Sheds and stalls, in addition to the booths, are devoted to the sale of numerous merchandise. The store of an elderly white-turbaned Hausa contains a mass of rough silk mixed up with the cocoons; these are produced by the silkworm, which feeds on the tamarind tree. The _rigas_ made from it are very dear, and also very pleasant to the touch, resembling in that respect and in colour tussore. Here is a stall containing the products of the local smithy, stirrup-irons, locks for doors, every kind of agricultural implement used by the native farmer, axes, knives, and skin-scrapers used in preparing goat and sheep skins for export. There a stall filled with native herbs used as medicines, from the _tafarnua_ for rheumatism to the _karijiji_ for colds, the _kula_ and _passakori_ much used by women after child-birth. Much space is taken up by the sellers of foodstuffs, mostly vegetable, such as guinea-corn and millet in variety, beans, yams, sugar-cane, sweet potatoes (in variety), pepper, onions, the fruit of the tamarind, the red flowers of the tobacco plant, cassava, and ginger. [Illustration: ONE OF THE GATEWAYS TO KANO CITY, SHOWING OUTER WALL.] [Illustration: ANOTHER OF THE ENTRANCES TO THE CITY.] In another direction you will observe on sale European salt and native potash in cakes and cones, zana-mats, firewood, native rope, roofing, sticks with branches, guinea-corn and millet stalks for fencing, native beds, doors made of palm sticks, baskets, mats in great diversity of size and colouring. Round about the booths and sheds on every side sit men and women (mostly the latter) selling articles of local or European origin; by their side, and, apparently, no more carefully watched than the articles themselves, small piles of cowries and sometimes the new nickel coinage we have introduced, and threepenny bits represent the takings of the day. Among such articles are to be observed indigo, antimony, ground-nuts, the inevitable kola-nut, shea-butter, spices, cow-dung in small packets (very precious), raw cotton, henna (_lelli_) for staining hands or feet, fresh honey, cakes and sweetmeats (of a fearful and wonderful composition), native soap from Nupe (_sabouni_), bobbins, shuttles, and other necessities of the national industry, cigarettes, red wool, green wool, crochet-thread, water-pots, and sundry cheap trinkets from Europe. The butchers’ quarter it is best to pass by swiftly; unsavoury in Europe, the flies and tropical sun do not improve it in Africa. Long files of cattle, donkeys, sheep, and goats can be seen winding their way to the cattle market, where many thousands are daily on sale. CHAPTER VIII A VISIT TO THE EMIR OF KANO