Kano is, of course, the most fertile province of the Protectorate, but this general description of agricultural Nigeria does not only apply to Kano Province. I saw nothing finer in the way of deep cultivation (for yams and guinea-corn chiefly) than among the Bauchi pagans. The pagan Gwarri of the Niger Province have for ages past grown abundant crops in terraces up their mountainsides whither they sought refuge from Hausa and Fulani raids. The soil around Sokoto, where the advancing Sahara trenches upon the fertile belt, may look arid and incapable of sustaining annual crops, yet every year it blossoms like a rose. But the result means and needs inherited lore and sustained and strenuous labour. From the early rains until harvest time a prolific weed-growth has continuously to be fought. Insect pests, though not conspicuously numerous in most years, nevertheless exist, amongst them the locusts, which sometimes cover the heavens with their flight; the caterpillar, which eats the corn in its early youth; the blight (_daraba_), which attacks the ripening ear. In some districts not so favoured, the soil being of compact clay with a thin coating of humus, intensive cultivation has proved exhausting, and it is a study to note how every ounce of humus is tended with religious care. Very hard work at the right time is the secret of success for the Nigerian agriculturist. It is little short of marvellous that with all he has to do he somehow manages to build our railways and our roads. Indeed, if that phenomenon has in many respects its satisfactory, it has also its sombre, social side. One can but hope that the former may outweigh the latter as the country gradually settles down after the severe demands placed upon it these last few years. [Illustration: A GWARRI GIRL.] [Illustration: A HAUSA TRADING WOMAN.] Truly a wonderful country, and a wonderful people, a people who with fifty years’ peace will double its numbers, a people whom it is our paramount duty to secure for ever in the undisturbed occupation and enjoyment of the land, precluding the up-growth of a middle-man class of landlord from which the native system is free, and being so free need never be saddled with. CHAPTER VI THE LIFE OF THE PEOPLE—THE HERDSMAN AND THE ARTISAN