200 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY Tower Hill. The general rule would seem to have been a rule of mildness, but it is to be noted that inhuman punishments which, in their survival, shock the sentiment of the twentieth century, were used on occasions which called for exceptional severity. Among these, burying alive in bottle-shaped holes, which were closed over the head of the victim, and sewing up in the hides of oxen or wild beasts, are two which connect the criminal code of Songhay with the past and with the present. The sewing up of victims in the skins of wild beasts was, it may be remembered, practised in Rome under the Emperor Makrinus, and was still in use at a much later period. The practice of burying alive remained among the punishments of the Soudan, and was only abolished in the states acknowledging British rule by the expedition to Sokoto and Kano in 1903. Askia the Great does not seem to have gone the length of codifying the Songhay laws, but the attention which was given to the study of law, and the long lists of distinguished lawyers who are mentioned in the annals of this and the succeeding reigns, would seem to indicate that Mohammedan law was generally accepted and practised through the Songhay Empire, with only such local modification as experience may have suggested. The system of local law existing at the present day in the Haussa States is admirable in theory. In the decadence of the country it is the administration of it which has failed.

Askia also introduced a reform of the markets. A unification of weights and measures was drawn up.

Inspectors of the markets — an office which already existed under the Sultans of Melle — were selected with special care. They were enjoined to keep close watch over the introduction of the new system, and any falsification was severely punished. The markets were, it is said, rendered so honest, that a child might go into the market-place and would bring back full value for value sent. The Niger was, of course, the great highway of commerce, and the towns situated upon it were the prin-