strikingly handsome profiles, with clean-shaven heads and keen cheerful looks. But many Tuaregs are here also from the far-distant north, even beyond the Nigerian border; their fierce eyes gleaming above the black veil drawn across the face, covering the head and falling upon the robe beneath, once white, now stained and rent by many weeks of travel. From the shoulders of these hang formidable, cross-handled swords in red-leather tasselled scabbards. Nor are the Hausas always innocent of arms, generally a sword. But here is a professional hunter who has joined the party. You can tell him from his bow held in the right hand and the quiver of reed-arrows barbed—and, maybe, poisoned—slung across his back. The legs of the men are bare to the knees, and much-worn sandals cover their feet. Some carry loads of merchandise, food and water-gourds; others have their belongings securely fastened on bullock or donkey. Women, too, numbers of them, splendid of form and carriage, one or both arms uplifted, balancing upon the carrying pad (_gammo_) a towering load of multitudinous contents neatly held together in a string bag. Their raiment is the raiment of antiquity, save that it has fewer folds, the outer gown, commonly blue in colour, reaching to just below the knees, the bosom not generally exposed, at least in youth, and where not so intended, gravely covered as the alien rides by; neck, wrists and ankles frequently garnished with silver ornaments. Many women bear in addition to the load upon the head, a baby on the back, its body hidden in the outer robe, its shiny shaven head emerging above, sometimes resting against the soft and ample maternal shoulders, sometimes wobbling from side to side in slumber, at the imminent risk, but for inherited robustness in that region, of spinal dislocation. Children of all ages, the elders doing their share in porterage, younger ones held by the hand (nothing can be more charming than the sight of a youthful Nigerian mother gladsome of face and form teaching the young idea the mysteries of head-carriage!). Two tired mites are mounted upon a patient ox, the father walking behind. A sturdy middle-aged Hausa carries one child on his shoulders, grasps another by the wrist, supporting his load with his free hand. A gay, dusty crowd, weary and footsore, no doubt, tramping twenty miles in a day carrying anything from forty to one hundred pounds; but, with such consciousness of freedom, such independence of gait and bearing! The mind flies back to those staggering lines of broken humanity, flotsam and jetsam of our great cities, products of our “superior” civilization, dragging themselves along the Herefordshire lanes in the hop-picking season! What a contrast! And so the trading caravan, bound for the markets of the south, for Lokoja or Bida—it may well be, for some of its units, Ibadan or Lagos—passes onwards, wrapped in its own dust, which, presently, closes in and hides it from sight.