The chief agricultural implement is the Hausa hoe, the _galma_, a curious but efficient instrument, which simultaneously digs and breaks up the soil and is said to be of great antiquity, but which is easier to draw than to describe. There is also in daily use among the Hausas a smaller, simpler hoe and a grass-cutter, while the pagan favours a much heavier and more formidable-looking tool. This pagan hoe somewhat resembles our English spade, but is wielded in quite different fashion. Iron drills, rough hammers and axes, nails, horseshoes, stirrup-irons and bits are included among the ordinary forms of the blacksmith’s art. Iron-stone is common in many parts of the country and is extensively worked, furnaces being met with in every district where the use of the metal is locally in vogue. It is to be hoped that “Civilization” will not seek to stamp out this native industry as the tin-miners have done their best—and, unless the promise made to the smelters of Liruei-n-Kano by Sir H. Hesketh Bell is not speedily carried out, but too successfully—to crush the interesting tin-smelting industry. The history of native tin smelting in Nigeria furnishes a remarkable proof of the capacity of the Nigerian native, but is too long to set forth here in detail. Suffice it to say that for a hundred years, a certain ruling family with numerous branches, has succeeded in turning out a singularly pure form of the white metal whose sale as an article of trade brought prosperity to the countryside. When I left the tin district, owing to unjust and stupidly selfish interference with immemorial rights, the native furnaces had been closed for nine months and poverty was beginning to replace comparative affluence. [Illustration: PANNING FOR IRON.] [Illustration: DYE-PITS.]