not lead one to associate much intelligence with them, but to think so is a mistake, and if one desires to have a really good hunting camel, I know of no better method to secure it than to select a good-natured beast from the rank and file, and hand-feed it with tit-bits of vegetation, and pet it when mounting and dismounting, and let no one else saddle it or ride it, and before long you will be astonished to find that you have won a queer pet and a useful and obedient comrade. It will have been gathered that it is the noisiness of the brutes that has to be guarded against when hunting, and that is so, for they are fearful beasts to roar on the slightest provocation. Besides being timid animals, they are very tender skinned, and almost all of them emit a loud complaining roar whenever they are touched by a human hand or there is the slightest movement in the position of the saddle in mounting or dismounting; while if an animal happens to be suffering with horrible septic saddle-sores, such as are very common, it is sure to make a terrifying uproar whenever approached.

When travelling with a caravan, it is usual to commence to load up before daylight and get well started on the way before sunrise, which is about 6.30 a.m., or—especially if there be a moon—to make a start at 2 or 3 a.m. in the night, and travel the greater part of the day’s journey free from the rays of the exhausting sun. On such occasions the camels are gathered in at sundown on the eve before from browsing among the acacias, and made to lie down by the camp-fire, so that they are at hand when the camel-men go to work in the darkness. Then, when the hour to start comes round, logs that have been collected the night before are kindled to make a blazing fire, and by the light of the flames the loads are securely roped and loaded across the pack-saddles, so that equally balanced packs rest on either side, while throughout the process the black bush silence of the night is rudely broken by the deep querulous roars of the camels in protest against being handled. Loading up in the poor light of night is a slow process, and in my case three or four men usually took from an hour to an hour and a half to load ten to fifteen camels. But the secret of a smooth journey is to begin the day with loads thoroughly secure and well balanced so that they will not annoy the bearer; and with bulky loads, such as the chop-boxes and collecting-cases of the white man, which are unfamiliar and clumsy both to the natives and their beasts, it requires considerable care in loading to be reasonably sure of a well-ordered start. When things do not go well, it is a mistake for the traveller to become impatient and abuse or hurry the camel-men in the early morning, when tempers are apt to be short, for although they are undoubtedly slow in their methods, they know their work and their animals, and will make the better loads if left alone, and you merely lend a hand here and there, and joke with them over their work, and thus gain their good-will and confidence. As to the type of saddle, a serviceable and simple saddle is made of wood in this fashion: first there are two arch-shaped pieces which are made to fit over the back of the animal, and which rest before and behind the hump, while underneath them are bound leather pads filled with palm fibre, so that the saddle is comfortably received on the camel’s back; secondly, from the back and front pieces there are run four horizontal bars, which are bound in position to the arches with goat-skin or sheep-skin thongs, whereby the saddle is made rigid and complete. It is a very simple piece of construction, but serves the purpose.

Sometimes no saddle is used when carrying good loads, such as bales of grain or salt, which naturally lie very close and compactly to the body of an animal, in which event two long goat-skins are used, puffed out like pillows with filling, which are thrown over the back on either side of the hump, and receive the burdened load ropes which carry the bales in position on the sides.

When loading camels on the first day at the commencement of a journey, or after having been idle for a week or two turned loose in the bush, they are afraid of their unfamiliar loads, and behave like bolting horses or wild colts, and saddles and packs are no sooner secured, and the brutes on to their feet, than they show their ill-humour and everything is thrown to the ground again. Once, twice, even thrice this may happen with three or four camels in the caravan, while it seems as if you will never be able to get out and away on the road. But in the end all are ready and in line and a start is made. But on that day you are sure of trouble en route with the fractious animals, and not until the morrow need you expect anything like reasonable order, when you will almost surely find that even the worst of the brutes has become docile and resigned to steady work.

I did not miss any of my share of this sort of experience when the day came for me to set out from Kano—I don’t think anyone does. Camels and their Tuareg drivers were in my camp at Farniso ready to start on the morrow (12th January). That evening trouble began: the camel-men, not having finished their private bargaining in Kano and seeking an excuse to delay, had put their heads together, with the result that they concocted a story that they had not enough rope to cope with the tying of the awkward loads of the white man—which was true, in fact, though anyone might know that it was not necessary to go to Kano to secure them with a village close at hand. However, knowing their homes were distant, and that it might be long before they had again occasion to visit Kano, I gave permission for one of them to go back, provided he would start there that night when the moon rose at 11.30 p.m., which he promised to do. Being easy-going and trusting at that time, which was before I had much knowledge of the plausible and sly-tongued Tuareg, I turned in and slept soundly—and so did the cameleer, for next morning I learned that he had not started for Kano until daylight. This meant that the whole morning was lost—not very pleasant when tents are down and everything you possess is bundled up and roped in camel-loads, and there is nothing left to do but sit on them and smoke innumerable cigarettes and inwardly curse your camel-men and your luck.

The camels were, in the meantime, turned at large to feed in the neighbourhood with their fore-feet hobbled, which was as it should be; and all was right until the man returned from Kano with more ropes and his purchases of cloth, and a cameleer hastened out to bring in the animals, but returned in about an hour to say that he could not find two of the camels.

At this stage everything seemed fated to go wrong on this day.

But there is a rift in the clouds even on the worst of days, and in the end the lost camels appeared in view, coming in at a breakneck pace before a mounted camel-man who had skilfully tracked them down in the sand for a long distance and rounded them up. The brutes, though their fore-feet were hobbled, had tried to return to their old haunts in Kano.

It was after 3 p.m. before we got loaded and away on this ill-fated day.

I had arranged before starting that we would camp at Fogalawa, 18 miles away, and it was well I did so, for, after starting out together on the road, I did not see the main part of the caravan again until midnight, since I remained throughout the journey with the tail-end of the line, where an obstreperous and unruly old female camel made the devil’s own trouble, and threw her load again and again with most vicious determination. The climax came close on sunset, when the camel-man and I were overheated and dust-grimed and angry over our exertions, and the cantankerous brute cut loose once again, and threw and shattered the chop-boxes and strewed the contents on the road. While bemoaning my ill-luck, and letting tongue run loose on the virtues (?) of our beast of burden, and at a loss to know what to do next, a native chanced to come up with some unloaded camels, and I was able to strike a bargain for a beast to take the place of the unruly one.

Thereafter the journey was a smooth one, but, nevertheless, I had lost so much time on the way that it was midnight before I came into camp behind the last camel, and had been nine hours on a journey that should ordinarily take five and a half to six and a half hours.

So much for the discrepancies of the “first day”; and now I must return to our starting-point, so that I may tell of the wayside. During the afternoon and through the night in the darkness we travelled over a broad roadway of loose shifting sand that held north through fairly open country that was, in general, under cultivation. Trees were plentiful, growing for the most part singly and not in close-set mass, but they do not impress one with height or stature at this season, though in the Rains the full-leaved trees of any size are imposing and conspicuous enough in most of the flat country between Kano and Kanya. No doubt the whole country has been covered with acacia bush at one time, with an odd large tree shooting above the dwarf forests here and there, and though the acacia bush has been cleared away to give place to cultivation, the big trees have been left standing, since to the toilers in the fields they are harbours of shade from the merciless sun.

Along the road a constant incoming string of caravans of camels and donkeys and oxen passed us, carrying bulging bales of ground-nuts to Kano, for the ground-nut season had begun, and unprecedented prices were being paid for them by the white man, which had created a widespread boom in the district and a tremendous wave of speculative excitement. It was a great year— 1920—of prosperity for the natives of Kano, this last fling of commercial extravagance at the end of the war—a rich year that, in the end, must have left its mark, for one could easily forecast the time to come, when there would be acute comparisons between the heyday of the boom and that other day when the boom must burst, and hearts be sore—for it is hard even for a native to come back to the solid old ground-level after he thinks he has reached a golden citadel in the clouds.

Next morning we continued on our way without any repetition of trouble with the animals, and the old camel, that had stubbornly refused to carry the white man’s boxes yesterday, to-day carried with ease a greater load of ammunition packed in native grass-woven bales. The brute had been nothing more than wildly scared of the strange articles that it had been set to carry.

The road continued broad to-day, but grew ever heavier underfoot with loose sand. By the wayside there was not so much cultivation as yesterday, and few habitations, except at Kore and Minna. We camped in mid-afternoon at the small village of Kanya after a pleasantly smooth journey. It was gratifying, after our trials of yesterday, to see how nicely the camels of a well-ordered caravan move forward over the ground with their soft-footed methodical gait; they get over the heavy sand road not only with their long pacing stride, in which both legs on the same side are lifted together, but also they move with a strange stealthy silence, which is due to the rubber-like give of their soft elastic pads. A further odd and striking detail about the feet of a camel is that, unlike other animals, the fore-feet are larger than the hind-feet.

Travelling by the wayside in inhabited country, if you happen to be near human dwellings, cockcrows will herald in the African dawn from some village hut-top obscure among the bush foliage, and on the third day we were busy with the load-ropes in the chill of late darkness ere the first glad cock-call told of approaching day. Already we had learned that it was wise to travel in the cool hours as far as possible and save our animals from the great heat of day, so long as short nights and loss of sleep were not over-fatiguing to ourselves, or, rather, perhaps I should say to myself alone, for natives have the knack of sleeping in daylight just as easily as in darkness, and throw themselves down in any little patch of tree-shade at the end of a journey and retrieve their night-sleep almost before it is lost: while that I could never do, even if I had not work to attend to.

But there was one native with me who worked long hours without sleep much as I did, and he was the faithful John. On his broad shoulders rested all the petty duties of attending to his master’s welfare in camp: a host of small duties indeed, such as cooking meals at any hour— early or late, at noon or midnight; pitching or striking my camp-bed (for I slept in the open); or doing the services of a valet in looking after all my personal belongings, and my toilet, even washing clothes when he had the time to spare—in general, cookboy and houseboy all in one, and a treasure. Moreover, he afforded amusement all round through the medium of his perpetual cheerfulness and expansive grin. Often I have laughed to see him, after the rush of getting ready to start, when he had got the last bundle turned over to the camel-men and his master’s camp clear, come saucily forward in his cloth cap and with his cane walking-stick—both relics of the coast which were inseparable from his person— and with a perceptible swagger over his “English” (?) and his importance as the master’s boy, grin broadly and ejaculate to the head camel-man: “Come on, come on, Aboki (friend), we wait for you!” which assurance always provoked laughter among the men, while Sakari explained to them in Hausa John’s “English” (?), and added to it in the telling.

The Harmattan winds had been very pronounced since starting, and the third day was as bad as its predecessors. So full of sand-dust was the air, that a white cloud hung over the land through which the sun was unable to break clearly. The mane of my horse was white with dust, and, looking on the acacia trees a little way off in the bush, they had the appearance they would bear on a frosty morning, with the fine dust, like white mist, hanging low and falling upon them to lie whitely upon the leaves and boughs.

I noticed at Kanya, and beyond, that the peculiar reddish sand and soil of Kano had given place to ordinary whitish-grey.

On this day we travelled to Jigawa, 18 miles away, on the banks of the Tomas river, which, though it was nothing more than dry bed at this season, is a very considerable stream during the Rains, quite one hundred yards across the floodwater. The place is a small town, with the remains of a stockade about its outskirts, and it contained wells of water and the usual village produce of eggs, fowls, and millet-meal, as well as goats and cattle. It may be stated here that there is no scarcity of water or food experienced anywhere on the journey from Kano to Zinder.

I heard at this village the first news of big game that I had had, and in the cool of the afternoon I went out westward to investigate, and the result of a prolonged hunt through fairly open thorn bush was that I sighted, and viewed through field-glasses, four Red-fronted Gazelle, which the local natives with me said were in fair numbers in the neighbourhood. The beasts, at which I fired one ineffectual shot, were very wild, and gave me the impression that they were disturbed often by the natives who hunt them.

The fourth day was a pleasant one, for it entailed only a short ten-mile journey; and I can assure you that a short day after two or three long, hot, and exhausting ones is a very agreeable change.

We camped at noon at Barbara, our day’s task finished; and the camels were hobbled and turned out into the scrub bush to enjoy a lengthy repast. Barbara is a large town that lies five miles on the British side of the frontier, and here it was that I bid good-bye to Nigeria for a time. Hence I made it a stopping-place, and an easy day. (I did the same thing many months later, on my return, and was royally received by the Saraki (native king) and his people-a large number of whom were Fulani—who en masse spent the day in holiday and dance because the White Man had safely returned and was glad.)

On the morrow we crossed the boundary and entered French territory, having crossed the line about an hour after starting where it lay between the two small villages of Baban Mutum (British) and Dashi (French); places, like many others, that were not shown on either of the incomplete maps I possessed, which were the best I could procure in England.

In the afternoon we halted and camped at Magaria, where there is a small French fort commanded by a European officer, with native troops under him. Here I was most cordially welcomed to French soil, and enjoyed the frank, unfettered hospitality that for ever is to be found with the big-hearted men of the Lone Places. Though I was not yet more than eighty-five miles from Kano, a European visitor was rare to the board of this solitary soldier, and so I was made doubly welcome over our cups of good comradeship, though neither could glibly speak the other’s tongue, and conversation was carried on for the most part in halting words of Hausa. He was a jovial good fellow, beside being the kindest of hosts, and ere the day was out I think we put the sober mud walls of his little cabin to shame with our gladness and laughter. That he was a lone man could be gleaned from his surroundings and his tastes. For companions about his abode he had a cage full of little waxbills, a grey parrot, two pie-dogs, two cats, and four Dorcas Gazelles— all bird and beast of the country-side, except the two cats, which were Persian. The barrack square and the garden of the Fort afforded him further pleasures in homely hobbies: in the square, young trees had been lately planted to form an entrance avenue and give shade, and to watch them take root and thrive was this man’s way with his treasures. And in the garden among the shrubs and vegetables his interest was the same to coax plants that were not indigenous to grow in the sandy, thirsty soil; and that he had some success I can vouch for, for there were beds of such vegetables as carrots, radish, beetroot, peas, and cabbage growing quite fairly at the time of my visit.

As I progressed later on, I found such humble gardens wherever white men were stationed: only a few places in all, it is true, but always a garden to furnish the need for vegetables, which is a pressing one to the health of Europeans in such a barren land as this, for rarely vegetables and no fruit can be obtained from natives. Apropos to this, entering a country of tropical heat, I was not prepared to find that it was devoid of fruit (excepting a limited amount of dates in the rainy season), and the discovery disappointed and dismayed me, I must confess, for it left me on short commons in that respect throughout the expedition. And when one lives for a prolonged period on the unchanging diet of animals that fall to your hunting, the hunger for fruit or vegetable grows ever greater, and is, at times, very difficult to allay.

The sixth day found us on the road at dawn, with Nigeria behind and the caravan well started on the way to Bande, our next halt. On this day and the next, over a belt of about twenty-five miles, country of marked change was passed through, and one got the impression that it was now turning more to desert. Dum palms, in small groups or solitary, sceptral with their tall graceful stems and tufted rustling tops, were now in the landscape, while there was a new sense of open space about one, such as is felt on sea or prairie, which was brought about by the wide views of grass-grown land before one where eye could range for long distances.

With the regularity of routine we were marching off the distance on the map, and each day we camped a stage further on—and a day nearer to Zinder. On the seventh day we made the journey from Bande to Makochia, over a very heavy road of loose sand; on the eighth we camped at Dogo— ever the cruel sand-drifting winds of Harmattan in our faces, while ever we held steadily on, for after camels are loaded at the dawning of day, never halt is made by the roadside until the journey’s end is reached and the patient brutes lie down and are relieved of their burdens.

The day of our journey to Dogo was one of particularly fierce storm, and we went forward against a very heavy wind and enveloped in continuous clouds of drifting sand: and, besides, it was so cold that I had to keep on my woollen sweater and khaki tunic throughout the day, although hitherto I had not on any day worn a tunic, and as a rule discarded my sweater an hour or two after the chill of dawn. At Dogo I was forcibly reminded of a snowstorm on the Canadian plains; before the village there is a wide white level stretch of sand almost plant-bare, over which winds and driftings rushed fiercely from afar to pounce madly upon whatever lay across their path. Not snowstorm nor piercing cold are elements of this land, but imagine the soft sand underfoot, like snow, the drifting sand, the snow blizzard, and the sting of the storm in eyes and nostrils and throat as unpleasant as the tang of biting cold, and you have the comparisons that have a very decided resemblance.

The road to Dogo lay over undulating country, pale with dry grass and sand, with a touch of faded green where there were trees in the open spaces. It should be a fair country to look upon in the Rains, but it is for the present inert, and discoloured with the drifting sand, and is a melancholy land indeed.

The country by the wayside had for a time a pronounced fall away to a deep valley visible to the west.

The altitude of Dogo is 1,375 ft., so that we had descended some 300 ft. since leaving Kano.

Dogo is the Hausa for tall, but I could gather no particular reason for the name. Had it been called Gara (the white ant), however, I would have well understood, for I have seldom seen an equal to the plague of termites that was here: boots, leggings, articles hung to the wall, every box among the camel-loads, was attacked by the infernal pests as soon as ever we camped and before we had time to prepare rough timber platforms to raise everything off the ground. White ants have to be guarded against everywhere in the Sudan, but I never saw them worse than at Dogo.

Next day, which was the ninth day of our journey, we reached Baban Tubki, six miles south of Zinder, where there were a few small date groves and plentiful well-water, and more luxuriant vegetation than usual. So that I decided that here I would pitch a collecting camp, and with that purpose in view swung the caravan west of the road, and sought a camping-place among the scattered trees and tall grass about a mile away. Camels were unloaded and the packs freed from their many ropings, and the preparations of camp erection were begun—and trekking for the present was at an end. . . .

In the part of the territory of Damagarim through which I had travelled since crossing the frontier there was no great change from that of Nigeria. It was certainly less populated, but the Hausa, Fulani, and Beri-Beri tribesmen were the same, as also was the construction of their grass huts and villages, though some of the latter were somewhat dilapidated and had the aspect of belonging to a poorer or more careless class of natives.

So far as I could tell by daily short excursions into the bush off the road, none of the country I had passed through was notable for big-game; but if I was to hunt in that particular territory, I would start at Jigawa (fifty-six miles north from Kano), and work north as far as Makochia, about fifty miles further on. I know there are Red-fronted and Dorcas Gazelles in that belt, but that is as far as my limited knowledge goes for the present.

By the wayside, each day, I had made notes of every living thing I had seen—bird or beast or butterfly. Now it was my task to set to work and preserve a representative collection of the fauna of Damagarim, and forge one link in the chain of the zoological geography of the country, of which up to the present nothing was known.

CHAPTER IV
A DAY’S WORK COLLECTING

Collecting was my constant occupation during the month that I camped and hunted near Zinder.

Now, collecting Fauna for the scientific purposes of large Natural History Museums is work somewhat out of the ordinary; so much so, in fact, that I would like to show clearly what such pursuits entail, and to do this will endeavour to describe some of the actual work in the field.

To begin with, the climate is African: which means, in this territory, that for at least nine months in the year the land knows not rain, and lies like an overdone pie-crust, withering beneath a heat that is too great. Day after day, with unchecked regularity, from the break of dawn, a fierce sun rises rapidly high up in the sky, and as it gains in strength, so a silence settles upon the earth, for so great is its oppression, that at the height of its power it subdues all living things. About 10 a.m. you may notice that the glad sounds of morning have faded—birds are retiring to leafy shades, the boisterous noise of natives at work in the village has died down; before noon the land is wrapped in silent solitude, and Old Sol alone is left in the field.

Hence the time to go hunting in this land is early in the morning or late in the afternoon, when the creatures of the underworld have left their hiding-places and are up and about in eager quest of feeding. For the hunter and his native boys it is also the favoured hour, for, as in travelling, the cool of the day allows of the maximum of exertion without any forfeit of sheer exhaustion which the noonday sun inexorably imposes.

Let us follow the proceedings of a morning’s hunting. I have turned wakeful toward dawn, and lie warmly in my blankets awaiting the sound of cock-crowing to tell me the time, for I am without a watch since the sand has damaged both I possess. When I hear the call I listen for, I know full well I must bestir myself if I would go away to the fields in good time. Blankets and bed are provokingly comfortable at that moment, but it is fatal to hesitate, so I call “John!” and at once he answers, for he too has been sleeping lightly; and while I am dressing he lights a camp-fire and prepares tea. Sakari and Mona are also awakened, and sit, with their coloured blankets over their shoulders and drawn about them, huddled before the few embers of a fire that they have rekindled, for there is a chill in the air and they are still half asleep and without vigorous circulation.

When I am ready, we prepare to start. My search is for birds this morning, so I take ·410 shot-gun for collecting small specimens, 12-bore shot-gun for anything larger, and a ·22 Winchester rifle in case I find some wary bird that I cannot get within gun-shot of, and yet may see it watchfully perched within the range of the little rifle. I fill my pockets with cartridges: those for the ·410 loaded with dust for sparrow-sized birds, and with No. 8 for birds of the size of doves; while I carry only No. 6 in the cartridges for the 12-bore gun, which I have found will kill vulture or eagle or bustard—in fact, any bird less than an ostrich. Also, I take an open basket, so that I may carry the specimens I capture with great care and without damage to the plumage, some cotton wool to stop bleeding and fill wounds, and a notebook in which to record the colours of the soft parts before they fade at death—viz. the colour of the eyes, the bill, and the feet.

John stays behind to prepare breakfast and make camp clean and tidy for the day; Sakari and Mona come with me.

I know where I will go—I keep more westerly than yesterday. We go carefully at first over the uneven ground, for it is not yet light, though there is now a faint brightness in the eastern sky. We are well away from camp, and cannot see it when daylight is upon us. I am alert now that the sky has cleared; eyes roam everywhere, catching movement in the undergrowth, among the leaves of big trees, or in the sky. Many birds I see: little brown ones like the undergrowth or ground; pale ones like the sand; dark ones like the trees; or gorgeous ones that have no shy colouring, but are gems unto themselves, that peep out brightly revealed in the dark background of their leafy haunts. I know them all, they are very familiar—for am I not among them every day? I am not concerned with these: I pass on ever observant, ever expectant, knowing that there are others that I will find. . . . Soon I am arrested: I have heard a note that I do not know—so often I am guided in that way. I go forward watchfully in the direction of the sound. . . . I have now marked down the clump of bushes whence the call proceeds. . . . I am within range of it— when I see a long-tailed bird dive from it and disappear in an instant. I have seen that it is a Coly, but not of a race I know. . . . Pray do not think I have lost this valuable quarry, though it has flown and is out of sight. Ah, no! birds that inhabit a favoured thicket are unlikely to fly very far, especially in the feeding hours of morning. So I pause and listen attentively, and anon I think I hear the tell-tale somewhat mournful single-pipe call of the bird I seek, but it is so faint that I wonder if fancy is deluding me. There is no time now to be lost. I hasten forward among the thorn trees that in a belt grow numerously, and the pulse quickens as I again hear the call for certain, and from more than one bird. . . . I feel my way toward the sounds. . . . I am not sure of the direction at first, but as I draw near there is no doubt. The birds are ferreting for leaf-buds among the thick tangle in the centre of a thorn tree (acacia). I get up in time to see them dart away, and succeed in shooting one specimen. But that is not enough, for the species, a long-tailed Coly, with a blue band on the back of the head (Colins macrourus), is new to my collection; I must follow them up. So I hunt on for an hour or so, with the result that I capture four; and it has been an exciting chase, for the birds were peculiarly wild, though they are of a kind that are often easy of approach.

I am very warm, and stand beside a tree to smoke a soothing cigarette. I have seen a number of hawks in the air during the morning; now that I am idling in the shade I see another. It is of a species that I have observed before, but that I have never been able to approach—a very large hawk, of even dark leaden-grey colour, with mighty wings and a crested head. The bird swings slowly over the land about a quarter of a mile away, and I give up following it, and drop my eyes to look about nearer at hand.

I had forgotten the incident, when Sakari aroused me with: “White man, dem shafo (hawk) live for tree—look him!” and he pointed away to a small group of tallish trees on our right. Sure enough, following Sakari’s directions, I could make out the outline of a heavy bird perched near the top of one of the trees, whence it overlooked the whole countryside. The native had watched it fly and settle there.

Now began a stalk as exciting as one could wish for. I always look on birds of prey, the hawks and the eagles, as royal game, and feel about the same intense interest in hunting a wild species of them as I do when stalking a particularly fine head of big-game. Between me and my prey there was hardly any tree cover. I could only trust to using the “lie” of the hollows to reach the bird unobserved or at least unsuspected. I ordered the two natives to remain where they were, while I took my shot-gun and started on a wide detour, so that I might reach a little dry streamlet hollow that led in toward the trees. Rapidly, but carefully, after I had got round into position, I advanced, crouching and creeping, toward the bird; and always when I dared to glance ahead I saw my coveted quarry perched in place and unalarmed. When I drew closer I could distinguish the eyes and hooked beak, and saw that the bird was watchful, for it turned its head in one direction and then in another as it looked out over the landscape. . . . Now I was crawling flatwise, bare bruised knees and all, and before long stood breathless among the trees—the bird somewhere overhead. As I moved to get a better view through the branches, the bird swooped from its perch to make off; and then crumpled up in mid-air as the report of my gun rang out. Seldom have I been more satisfied with the sound of the fall of a heavy bird; for many a like stalk have I made after equally rare prize, only to find the sharp-eyed quarry depart when I was half-way on my journey, or sometimes when almost within shooting range.

The natives soon joined me, and having now enough specimens for the work of the day, we turned back to camp.

On the way home I had two fox-traps to visit and lift, for it is not safe to leave them set during daylight, lest browsing goat or village cur stumble into them. The luck of the morning continued, for in the second trap there was a struggling captive—a beautiful buff sand-coloured little fox known as Vulpes pallida edwardsi.

This capture afforded the two natives great satisfaction, and, as is their habit, they showed fiendish glee over the downfall of this creature of renowned wit and cunning. If they were not restrained by my presence, I know they would poke it with sticks and jeer at it, and in many ways act with unconscious cruelty, for they have not an atom of pity for such things—no African has. If they were free to kill the fox, they would secure the teeth and the eyes and the skin to secrete the parts about their persons as charms in the firm belief that they thus invest themselves with the high gifts of the animal against the cunning of their opponents or enemies.

Thus finished a morning’s hunting. Sometimes, on other days, I would meet with greater success, sometimes with less; and sometimes, too, I would have my days of disappointment, when a rarity was seen and lost through a missed shot or in losing all traces of it in its flight. But the hunter does not readily forget, and naturally memorises a place where he has once found quarry, so that again and again he will revisit it, and often picks up on a later day that which has escaped him at the start.

There were few big-game in the district, and, in my case, for the present, it was not my concern to hunt them, except that I might have fresh meat.

But in addition to ornithological research, I was interested in collecting all kinds of small mammals, and as few indeed were ever seen in daylight, I had to resort almost altogether to steel traps to make my captures, and had mouse-traps, rat-traps, rabbit-traps, and fox-traps set at nights wherever I found an inhabited burrow or den or a frequented “run.”

Furthermore I had yet other matters to give thought to, for I was to bring home collections of Lepidopteræ, which entailed long excursions in the heat of the day in quest of butterflies, and patience-trying hours of watching by a lamp-lure in the darkness of night in quest of moths.

Altogether, I can assure you I had no time to weary for companionship or to realise my loneliness, and that was a comforting consideration.

I have described the manner of hunting specimens, and would now turn to the work of preserving them.

I have built a rough-framed grass hut for workshop, close to my tent. When I return in the morning, it is here that the specimens are taken, and work is begun at once, for the temperature is so great that a lifeless carcass cannot be relied on to keep fresh longer than five hours, and will certainly be beyond handling if left to the end of the day. I usually preserve from five to ten specimens in a day, the number depending on size or the success of hunting; while on special occasions I have finished as many as fifteen in a day.

Sakari and Mona, the boys selected at Lagos and Kano to help in skinning specimens, can now be trusted with certain work. The fox had been put out of pain, and, laying it on its back, I make the opening cut in it and start Sakari on the task of skinning. As he proceeds to work the skin off, from the belly upwards, the limbs are drawn inside and severed at the heel of the paws, the tail is pulled out by the root, and in time the skin is clear of the body and drawn off over the neck and head. The limbs are then labelled: “right fore,” “left fore,” “right hind,” and “left hind,” and are severed from the carcass at the hip and shoulder joints, and, along with the skull, are scraped clean of flesh and numbered and laid aside to go with the finished skin of the specimen. All the scraps of flesh and fatty matter are then removed from the skin, and I take it over from Sakari to apply a thorough coating of arsenical soap preservative, when it is labelled and completed, and laid aside to dry. It has taken Sakari about an hour and a half to do the work, and when he is finished I set him to partly skin the smaller birds, for he is light-fingered and has considerable skill.

Mona, meantime, is set to work on the large hawk, which proved to be the Banded Gymnogene (Gymnogenys typica). A smaller bird may have the wings severed at the shoulder of the carcass as the skinning progresses and the bones drawn inside to be cleaned of flesh and returned into position, but with a very large bird such procedure is impossible, and the wings must be dealt with separately. So I stretch one of the great wings to full expansion, and on the underside make a cut along the full length of it. Mona then proceeds to part the skin from flesh and bone, so that when the skin is fully released above and below the limb, he can remove all flesh. When one wing is complete, and the bones white and clean, he proceeds with the other. Now the main body may be dealt with, and a cut is made from the top of the breast-bone to the tail, and the work of skinning continues, always using maize-meal as well as scalpel in removing the skin, for the former is invaluable for absorbing all moisture, such as saliva, blood, and grease, as the skin is parted from the flesh, and safeguards all danger of soiling the plumage. From the inside the legs are severed from the body at the top of the thigh, and the tail at the base of the big quills, and Mona proceeds with removing the skin from the body—for later the legs may be returned to, the skin peeled down as far as it will go, and the flesh cleaned from the bones. Soon he reaches the shoulders, and breaks off the wing-bones close to the body, and works the skin, which is now freed from the body carcass, slowly up the neck and over the skull; the neck is then cut off at the base of the skull and the carcass thrown away. The skull is carefully cleaned and remains in the skin attached to the bill. When the limbs and skin are all thoroughly cleaned, Mona’s work is finished, for so far can I trust him to go, but no further. He has taken fully two hours over the work, and he has nothing else to do for the time being, since he is not yet sufficiently skilled to skin the smaller things. I now take the hawk skin from Mona and thoroughly anoint the skull and neck with preservative soap, fill the eye-sockets with globular balls of cotton wool, to take the place of the live eye, and pass the head back through the neck into its normal position; I then soap all the remainder of the skin, and place a thin layer of cotton-wool over the damp surface as I go along to keep the feathers from becoming soiled should they turn over skinwards as they often do. When that is done, the bird is completely preserved; but still it has to be reformed, so that it will dry in a perfectly natural outstretched posture. With this intention I first take needle and strong thread, and where I see the base of the scapular feathers showing on the inside of the skin, on either side, I pass the thread through each, and tie it so that in doing so the shoulders are brought together—a trick that greatly assists in bringing the wing butts back into their normal place. Next I cut a stout straight stick or rod of the length of the bird, and point both ends. Upon the upper length of this I wrap sufficient wool to fill the neck, and when that is done, it is carefully inserted in the neckskin and the point of the stick forced up into the base of the bill, while the other end is fixed into the root of the tail. The bird-skin is now lying, back-downwards, with a straight firm rod running down the centre of it; round this rod I commence to build the woollen filling, until a form is shaped of the size of the carcass. I then see that the base of the wing-bones and leg-bones are nicely set close into the body, and, that done, draw the skin over the breast into its original position, and hold it in place with a few stitches; and the bird is ready to pick up and have the feathers rearranged with such care that no one may suspect that it has ever been tampered with—work that requires a distressing amount of patience if you desire a beautiful specimen. When every feather is in place, the specimen is laid in a coffin-shaped mould[6] of correct width to hold the wings in place close to the body, and it is then set aside to dry. When quite dry, the specimen is perfectly rigid, and requires no further support, and may be handled freely.

Small birds are treated in the same way, except that there is no difficulty with the wings, but the work is much more dainty, and requires light fingers and a great store of patience.

Some birds, such as ducks and night-jars, cannot be skinned by bringing the neck over the head, as the latter is too large; in such cases an incision is made in the back of the head and the skull worked out through it.

Meantime, while the natives have been employed with fox and hawk, I have worked on the small birds (the Colies), so that by mid-afternoon all are finished and laid aside to dry, with sufficient camphor sprinkled over them to keep ants from attacking the soft parts of the head. I am then free to set out on another search for specimens or to employ my time in setting traps. If I collect in the cool of the evening, I keep specimens overnight, which can be done without fear of decay, and start skinning them at daybreak on the following morning.

My description will, I trust, illustrate something of the process employed with specimens collected and preserved in the field. You may already know them if you have been “behind the scenes” in an important museum, and have seen the wealth of research specimens that are there, carefully stored away from the strong rays of daylight so that their colour shall not fade. Drawer upon drawer of different species, all uniform in shape and labelled for the purpose: the Type specimens from the locality where the species was first discovered, and specimens from any other part of the world where it has since been found to exist; many rare and immensely valuable; many the absolute proof of vastly important records that have gone to establish the Natural History of the world, and valuable as the parchments of the historian or the relics of the antiquarian. There you may actually see how the collector makes up his skins in the field, and why they are made, and how the peoples of the world come to know all the creatures that inhabit it.

CHAPTER V
ZINDER

Zinder is a very strange town: strange because of its great size in so isolated a position; strange because of the nature of its site and old-world obsolete composition.

Kano, though it is the commercial metropolis of the Western Sudan, is first and foremost the capital of the province of the same name by reason of its large population and importance; and in like manner so we find Zinder, the capital of Damagarim, vastly larger than any fellow-village in the territory—a unique and imposing place, lost in a wilderness of great spaces and little peoples.

It is difficult to give those “back home” a fair conception of the solitude of Zinder. But let us suppose for the moment that England and Scotland are wilderness—without “made” roads, without mason-built houses or cottages—and all England covered with scrub-wood of a great sameness, wherein, concealed among the foliage, a few natives have settlements of primeval gipsy kind, while Scotland, we picture, in fancy, as a mountain-land of barren rock, with lowlands of desert sand, and almost no inhabitants at all.

Zinder is 140 miles from Kano, and Agades, at the southern foot of the Aïr mountains—and the only other old-world town on my route—is 257 miles north of Zinder. Suppose we take London to represent Kano, and set out to walk with a caravan of loaded camels toward the north of England. Days pass, and we see a few gipsy-constructed villages by the wayside—nothing more; but when we approach Sheffield, we are surprised to see a large fortified town appear before us, in the distance, standing in the great wilderness alone. This we can take to represent Zinder, for from London to Sheffield is about equidistant as from Kano to Zinder. If you would continue the journey as far as Edinburgh or Glasgow, you should imagine that you have passed from the scrub-wooded land into desert, and that either of those Scottish towns may represent Agades, for from Sheffield to Edinburgh is about equidistant as from Zinder to Agades. Therefore, to realise the solitude of Zinder, you require to imagine that Sheffield stands alone in her dignity in all the land between London and Edinburgh; and if you would picture even greater solitude, such as invests isolated Agades, you may imagine Edinburgh as a straggling town, not large, but steeped in ancient history, and that it is the only town in the length and breadth of Scotland, the earth’s surface of which we have imagined to be barren as sea-shore which the tide has left, and containing but a mere handful of inhabitants. By such comparisons, by likening with bold sweeps of the brush the home geography to that in the territories of Kano, Damagarim, Damergou, and Aïr, we arrive at the conclusion that there would only be three towns throughout the length of England and Scotland, which we have called London, Sheffield, and Edinburgh for convenience of comparative distance at which they are set apart, and nothing intervening excepting a number of diminutive hut-villages of natives among the scrub-wood of the land. By this time, if your imagination has run free, you have shovelled the countless towns on the map of England, Scotland, and Wales into the sea, so that you have just the three you require and the requisite solitude surrounding them. But that is not all you do: trains must vanish, and ships that visit your shores, and the ocean around you shall be deserted, and no strangers shall come to the land. . . . Then is the picture of Solitude such as it is in the Western Sudan drawn to completion, and you may realise something of the ever-present weight of seclusion that hangs over ill-fated places that lie remotely out of the world and seem to soliloquise of Eternity, since they are so much alone and so near to the earth.

“Ah, it is a sad land!” is an exclamation I have oftentimes heard escape from the lips of Frenchmen who hold appointments in the country, for their vivacious natures feel most keenly the solitude of the barren land which envelops them with a grimness akin to the bare walls of a prison, and holds out no hope of escape until the date of release decreed, the while many a homesick heart has passionate longing for freedom of expression in convivial and comprehensive surroundings. I have been informed by officers that the depression of solitude—no doubt combined with the unnerving influence of malaria—is so great, that some men cannot stand it, and have to be prematurely sent from the territory in a state of total mental collapse; especially is this the case, it is asserted, among the N.C.O.s, who have naturally a narrower field of interest outside their military duties than the officers.

Zinder, like Kano, is surrounded with great earthen walls of similar height and strength, and they are so prominent that they may be sighted at a long distance off, whether you approach the place from the south or the north, for the nature of the landscape is such that you descend to Zinder (altitude 1,640 ft.) from the south, and look on its imposing bulwarks whenever you top a distant ridge which lies about two miles away; while you ascend to it from the north, where, perched on the crown of a rocky ridge, it has the pleasing appearance of a fortified castle. Kano has no view equal to this northern aspect of Zinder, which is of charming outline, and which looks particularly picturesque in the shades of evening, and fantastic in the moonlight, for then are the barren, unsympathetic surroundings almost forgotten under the softening influence of night’s enchantment.

The site upon which Zinder stands is a curious one, insomuch that it is on a rising grade, which extends to the upper or most northern section of the town, which is on a low-rugged ridge extraordinary for the outcrop of giant boulders thereon, some of them many times the height of man, and lending an uncommon character to the surroundings of the habitations. The huts are built of clay-soil in the same manner as at Kano, for the community is, as there, largely Hausa, but the town in general, since it is smaller, is less bewildering in its narrow street-lanes, while there are markedly fewer inhabitants and less commotion. There is a circumstance in Zinder which is sad to relate: many of the dwellings are forsaken, and stand to-day in disrepair or in ruins, and a certain melancholy atmosphere of decline is there. Doubtless there are many causes for this decline, but those that are apparent and presently prominent are: firstly, that the lure of the rapidly ascending prosperity of industries and commerce of Kano has influenced many to desert the old town and go to settle in the great metropolis; and, secondly, that jurisdiction under military rule would appear to contain some element that is irksome to a certain number of natives, and so those who are not content, depart from under the immediate eyes of the administrative to seek, perhaps, a greater freedom in some distant bush-village, or in Hausaland in Nigeria. Natives of primitive environment are very easily influenced, and the act of changing abode an undertaking of small consequence, so that once a movement commences, others quickly follow the example of the leaders. My boys, Sakari and John, I fancy, expressed something of popular Hausa opinion when they quaintly proffered the conviction that “Kano is sweet past Zinder.”

NATIVES DRAWING WATER AT BABAN TUBKI WELLS, ZINDER.

AMONG THE ROCKS OF ZINDER.

On the high ground just outside the western walls of Zinder there has sprung up, since the date of French occupation in 1900, an extensive European cantonment which is altogether modern and in strange contrast to the old town, to which it is distinctly foreign. Herein are the headquarters of the military administration of the Territoire Militaire du Niger. Here, laid out on broad lines, there are spacious buildings of creditable French colonial design—long flat-roofed, one-story bungalows in type, with pleasant balustrades that shelter cool verandas. The thick walls of the buildings are constructed by natives, with bricks which are baked with clay mud, obtained, strangely enough, by breaking into the ancient wall fortifications of Zinder, and kneaded, with the addition of fibrous straw, and baked or dried in the blazing sun. The domestic quarters or the administrative offices within the bungalows are delightfully cool, and it is pleasant indeed to have occasion to go inside out of reach of the hot sun of day which strikes down perpetually and without mercy on the scorched, expressionless sand of bare streets and compounds. (In the month of February the thermometer registers about 80° Fahr. in the shade at 8 a.m., and about 100° Fahr. at noon, although the hottest season is not reached until June and July.) The cantonment, which might almost be called a town within itself, is unique in the territory, there being nothing but outlying forts to compare with it; indeed, if we go outside it, not even the segregation at Kano, which contains about an equal number of Europeans, can compare, in my opinion, with the general planning and architectural appearance of Zinder. Which may be due to the fact that Kano is principally a township of trading stores, with domestic quarters overhead, whereas at Zinder there is not a shop in the place, and all the buildings are laid out on a well-conceived plan to accommodate the military administration, with due consideration to comfort and their exalted rank.

For the white traveller to come unawares upon the imposing buildings of Zinder, in such isolated surroundings, is naturally a great surprise, and a totally unexpected pleasure; and to the natives who arrive from the distant bush, or stop in the passing of their caravans, they must be a constant source of wonder.

In Zinder or in Kano, or, in fact, anywhere south of Aïr, you never hear “Zinder” given its official name, for, without exception, it is spoken of among the Hausa people under the designation of “Damagarim.” Their explanation is that the name “Zinder” is not of Hausa origin, but is an old Arabic or Tamāshack name belonging to ancient rulers of northern race whose tribes have long ago been driven back, though the name still remains in use among the Semitic races in Aïr and other distant places on the old caravan routes to Tripoli and Algeria.

Zinder came under French rule in 1900.

It was in 1898 that large military missions were organised with the purpose of entering and occupying the country now known as the Territoire Militaire du Niger in the Western Sudan. The project was supported by a treaty between Britain and France which had been agreed on and signed in 1890—eight years before the undertaking was actually set afoot.

There was, in all, three separate missions, which started from Algeria, from the Niger river, and the Congo of French Equatorial Africa; and the scheme was that all would converge on Lake Chad, which was to be the rendezvous should each column meet with success. An object ultimately attained—and the Territoire Militaire was created in 1900, under the jurisdiction of a commandant, with headquarters established at Zinder. In 1901 a second mission was organised to stabilise the position, and this mission was a powerful one in strength of arms, so that an imposing and awesome impression should be made on the minds of any disaffected native inhabitants, should such be encountered. During that year complete occupation of the Damagarim Region was peacefully carried out.

Below are statistics kindly furnished by the commandant, in September, 1920, of the native population in the region known as Damagarim, of which Zinder is the capital:—

It will be seen that the Hausa race predominates, but the northern quarter of this region is near to the limit of their range, for they extend but little farther into the Damergou region, where they are only twenty-three thousand all told; and those principally in the neighbourhood of Tanout.

CHAPTER VI
THE SHORES OF BUSHLAND AND DESERT

Toward the end of February I left Zinder.

Takoukout, 109 miles farther on, was to be my next camping-place.

Before leaving Zinder I heard plenty of discouraging news of the journey confronting me: exploits of armed robbers and great scarcity of food were freely spoken of, by both Europeans and natives, as existing drawbacks to visiting Aïr; and I began to note that my Hausa boys were growing restive and suspicious of what lay ahead. In fact, in the end those fearsome but idle rumours unsettled and unnerved Mona to such an extent that, when the time drew near to go forward, I decided to send him back to Kano, deeming it useless to take him further in such a state of mind. Sakari was little better, but he was so helpful in skinning, that I was loath to let him go, and by the aid of increased wages was able to induce him to continue.

It was the old familiar trouble, for I have always found it difficult to induce natives, most of whom appear to have a strong erratical and unreliable temperament in their composition, to leave their homes on a long journey, and, when possibilities of hunger and danger are added, trouble may be anticipated after the undertaking has commenced, no matter how auspicious the start, nor how binding the promises, which were perfectly sincere at the time they were made.

For my own part I had often puzzled over the question: “Why is it that Aïr has so long been avoided by naturalists and travellers?” for, so far as I could gather, no one had explored the country in British interests since Dr. Barth’s geological and anti-slave trade mission to Central Africa in 1850—seventy years ago; but now I believed I had a cue, for hunger and danger are indeed companions of ill-omen sufficiently gruesome to warn away the wise—provided they are altogether without some opposite neighbours to stand by in time of stress and modify the fearsome picture. But of this more anon.

It may be said that in leaving Zinder, northward bound, one passes out into true Sahara and true wilderness. Henceforward the break-up of the natural bushland sets in, and wide belts of sand desert and dwarf bush alternate, until the vast sea of sand-plain is reached about 180 miles north of Zinder. Henceforward, also, the nature of the country undergoes change; it is more barren than before, which is reflected at once in the tremendous drop in population which occurs in the region or province of Damergou; and it is reflected, also, in the dwarf stature of the ill-nourished acacia trees, which, by the way, remind me much of the dying-down of the timber forests of Canada to the dwarf Scrub Pine on the shores of the sub-Arctic barren grounds. How strikingly similar are those two instances of landlocked shores, that are boundary between bushland and desert or plain, though they take effect in continents widely separated, and of entirely different climatic conditions! In both cases the trees are ill-thriven and dwarfed, but there is a difference: in the Sudan the cause is to be found in the unfertile sand and lack of moisture, while in Canada it is the severity of the winter in that particular latitude which lays its blight upon the land.

Then, too, as you enter wilderness and land of diminished population, you pass into country that is poorer in bird life, but richer by far in big-game than any territory to the south—as shall be seen as we progress.

The village of Tanout, 85 miles distant, lay across our path to Takoukout, and I set out with the intention of covering the distance in five days, which meant fairly stiff going for the well-loaded camels. As customary, we had the usual trouble with certain animals and their burdens on the first day out from Zinder, and were on the road, without pause for rest, from 7 a.m. till 4 p.m., when we reached Bakimaran after a journey of 18 miles. There is a belt of barren land which starts about 5 miles south of Zinder and continues northward until beyond Bakimaran—a belt altogether 25 to 30 miles in width—and it was across this that we travelled in setting out. It was drearily bare country, undulating in places with low rounded rises, sandy or covered with withered grass, and often with rough outcrops of gravel and boulders and rock, while, in patches, there was some scraggy bush and an odd tree. Few natives were encountered until Bakimaran was reached, and cattle and goat-herds, which are common to inhabited territory, were remarkably scarce, though the latter circumstance could, perhaps, in a measure be explained, as there are occasions in the dry season when grazing or water give out, and it is necessary that the main herds of the people be driven, often long distances, to find new pasturage. Apropos of this, there sometimes arises an amusing incident: a thunderstorm and sudden cloud-burst of heavy rain occurs in a limited locality and starts the grass growing green; before long a wandering bushman chances upon this fine pasture, and hastens away to fetch his lean and hungry herds to it; but on his return he finds to his disgust that someone, who has also made the discovery, has forestalled him, and there ensues lively dispute over rights of possession, which sometimes ends in angry abuse and even fighting—like to the madness of two hungry dogs that pounce together upon a dish of appetising food, antagonistic and snarling, although the vessel, in all probability, contains ample repast for both.

On the following day we departed from Bakimaran before dawn, and camped at Kaléloua in the afternoon. On the way we passed from the barren belt into fairly thick bush country, wherein no native habitations were seen until we reached our destination. The country now contained some big game. Red-fronted Gazelles were numerous, and were observed, usually, singly or in pairs, and I had no difficulty in shooting sufficient meat for my natives and the headmen of Kaléloua. Also one small band of giraffe were observed, but not disturbed, much to the disappointment of my natives, who were most anxious that I should kill those Rakuma-n-daji (Camels of the bush), which is the quaint Hausa name for those odd-shaped animals.

On the third day, which was a Sunday, we travelled to Dambiri. During the early part of the day we continued to pass through the bush belt we had entered on the previous day, but midway on the journey, after about 20 miles of bush country lay behind, this gave place again to open plains of sand and dry grass, which continued to Dambiri, and beyond as far as eye could see. In contour the open landscape was gently rolling, without any sharp rise, and not unlike the plain we had passed in leaving Zinder, except in the ever-growing supremacy of sand and solitude.

The growing poverty of the land is reflected in the natives and their habitations: the village of Dambiri, like the few others we had passed since leaving Zinder, was small, and the grass dwellings and yard fences built with less neatness and thoroughness than further south, and there was much that was unkempt and uncared for in the general aspect of the place, while the natives themselves were poor and raggedly clad. It is curious to note how surely the gradual change from fertile land to desert land is insistent of a corresponding falling off in the quantity and quality of the Hausaland natives, until they reach the very lowest ebb on the shores of the desert, and cease to venture farther; while another and vastly different race, the nomad Tuaregs, take up the duel of existence against nature in the great barren sea-like wastes beyond.

Dambiri, the designation of the village, is not an unpleasant Hausa name in quality of sound, but one gets rather a set-back if inquisitive enough to inquire into the literal English translation, for the meaning of the word is, “a bush cat with a bad smell”—which, I take it, rather pointedly has reference to the Civet Cat.

Once a week, on a set day, it is the custom of each village to hold market; and market-day constitutes the most important occasion in the routine of native life, for all are born traders, even in this impoverished territory of small productiveness, and outlying natives and the inhabitants of other villages travel eagerly, often long distances, with their quota of humble produce, to swell the concourse. Sunday was the day of market at Dambiri, so that there was unwonted stir about the place when we arrived, and much sound of tom-toms. I will not go into details of market-day at Dambiri, for the wares and proceedings are similar to those described at Kano; but I will make mention of the tom-tom music.

Those drum-beats which emanate so persistently from the village, and which sound so monotonous and aimless to the European stranger, have in reality a definite purpose to the initiated, for they are in fact declaring urgent news that is intended to reach the ears of all, something after the manner of the old-fashioned town-crier in our own country, who goes forth with a hand-bell to make quaint public proclamations. Here are a few examples selected out of many: a certain rattan, or scale of beats, means that a beast (ox, sheep, or goat) is about to be killed, and that those who want fresh meat should hasten to purchase it before the excessive heat of the climate works destruction upon it; another sound denotes that meat is being sold at the market-place—not at the slaughter-place; others call the population to foregather before the King’s dwelling, or to a wedding, or to feast; and yet another warns the people of the approach of a Saraki (local king) or a Amiru (emir or prince). In the examples which I have given, it will be seen that there is some need of urgency in the proclamation; and that is usually the case. Furthermore, the drum-beats of the tom-tom travel much farther than the human voice, and as it is often desired to reach the ears of the people at toil in the fields as well as those within the village, the inhabitants show cuteness in thus using their favourite instrument of music (?) for the duties of the day as well as for pleasure.

On the fourth day we journeyed throughout across strange wide plains of grass and sand, where no trees grow and but few scattered dwarf bushes, and camped at Mazia, which has an altitude of 1,700 ft., so that a decided ascent has set in since leaving Dambiri (1,500 ft.). In fact, on reaching Tanout next day, the highest altitude thus far encountered was recorded, namely, 1,800 ft., while a little further north, above Guinea Valley, the continuation of the same height of land recorded 1,900 ft., which is the highest point noted anywhere on my route from Kano to Agades.

During the late afternoon, at Mazia, I shot two Dorcas Gazelles and one great Arab Bustard to add to our scant supply of food. The dainty little Dorcas Gazelles are creatures that frequent the open plains and thin scrub, so that they too furnished evidence that we were now on the shores of the desert.

Water is not plentiful nor pure at Mazia: in fact, at this season (I am writing at the end of February), after four or five months have passed without rainfall, many wells reach a very low ebb, and pure water was a luxury enjoyed only at Zinder. Elsewhere it was always much discoloured with vegetable matter, and decaying timber props and soil; but it is precious enough even so, for it means no less than life to man and beast in this country of ravenous sunlight and terrifying dryness.