“Look, Yúsufu!” exclaimed Aminé, halting opposite a booth where a venerable Hausa sat on a handsome rug in the midst of his wares, “what a beautiful _riga saki_ this old man has. I wish we could buy it for thee, so that thou mightest throw aside thy old ragged _riga_.” She pointed to a splendidly embroidered gown that hung on the partition of the booth. “But a day or two ago I had no _riga_ at all,” said I, and I led her away from the tantalising spectacle. We passed between the double rows of booths and entered the produce market, where rows of countrywomen sat on the ground behind their little stalls, with their goods spread out on mats or in baskets or calabashes. It was late in the afternoon, and many of them, having sold out their stocks, were rolling up their mats preparatory to going home. One old woman who was thus preparing for her departure, had left upon the ground one circular basket tray, on which there yet remained a couple of heaps of the identical caterpillars that formed Aminé’s stock in trade, and as we stopped before the stall, a Hausa woman came up, and, after some haggling, laid down a dozen _kurdi_, and gathered up the two piles of insects. As the old woman picked up the empty tray, Aminé stepped into the now-vacant space and spread out her mat, on which she began to arrange little heaps of the caterpillars, the corpses of which she disinterred from the “black hole” of her bag. When she had set out the stall to her satisfaction she seated herself at the end of the mat to wait for customers, and I strolled off to see the “fun of the fair.” There was plenty to see, and as I looked at the strange and novel spectacle I almost forgot my forlorn and destitute condition. I elbowed my way through the crowd, and joined the other idlers and sight-seers around the more entertaining stalls. Here was an old Hausa busily writing laiyas or amulets, and I watched him with a special interest, noting his methods and materials and the prices his trumpery fetched. Then I came to a man roasting kabobs over a pot of charcoal, and the aroma they diffused around made my mouth water, so that I hurried on. There were drinking stalls, where a kind of crude sherbet was dispensed in little calabashes from a great jar, and a stall where a man was frying _masa_; and the little cakes looked so tempting that I invested twenty _kurdi_ in half a dozen for supper. From a specially dense part of the crowd came a Babel of talk and shouts of laughter, and, on pushing my way to the front, I beheld a barber plying his trade, and as he mowed the stubble from the head of a kneeling client, he kept the bystanders in a roar of merriment by an unceasing flow of jests and anecdotes.