“books,” and that my friends could therefore feel satisfied that they would not be causing me any pleasure at all by answering my questions in any particular manner—that, in short, I did not care a row of yams what their answer might be. One question I never failed to ask was whether the Government had distributed seed to that particular village or in that particular area, and if so, what result had followed the sowing of it? Sometimes the answer was in the negative. When it was in the affirmative it was invariably the same. The Government seed had come. It had been sown. But it was “no good.” Now, I disclaim all attributes of wisdom in this matter of cotton. But I beg you to believe me when I say that the Hausa farmer is no fool.[14] CHAPTER III THE COTTON INDUSTRY—_continued_ Cotton is grown extensively in parts of Northern Nigeria, not for export—outside the Hausa provinces—but for home consumption. In Kano province—28,600 square miles in extent with 2,500,000 inhabitants, more than one-fourth of the total population of the Protectorate—its cultivation is accompanied by what can, without exaggeration, be termed a national industry of weaving, manufacturing, embroidering, and dyeing the garments, both under-garments and over-garments, which the Kano people wear. But not the Kano people alone. For many centuries, for nearly 1000 years probably, the Kanawa have been famed throughout the great region comprised between the bend of the Niger and the ocean as the expert cotton manufacturers of Africa; the most interesting region in all the Dark Continent, where divers races have ceaselessly intermingled, attracted thither by its fertile soil and abundant pastures; Libyan and Berber, Egyptian and Semite, and the mysterious Fulani. Three-fourths of the “men of the desert,” too, the fierce-eyed, black-lithamed Tuareg, descendants of the Iberians, who roam over the vast spaces between Tripoli and the Chad, replenish their wardrobes from the Kano looms. Throughout Bornu, Wadai, and Baghirmi, in the northern German Cameroons as far east as Darfur, Kano cloths hold unquestioned sway. The Kanawa are not the only Nigerians who manufacture cotton goods; but they are the only people among whom the industry may be truly called a national one. As carried out in Kano province this industry adds dignity, interest, and wealth to the life of the people, assists their inventive faculties, intensifies their agricultural lore, and sustains several other branches of industrial activity, binding in close alliance of material interest the agriculturist and the artisan. It gives a healthy, attractive employment to many thousand homes—employment carried on in the free air of heaven, beneath the bright sunshine of Africa. It has become a part of the national life, the pride and profit of the people. Men, women, and children participate in it, the men clearing the ground, hoeing and sowing, the women and children doing the picking, the women cleaning the