It is quite beyond the scope of this chapter to tell how we continued our way through Nupé to Kontakora, and thence by way of Yauri, the Niger, and Gulbi-n-Gindi to Jega, Sokoto, and Wurnu, where the Sultan of Sokoto had established his court. Here we were in a region teeming with varied interest, having reached the religious, political, and commercial centre of the Western and Central Sudan. We could hardly believe our senses, and realise that we were in the heart of Africa, among a people popularly called negroes. Rather did it seem to us as if, worn out by the tiresome miles and the monotonous jogging of our horses, we had fallen asleep, and in a dream imagined ourselves in some part of Moorish Africa. A blazing sun beat down with terrific effect upon a parched land, in which here and there appeared green oases of acacia, baobab and _doum_ palm, in which nestled villages and towns half hid by the grateful shadow of the foliage. On all hands, as we pushed along, we were reminded of Mohammedan customs, of eastern amplitude of dress, if not of gorgeousness of colour. Everything bore the impress of Moorish ideas and North African civilisation. In the early dewy mornings, in the sultry heats of noontide, at the close of the tropic day, we could hear the sacred call to prayer. By the wayside, far from mosque and town, were to be seen spots marked off by stones, which with silent eloquence invited the dusty and footsore traveller to stay his weary march and wean his thoughts for a moment from his worldly affairs. The types of men, the fashions in dress, were of the most varied character. Specially interesting were those mysterious people the Fillani, or Fulah, numbers of whom passed us from time to time. Simple herdsmen, semi-nomadic in habit, and semi-serfs in position at the beginning of this century--warriors and Mohammedan propagandists a few years later--they are now the rulers of a hundred races between the Atlantic and Bornu. Portentously picturesque, with their voluminous garments, their massive turbans, and _litham_-veiled faces, they pranced along on gorgeously caparisoned horses with the dignified bearing of the Moor. [Illustration: PORTRAIT OF THE SULTAN OF SOKOTO’S BROTHER.] More numerous were the Haussa, the most intelligent and industrious of black races. Very different from this interesting people were the Tuareg visitors from the plateau lands of Asben, who stalked past us in artistically ragged dresses, with eyes which seemed to glow in the shadow of their face cloth and overhanging turban with the fiercest of human passions.