kingdom, frequently at war with its neighbours, repeatedly besieged, it has survived every vicissitude. Neither the disastrous struggles with Katsina in the seventeenth, and with Gober in the eighteenth centuries, nor the deposition and defeat of the forty-third (and last) King of the original dynasty by the Fulani early in the nineteenth century, nor yet the occupation of the country by the British seven years ago, have destroyed its influence or impaired its commercial prestige—a tribute to the staying power and to the sterling qualities of the truly remarkable African people whom, in the providence of God, it has now fallen upon us to rule. Its market-place, still the scene of clamorous activity, continues to attract merchants and merchandise from all parts of western Central Africa. It still remains the nerve-centre of a district whose natural fertility, aided by the labour and skill of a hard-working, industrious population, not only supports, as it has done for many centuries, a population of equal density to the square mile as England boasts, but exports large quantities of grain to less-favoured regions; and its looms continue to supply the requirements of an immense area ranging from the Chad to Timbuktu and the borders of Tripoli, and (in part, at least) southwards to the Niger. [Illustration: A VIEW OF A PART OF KANO CITY (INSIDE THE WALL).] Picturesque by day, with numerous and gaily dressed pedestrians and horsemen perambulating its tortuous streets, busy crowds around its markets, dye-pits, tanneries, and looms, Kano is still more so when the moon floods its broad open spaces with light and flings strange shadows across the sandy thoroughfares where they abut upon the dwelling-places of its inhabitants. Then, but for the occasional howl of a dog, this city which has endured so long and withstood so much lies wrapped in impenetrable silence. The ugly sores of Africa—not, assuredly, as ugly or as numerous as those of Europe, but more conspicuous—are mercifully hidden. No one walks abroad. Yet you know as you wander with noiseless footsteps through its curves and labyrinths, escaping for once from your inevitable native attendants (delightful people, but sadly hampering at times), that behind these thick clay walls and closed doors, the mysterious world of Africa is awake and stirring, that social world with its primitive impulses, but also with its many courtesies and refinements, that world of habit and of thought, guarded with jealous reticence from the alien, unfathomed and unfathomable even by the most experienced of Residents. And, again, at sunrise, when from the summit of the minaret outside the Emir’s residence, the pink flush of dawn steals down the sides of the city’s guardian hills, Dala and Goronduchi, flickers upon the fronds of the palm trees, and reveals the seemingly interminable vista of houses, mostly flat-roofed, but varied here and there by others of humbler thatch and conical in shape; when the blue