Hoe-handles, mortars, pestles, beds, doors, gins, spindles, bobbins, looms, shuttles, saddles, riding-boots, sandals, slippers, bridles, scissors, razors, rope, fishing-nets, earthenware cooking-pots, lamps, water-bottles and pipes are among the innumerable articles turned out by the artisan in Northern Nigeria. Indigo dye-pits are to be found in many towns, but the great tanning centre is Kano. Cloth-beating is a recognized branch of the former industry. After removal from the circular pits sunk _à fleur de terre_, the clothes are hung up to dry and then handed over to the beater. In a dark and spacious hut perspiring men kneel in rows facing one another on either side of a huge log of wood, stained black and smooth-polished with constant use, upon which the cloths are spread and vigorously beaten with rounded wooden mallets. Very hard work it is, as I can personally testify, having tried my hand at it, much to the entertainment of the dusky experts. The Kano tanneries are in appearance disappointing; in odours surpassing anything that can be imagined. But the product is astonishingly excellent. The completed skins, dyed deep red or orange with native dyes, the roots, leaves and bark of sundry shrubs and trees being utilized in the many processes through which the raw hide passes, are as soft to the touch as Russian leather. They are greatly appreciated in the Western world, and the trade is a rapidly increasing one. CHAPTER VII THE CITY OF KANO AND ITS MARKET You are permanently conscious that this country has a history and traditions. Nowhere, perhaps, does the fact impress the new-comer more vividly than at Kano. It is a wonderful place to find in Central Africa, this native city with its great enfolding walls, twelve miles in circumference, pierced by thirteen deep gateways (_kofas_), with platform and guardhouses and massive doors heavily clamped with iron; with its written records dating back nearly eight hundred years. And although incomparably the most important it is not the oldest of these Hausa cities—Katsina, now in the same “province,” is probably older. When the West-Saxon realm fell before the onslaught of the Danes and the first Danish King reigned over England, Hausaland was conquered by an unknown people from the East, and when the prosperity of the English towns was beginning to revive under Henry I., Gijimasu, the third King of the invading dynasty, was building Kano. When Henry VIII. was laying the foundations of personal government, the “rich merchants and most civil people” of Kano were entertaining Leo Africanus. Three hundred years later (1824) Clapperton entered this “great emporium of the kingdom of Hausa,” which Barth forty years afterwards termed the “far-famed entrepôt of Central Africa;” which Lugard was subsequently to describe as exceeding anything he had ever seen “or even imagined” in Africa. Tributary now to this, now to the other, evanescent African