Reference has been made to the Arab merchants. They, however, constitute only a small number of the multitude who frequent the market and the adjoining streets. You will see them at their stalls or continually passing along in the afternoon, the thoroughfares crowded with them: Fulanis, Hausas, Nupés, Beri-Beris, male and female, many carrying in hands or on head cotton goods, native and imported, for sale. It is a busy multitude and few there are not intent on business.

The men are tall and bear themselves well, in turban and robe wide and ample, of blue or plain white or white figured with green or whatever may be the decorative colour. Respectful, nearly every one of them. They invariably give the salute which is regarded as due to the Englishman in Northern Nigeria: removal of sandals and kneeling on the ground, though, of course, where persons are thickly gathered only the semblance of the compliment can be performed.

Where instead of the turban a kind of white fez is worn, as is frequently the case with young men, it is lifted in courteous salute. An Englishman may well feel proud whilst walking in the streets of Kano, not because his vanity is ministered to by the repeated deference, but that he may reflect and remember the courageous pioneers of only a dozen years ago who with resources improvised in the country won the land for Great Britain and placed the name of Englishmen highest in the land.

Going through the streets the white man is gazed at as an unusual sight, but the people did not look at me with more interest than I at them, wondering how we, a mere handful, overthrew their rulers and the large armies of mounted, trained fighting-men and captured their strong towns. However, one need not wonder long. Knowledge of contemporary events gives the answer. Still more to admire—for, after all, conquering is only a feat of arms—is the sagacity which produced the policy in full operation to-day, that of the people ruled by those whom they have selected, and rulers and people thoroughly co-operating with the governing Power in administering the affairs of the country. History furnishes no example where that has been done with anything like the same material in a similar period.

A peculiar thing struck me in connection with this general salutation. In Zungeru, esteeming the excellent feeling shown by the native population to the English, I was told I would find it still better in Kano. That is just what I did not find. In Kano City, yes, and, to an extent, at the despised British traders’ stores, but the nearer one goes to the Residency quarter the less general is the salute given an Englishman. Apparently, estimating from such signs and tokens, he is respected most in the native area. Strange, this.

Not alone the city but the entire Province of Kano is ruled by the Emir, who appoints native Judges, and from him subsidiary Chiefs and village Headmen, through Chiefs of districts, take instructions and render reports. We rule through the native rulers, the leaders of the people. A very brief survey of its operation in Kano City may not be out of place.

The entire administration of justice has been placed in native hands, except where a European is involved. The Alkali, as the Judge is called, decides cases civil and criminal, framing his decisions on custom and usage based on the Koranic law. That, purged as it has been of corruption and inhumanity, is approved by the population, who are overwhelmingly Mohamedan, as being right and just, much more than would any application of English forms and methods. The Alkali is paid a fixed salary from the public Treasury and no longer, as formerly, has a share of the monetary penalties exacted.

Moreover, although acting under the general administration of the Emir, the Alkali is irremovable, as Judges are in England. These features of a regularly-paid, ample salary and fixity of office give the Alkali—and other Alkalis as well—an independence of judgment uninfluenced by temptation of bribery. The Governor can, of course, remove an Alkali, and though there is no formal appeal from an Alkali’s Court, which at Kano is empowered to deliver death sentence in a case of murder, all the decisions can be altered by the Resident or revised by the English Chief Justice attached to the Governor’s headquarter staff.

Judicial and administrative functions are separate. The Alkali decides punishment and the Emir’s officers carry it out, just as in England, though Nigeria practice is the outcome of native usage.

A single decision of the Alkali is selected as an example. A young constable complained that his wife—who looked his senior by several years—entrusted with some cattle for sale had appropriated the proceeds and transferred her affections to another married man with whom she had dissipated the money claimed by her rightful lord. The woman admitted the action but put in as defence that what she had sold had been purchased with her own earnings and was her individual belonging. She proved that to the Alkali, who thereupon dismissed the charge of theft but held that if the woman did not promptly return to her husband the new domestic partner she had taken unto herself must monetarily recompense the original one for the loss of connubial felicity and to the extent of the wedding portion he paid for the angel on the hearth, minus a proportion for the years of married life.

The Married Women’s Property Act may not be embodied in clauses and sections; statutes of Parliament are not codified and docketed; jurisprudence is not packed in dusty volumes, one contradicting another; but the principles of justice and common-sense, blended with the outlook of the people on what is right and proper and fair, mark the judgments of the men set up to decide among them.

Assessment and collection of taxes have been explained in Chapter VII. I went to the Beit-el-Mal and saw the accumulated revenue in boxes holding copper and nickel penny coins, bags of guinea corn—taxes paid in kind—neatly piled and stored to be sold at suitable opportunity—and boxes containing silver coins, which were interned in an inner chamber, locked and dark.

Hanging up ready for inspection at any moment by those empowered to examine were satchels in which had been put counterfoil receipts, all numbered and in regulated order, and suspended near was the book specifying what should be in the building and the general total. The descriptions were written in Hausa, but with Roman characters and figures. The intelligent Fulani and Hausa people have been trained by British officials to modify their former system to this extent.

I was also formally invited by the Resident to accompany the Acting Governor of the Protectorate on his visit to the native prison and on that occasion peeped round the corner inside for a few seconds. Though I believe the prison is excellently kept, I should have liked to have gone more privately when there would have been opportunity for asking questions.

Quite a different place, outside the city, which I should also have been glad to look over was the school for Mallamai (Mohamedan scholars) and Chief’s sons at Nassarawa. But for some reason the aid to general investigation at Kano, which I had a right to expect, was proffered in such a way that nobody with self-respect could use it, and having to set about seeing things by other means, so much time was occupied that the Nassarawa school was one of the places which had to be cut from the programme. The establishment is based on the lines of that at Bo, Sierra Leone, which was copied from the one in French Senegal.

Besides the central, native Government, Kano City has also a rough form of municipality. It is divided into wards, each under a Wardmaster, responsible to the Emir. The streets are kept scrupulously clean from refuse. That must be placed in stated spots and is removed daily.

As a matter of fact, there is little. The people waste nothing that can by any possibility be utilised. Cattle are killed in the open market by the Mohamedan priest, and nearly every part goes to a useful purpose: some of the internals are made into strings for musical instruments and from the bones praying beads and other articles are fashioned. Small portions of offal thrown in the appointed places are disputed for by ownerless dogs who wander about and by vultures.

Do not shudder at the word vulture and conjure up scenes of battle and men dead and dying. The vulture is quite a useful institution here. In the compound where I live two will perform the office of minor scavengers. So much are the birds esteemed that you kill one at a penalty of £5.

Even the clearings where cattle stand is removed by arrangement with the city authorities by persons who buy it either to use in the preparation of cloth dyes or for field manure.

To persons going up to Kano—or, for the matter of that, to any part of Northern Nigeria—small money will be a considerable convenience and probably saving. No gold coins circulate although legal tender. A two-shilling piece is rare. If a shilling is given in the market-place for a purchase, more likely than not that the stallkeeper will have to ask several of his neighbours to change it. The threepenny bit and pennies and halfpennies are best for one’s exchequer. The “dash”—i.e., tip—is not the disease it has grown to be in Sierra Leone and Lagos, but tangible recognition of little services rendered is not wasted at Kano, any more than it is elsewhere. Visitors may, however, be reminded that a “dash” is not looked for in Northern Nigeria to the extent it is in Coast towns.

For everyday transactions nothing equals the threepenny bit for convenience. It is preferred by sellers. A good supply should be brought up from the bank at Lagos or Forcados. I am now in possession of my second £10 worth. Persons must not rely on obtaining the coin to any extent here nor on the way.

Of £25 drawn from the Bank of British West Africa at Zaria, no threepenny bits could be spared for that amount, £50 being the minimum with which they were given and then only to the extent of 2½ per cent. of the sum drawn. I could be given no more than £1 in sixpences, the remaining £24 was in shillings. Both the Manager, Mr Fenn, and the Cashier, Mr Cameron, are always willing to accommodate clients as much as possible, but request for smallest money and for nickel pieces are so many that a scale of proportions has to regulate drawings.