The _Mallamai_ school was full of special interest, being composed of grown men from eighteen to thirty; for these are the teachers of to-morrow. I was told, and I can well believe it from their intellectual faces, that the rapidity with which they acquire and the ease with which they retain knowledge, is amazing. Land surveying and farm measuring is included in their _curriculum_, and some of them, although their course of instruction is not completed, have already rendered very considerable assistance, their work (which I was able to examine at a later date), calculated in acres and roods and covering many assessment sheets, being neat and generally accurate. I attended the geography lesson which was then going forward, and found these future teachers studying, not the configuration of the Alps or the names of the English counties, but the map of Africa, the rivers, mountain ranges and political divisions of their own continent: not the distances between Berlin and St. Petersburg, Rome and Paris, but between Kano and Lokoja, Zaria and Yola, and the routes to follow to reach those places from a given spot. The various classes, I observed, were not puzzling over, to them, incomprehensible stories about St. Bernard dogs rescuing snow-bound travellers, or busy bees improving shining hours, but becoming acquainted with the proverbs and folk-lore of their own land; not being edified with the properties of the mangel-wurzel or the potentialities of the strawberry, but instructed in the culture requirements of yams, sweet potatoes, and sugar-cane. I did not see rows of lads in European costume, unsuited to the climate, hideous (out here) and vehicles for the propagation of tuberculosis, but decently clothed in their own graceful, healthy African garb. The school for the sons of chiefs—which, I venture to hope, will not, as rumoured, be abandoned without very careful consideration—struck me as a triumphant proof of what a sympathetic Administration can accomplish in a very short time out here by way of winning confidence and removing suspicions. Here were perhaps threescore youngsters, the older and more advanced boys forming a separate class, and a more intelligent, keener crowd it would be difficult to select in any country. Their presence—among them were sons of the Emirs of Sokoto, Kano, Bauchi, Bornu, Katsina, Katagum, Bida, Gombe, Gando, Daura, and Muri—together, was evidence of the revolution which a few years have brought, for their respective fathers were until our advent more or less in a state of chronic friction and sometimes of open warfare. These _Yan Sarikis_ (sons of chiefs) are not only allowed, but encouraged, to correspond with their parents, and constant are the mounted messengers passing to and fro.