The Province of Kano extends 28,600 square miles and has a population of 3,500,000 souls. Kano City and the settlement near it are, however, spoken of as Kano. Kano City accommodates a native population of more than 30,000 inhabitants. Outside the city there are an English official quarter and a few European stores. The latter are, roughly, two miles from the native city, and the official quarter is a corresponding stretch further on. Each centre is separate, distinct, isolated. Between the stores and the native city there is, however, constant communication, much coming and going for business purposes. Between the official quarter and the stores there is scarcely anything more than the most limited exchange of messages, verbal or written, stiff, formal and frigid.

There is not so much difference in London between Belgravia and Bermondsey as there is in Kano between the official and the traders’ quarter. In London efforts are made to minimise and soften the extremes of existence, while at Kano, if there are extremes, the policy pursued has the effect of hardening, accentuating, emphasising them. Why this spirit should be necessary in Kano I do not know. It does not exist in Lagos or Zungeru.

I leave this part of the subject with the remark that I can say very little about the official quarter, as there was never any cause for me to enter it beyond a few yards when I had to go to the Post Office to despatch cables, for two visits to the Residency and one to the Treasury to obtain change of money. The place is no doubt comfortable enough. Reports say that it lacks little in that respect. But in Mandarin-like attempts to set up a caste apart from all other men, it reminds one of the Forbidden City of Pekin. Yet these matters are insignificant—I hope I ruffle nobody’s sense of dignity by saying so—compared with the interest, the attraction, the fascination, and the importance of Kano City and its inhabitants.

First, however, some reference to the European stores which have been started at Kano. They belong respectively to the Niger Company, Lagos Stores, the Tin Areas of Nigeria, the French Company, and a Syrian trader. The latter has a house and does not live in a hut in the native quarter, as do nearly all his compatriots in West Africa. He approaches a great deal more than they to the European manner of carrying on business. Messrs John Holt have a site, but building has not been started.

All the stores adjoin one another. They are within a few feet of the railway. The sites were selected by Sir Hesketh Bell during his term as Governor. His policy of facilitating commerce in every colony of which he has had charge is recognised by merchants at home, and has been publicly acknowledged repeatedly. The Niger Company and the French Company do what is termed a canteen business—i.e., that of retailing tinned provisions, etc.—as well as dry goods, whilst the other firms confine themselves to the heavier class of articles, though a few of the former class are also disposed of over the counter. There is not sufficient demand to maintain even a single little store for Europeans. The number of white people, officials and traders, does not exceed 30, and all bring their requirements, except fresh food, for the term of service.

The stores started only a few months ago, when the railway was completed. They are not in working order and he is wise in his generation who does not rely on them. My stay in Kano has been longer than planned, with the result that for a week I had no bread; hard, thick biscuits—euphemistically called cabin bread—having to be a substitute. They were eaten with tea for which neither milk nor sugar was obtainable. Subsequently I learnt that I could buy fresh cow’s milk from native farmers at 3d. a pint bottle. When the flour had been consumed, I again flourished on cabin bread.

On a supply of flour coming up—sold at 4s. 6d. for a 7 lb. tin—the always willing and useful Oje declared that he “fit to make bread,” and quite a palatable quality he produced.

Fresh food retailed in Kano City is at low figures, though prices have greatly advanced recently. A chicken, furnishing a meal sufficient for two persons, is bought for 5d.; a guinea-fowl, larger than the chicken, costs 3d. or 4d. A duck is to be had at a corresponding figure. Eggs are purchased at 10 a penny. Sweet potatoes—long, thin, circular—are not disposed of by weight, but are retailed at sight; and fivepennyworth lasts four meals. Onions—larger than turnips, some of them scaling 1½ lbs.—minus the strong flavour of the English variety—cost 4 a penny. By going two or three miles to the farms where they are grown, sufficient to fill an apple-barrel can be secured for 6d. A leg of mutton—flesh that is dearer than beef—sells at 5d., and is more than enough for four diners.

Man does not live by meat alone, and anybody coming here should bear in mind that he is entering a new country, from the European standpoint, where, although foodstuffs are raised, the population has quite a different standard of feeding from his; where railway communication has been merely a matter of months; that things which he probably considers necessary for his existence are just beginning to be sold and that they are of less importance and value to the firms selling them than other articles, which therefore are naturally given preference; and, further, that the articles referred to and others of the same character are occasionally sold out at the great port of Lagos. I had trouble there to buy two tins of sugar. Estimate, then, the position in Kano, distance of a week by railway.

With the exception of the Lagos Stores, all the establishments at Kano are in temporary buildings. The Niger Company has houses of mud and straw and one of corrugated iron. The Tin Areas Company has corrugated iron and also mud houses; whilst the French Company and the Syrian trader have confined themselves to the latter material. Each store stands in a compound. A section is 300 feet long by 100 feet wide. The Niger Company has four sections, the French Company four, the Tin Areas two, Lagos Stores two, the Syrian one. The buildings, of course, only cover a small portion of the ground occupied.

I have stated that the chief business of the stores is to buy, not sell. There are great quantities of native produce for which eager markets in your part of the world wait, and though a good profit should show between the prices here and those in Europe, there is strong competition in purchasing, and everyone will be able to gauge its effect on the vendors, who are keen and alert. They have sharpened the hereditary instinct in the course of generations. Therefore, it can be seen that it is no easy, certain course to sit down and deal for merchandise brought in. The principal articles are hides, skins (goats’ and sheep), ground-nuts, gutta percha, beeswax, and ostrich feathers. I am only touching on articles brought out of Kano City in large quantities to the neighbouring stores, not to those on sale at the market there.

Sheep and goats’ skins and ground-nuts form the main items in the former category. The skins are tanned and dyed red, yellow, and green. The dyeing process is kept secret, but I know that the ashes of dung burnt in open ovens near the entrances to Kano City—such spots being by no means attractive in an olfactory sense—I know that such ashes are used, and that the bright red colour much in favour is obtained from juice of the holcus.

I am unable to say at what price the skins are purchased. One cannot put such questions to buyers who, obviously, are averse from disclosing information which would be useful to rivals, but I believe the figure to be well under to slightly above 1s. each. The sound quality skins easily fetch 6s. or 7s. each in Europe. They are used for satchels, purses, bookbinding, and, within the last few years, slippers and boots have been made from them.

It is safe to state that the purchases of all the other stores together do not approach those of the Niger Company. One can see quite a string of dealers, accompanied by servants carrying skins on their heads, processions of camels and bullocks bearing large bales of skins, and hundreds of donkeys panniered with ground-nuts making their way to the compound of that Company.

It is no reflection on the men in charge of the other stores to say that they have a very difficult task indeed in competing with the Niger Company. In the first place, it is known, and was well known before its present competitors were heard of. Ask anybody in Kano of the Bature Company—the White Company—and, if he can, he will direct you to the Niger Company’s store. European firms may comment as they will, the Niger Company is liked by the population. “In the days of the Company’s rule,” I was told in the southern part of the Protectorate, “we paid no taxes.” That is not accurate, but it is believed, which is just as good as if it were. People, therefore, who have skins to sell naturally first think of the Niger Company, and as it has a name for fair dealing, undoubtedly a heavy preponderance is taken there. Everything is paid for by cash, on the spot.

But the Company depends not on its name alone. An elaborate organisation exists by which native merchants who are vendors are introduced by brokers—a better analogy is that of an outside clerk to a stockbroker—who help a transaction through. Some Arab and native local merchants have already established a branch in England, where skins and feathers are sent direct. To these men the Niger Company acts as forwarding agent, sending goods over the railway to Baro, thence by the river route to the sea for shipment.

Although the general canteen business of the stores—apart from the trade to Europeans—is small at present, it should extend. In Kano and the immediately surrounding districts there must be 50,000 to 60,000 inhabitants. Nearly all have some money to spend. The trade with these people will probably not be done in a direct manner, but by native retailers, who know their own folk best and with whom, as dealers, Europeans cannot compete. The trade, I think, will be a small wholesale one.

What can be done in that way is already clear from the six months’ work of the Syrian previously referred to. In the six months he has been up here he has done business to the amount of £4,000 in English calico and beads. Doubtless the gentleman will be surprised to find that these figures are known to me. They have been obtained in no underhand manner.

No wonder he is about to open a place at Manchester to be used as a forwarding depôt. Though this Syrian, Farris George, is not to be compared to the large firms, his record demonstrates the field of trade that can be cultivated in Nigeria. A few years ago he landed at Lagos and commenced trading in a street market in the smallest manner. Steadily he did more and more; was joined from time to time by members of his family; and eventually he became well-to-do. When, as the phrase goes, the railway opened up Kano to outside commerce, George was quickly on the spot, and he has improved his opportunities all the time. Although when the stores get into their stride his total will appear insignificant, I shall be surprised if he has not secured quite a respectable proportion of the whole, an amount not to be despised and very difficult indeed to lower.