A period of comparative political quiet ensued. Othman issued regulations, and caused them to be strictly enforced, inflicting the severest punishments upon robbers and evil-doers generally. A recrudescence of spiritual influence and of letters everywhere manifested itself. Learned men flocked to Sokoto, where Othman had built his capital, from West and North Africa. The trans-desert trade revived. Security was so well established that Clapperton, who visited the country during Bello’s reign, records the common saying of the time that a woman could pass unmolested through the land, even if she carried a casket of gold upon her head. With the death of Bello the influence of the central power, enormously difficult to maintain in any case owing to the greatness of the area and the absence of ways of communication, declined. Administrative decay gradually set in and extended with the years. Little by little the authority of the Emir of Sokoto was openly questioned, in all save spiritual matters. Allegiance slackened. Emirs quarrelled amongst themselves. This or that chief acted on his own responsibility in political affairs affecting the general weal, or entirely broke away from control. The roads became infested with bands of highwaymen whose proceedings differed in no way from the banditti of feudal Europe. Rebellious chieftains formed robber strongholds. Military operations degenerated into mere raiding for the capture and sale of prisoners of war to replenish revenues from ordinary taxation which the disturbed state of the country was causing to decrease. There has probably been a natural tendency in recent years to exaggerate the aggregate effect for evil upon the country which accompanied the weakening of the Fulani dynasty. There is no proof that the state of affairs was worse than what had obtained previous to Othman’s _jihad_. It could hardly have been worse than the condition of Western Europe at sundry stages in its history, when the weakness of the paramount authority and the foraging and strife of rival Barons combined to desolate the homesteads of the people and lay waste the country side. Some notion of parallels in approaching the events of West African history is very desirable, but not often conspicuous. But there can be no doubt—the evidence of one’s own eyes in ruined villages and once cultivated areas “gone to bush” is conclusive—that when the alien Britisher arrived upon the scene as a reforming political force, Northern Nigeria was once more urgently in need of a power sufficiently strong to restore order. Such was the condition of the Hausa States. In Bornu matters had gone from disorder to chaos, culminating in the final tragedy of Rabeh’s incursion, the slaughter of the _Shehu_ and the sack of Kuka, the capital.