Nearer approach to Kano discloses an encircling wall, with tall date-palm trees standing sentinel-like. A closer examination shows the wall to have a thickness of 40 feet at its lowest part, and to run to a height of 50 feet. The top has half-circles, at the backs of which bow-and-arrow men could shoot with ease, and elsewhere this opportunity for defence is varied by mud compartments—as hard as stone—fashioned into the top of the wall where men could stand and use muskets through loopholes in the solid wall. A deep ditch lies in front of the wall, which has thirteen gates for entrance. The road to each gate narrows, with heavy, low side walls, so that an attacking party would be crowded into a small space, allowing few to press forward together. Several of the gates were further protected by the wall turning at an angle outwards, allowing missiles to be poured on the flank of an advance party. Inside this Kano, less than eleven years ago, a slave market flourished, although the country was then a British Protectorate, and out of these gates there issued forth from time to time the then Emir and his thousands of mounted spearmen, setting out on slave-hunting expeditions, cheered by the loud-sounding drums and trumpets, and encouraged by the cries of the women-folk, who yelled to their lords to bear themselves well. So the Emir’s following rode on, raiding tracts of territory, carrying off the women and children, slaughtering male adults with never a second thought. When the dwellers in a village had wind of the coming onslaught and hid themselves, the raiders burnt the houses and crops to the ground, leaving the people to perish by exposure and starvation. Thus was the land being depopulated. In 50 years it had been decreased to less than a fifth. In 1900 organised raids on a large scale, to keep up the supply of slaves, were brazenly carried on by the Emir of Bida and the Emir of Kontagora, almost within sight of the British administrative headquarters—then at Jebba—where the High Commissioner, Sir Frederick Lugard, sat impotent. It was as much as he could do to maintain his hold on the Provinces occupied, for the large contingent of troops—1,200—he had to supply for the Ashanti War had left Northern Nigeria helpless to stop the murder, plunder, and slave-hunting that was taking place from the north. With the return of the native soldiers the subsidiary Emirs were dealt with separately, but Kano, the political centre, the strong place of Hausaland, stood out defiantly. Sir Frederick Lugard tried persuasion, for he realised that his resources were not on a scale to tackle the great fortress city of Kano unless at much risk.