The distinction between Hausa and Pagan is easily seen in dress. Any Hausa worth the name sports a flowing robe and wide linen trousers. A well-to-do man’s garments of that kind will make those of a British Jack-tar appear puny and of spider proportions. Costume affected by the Pagan sexes will be referred to presently. A less visible but far deeper division between the two is that formerly the Hausa people raided Pagan tribes wherever it could be done, dragging prisoners to slavery, killing the villagers unfit for it, burning the houses, destroying the crops and food stored for the lean months, and leaving any persons who had escaped the raiding bands to death by exposure and starvation. The price of peace to a Pagan tribe was tribute, which usually took the form of an annual quota of slaves. They were mostly obtained by raiding other Pagan tribes, and, as an area that was secure from raiding found a vent for its energies and warlike skill by inter-fighting, the whole countryside for hundreds of square miles was in a continual ferment of bloodshed. The advent of the British made a radical alteration. When a Protectorate was proclaimed it was announced that whilst the Pagan would be preserved from being raided he was to allow free passage through to the Hausa, for a few years ago no Hausa dare enter these regions where the Pagans were strong enough to resist attack. Caravans which came near enough to the danger zone were assailed or harassed by the wild men from the hills. With the inception of the new conditions, a public path, corresponding to a highway in England, was marked out, wherever possible away from the Pagan villages, and it was proclaimed that any peaceable stranger passing along who was murdered would be avenged by the British. Although that is enforced to some extent in the neighbourhood of large centres of administration, it cannot be the uniform rule over a vast territory where means of locomotion are almost entirely confined to bush and mountain tracks. Held in check by the supreme authority, the fierce hatred and enmity of Hausa and Pagan remain. You cannot eradicate in less than a decade the memory of wrongs for generations, nor at once replace with a spirit of sweet and loving brotherhood the intense desire for revenge. The feeling manifests itself around outlying posts in minor ways. Murder is, however, seldom resorted to. Seven days’ marching has brought us to the middle of the Bauchi Plateau, 4,000 feet above sea-level, although the spot could have been reached in four days by a more direct line from Rahama.