Bit by bit the walls are raised, the outcome of each day’s work being plastered by hand into that of the preceding ones, and before the last layer has been laid on, the whole will be still susceptible to thumb pressure. Completed, the building is left to dry in the undiluted blaze of the burning African sun, which bakes all into the hardness of brick. The wet season certainly puts mud houses to severe trial, and those of the jerry-built order sometimes succumb. Even the strongest, having walls two or three feet thick, have to be repaired and patched after continuous rain—as it rains in Northern Nigeria—and the time for general exterior overhauling is also at the close of the wet season, if the threatened habitation will stand so long. Mud houses are quite common for Europeans near Kano City; in fact, with the exception of brick bungalows in the official element quarter, all whites have that type of dwelling. Part of this chapter has been written in one of recent erection which had not gone through the months of hardening process. It looked substantial enough, with its 24-inch stout walls, circular, from a distance resembling a Martello tower. One might have believed it to be proof against any soaking. Five hours of much less than the standard tornado had caused a steady run of mud to drop with ominous sound on various parts of the floor. The wooden gutters that projected horizontally had been undermined and fallen, and the top of the wall on which they had rested was being steadily and in rather liquid form deposited around me. Still, the very centre of the room was, so far, clear of direct descent; and splashes of dirt, though persistently maintained, are a mere nothing in this country. Presently the owner of the house came in to warn me that I had better stop writing and move my bedding and boxes into his store. In his opinion it was not unlikely the walls would collapse. As he did not seem quite certain on the point I said I would chance it and remain. A journalist who desires to send an expected contribution to his paper must not be over-particular about falling walls around him. Nothing on this earth is so important to his mind as the thought that he must not miss the mail. So I rattled on. [Illustration: HOUSE IN KANO CITY. Rent, 2/6 a year.] [Illustration: NO. 1 KANO. The houses in the City are numbered to facilitate taxation. (See page 93.)] Presently one of my boys ran in dripping, his face—as much as a black skin can be—pale. He gasped, “Massa, the wall he be fit for fall!” and at the same moment the friend who had placed the house at my disposal came and begged me in emphatic language not to make a fool of myself and to clear at once. I did, for the next worst thing to not doing his duty to his paper is for a Special Correspondent to get killed in trying to do it extra well. Sure enough, seen from outside, the thick wall had cracked from top to earth and the perpendicular had distinctly shifted from its original alignment.