from immense distances to this great market of the middle Niger. The mangroves of the Delta, the awesome grandeur of the forests, these are left far behind. We have entered the uplands of the North. CHAPTER II NORTHERN NIGERIA PRIOR TO THE BRITISH OCCUPATION The political events of which Northern Nigeria was the scene last century are well known, but a brief recapitulation of them is necessary by way of introduction to the study of its present conditions, the life of its people, and the accomplishments and problems of the British Administration. In the opening years of the nineteenth century, what is now Northern Nigeria consisted of the shattered remnants of the once famous Bornu Empire; of seven independent states more or less (generally less) controlled by chieftains of the remarkable so-called “Hausa” race, invaders of a thousand years before “out of the East,” and of the aboriginal inhabitants whose origin is lost in the mists of antiquity. Scattered throughout the region and constantly shifting their habitat in response to the necessities of their calling, were tribes of light-coloured straight-haired people, Fulani, nomadic herdsmen and shepherds. From the ranks of these people, spread over West Africa from the Senegal to the Chad, had sprung from time to time political leaders, divines and men of letters who had played a conspicuous part in the history of the old Niger civilizations. The Hausa Chieftains had established a nominal authority over a wide expanse of territory and were constantly at war with the aborigines on their borders. It was not, however, for warlike feats, but for their commerce, farming, cotton and leather industry; for the spread of their language; for the great centres of human activity they had formed and for the fertility and prosperity of the land which they had made their home, that the Hausas were justly renowned all over Western and Northern Africa. They had evolved no great imperial dominion whose various parts acknowledged a central Head, such, alternately, as Melle, Ghanata, Kanem and Bornu; but they had leavened with their intelligence and fertilised with their industrial achievements some of the naturally richest areas of tropical West Africa, and they had earned for themselves in these respects a widespread fame.