238 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY political individuality. He has always been merchant, peasant, soldier, and artisan. Storms have swept over him, to which he has bowed a submissive head. According to circumstances his territory has contracted or expanded, but in the Haussa nation the life of the individual appears to have been so little dependent on the political development of the race, that it has lost no vigour in the incidents of history, and we find him to-day pursuing his avocations as his fathers before him pursued the same avocations when they first emerge to our sight from the dimness of antiquity.

The territory covered by Haussaland to-day stretches roughly from about 9° to 14° N. lat., and from 4° to 11° E. long., and it contains a population estimated at perhaps ten millions of people. No accurate census has as yet been made, and this estimate, lower than that usually given, is only approximate. The Haussa language, which is classed with Coptic amongst the Hamitic languages, is said to be more widely spoken than any other single native language in West Africa.

The Haussas have themselves, like most other West African races, a tradition of having come once from the east beyond Mecca, but their presence in the Soudan, somewhat to the north of the territory which they now occupy, is, like that of the Berbers in the Western African desert, of immemorial antiquity. Dr. Barth connects them with the Aterantes of Herodotus. They have also been connected with the Habeches, Habais, or Habes, of Strabo. Within historic times they have been known as divided into seven independent Haussa States, upon which certain other states, also largely peopled by Haussas, have been dependent. The seven original states were Biram, Gober, Kano, Rano, Zaria, Katsena, and Daura. Some of these have now sunk into insignificance. Some form still the most important provinces of Northern Nigeria. Though within any period of which we have record — dating for about a thousand years — these states have been independent of and