All Zaria is astir, for this is December, the sacred month, the month when the pilgrims to Mecca are offering sacrifices, and to-day the Sallah celebrations begin. At an early hour masses of men began to swarm out of the great Hausa city, dressed in their best gowns, driving before them bullocks, sheep, and goats to be sacrificed on the hill—even Kofena, the hill of many legends, the old centre of Hausa “rock worship,” beyond the city walls—to the sound of invocations to Almighty God. For days beforehand people have been pouring in from the villages in the surrounding plain. Long files of oxen, sheep, and goats have been passing through the gates. Every household has been busy getting together presents for friends, making provision for poor relations, bringing forth the finest contents of their wardrobes, preparing succulent dishes for entertainment. Every class of the population has been filled with eager anticipation, agriculturists and weavers, blacksmiths and tanners, dyers and shoemakers. The barbers have plied an active trade, and the butchers likewise. Every face has worn a smile, and the hum of human life has been more insistent than usual. A city of great antiquity this, boasting a long line of fifty-eight Hausa kings before the Fulani dynasty arose, and thirteen since that event early in last century. It rises out of an enormous plain, cultivated for many miles around, dotted here and there with fantastic piles of granite, resembling mediæval castles. Its reddish clay walls, crumbling in parts, twenty to thirty feet high in others, and many feet in thickness at the base, enclose a sea of compounds and tortuous picturesque streets, above which wave the fan-palms, the paw-paw, the beautiful locust-bean tree, and the graceful tamarind. In the plain itself the gigantic _rimi_, or cotton tree, is a conspicuous landmark, and its rugged staunchness is the subject of a legend uncomplimentary to the ladies of Zaria: _Rimayin Zaria sun fi matan Zaria alkawali_, meaning that the old _rimi_ trees are more dependable than the fickle beauties of the town.