242 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY their mutual jealousies, their occasional acceptance of a dominant leader, their commercial activity, their common religion, are features of a quite remarkable similarity.

There are, I think, especially interesting conclusions to be drawn from a consideration of the early religion of the Haussa States.

As regards the genealogy of the Haussa people, their Fulani historian, Sultan Bello, not anxious to glorify the race whom he desired his own people to supplant, ascribes their origin to a slave, excepting, however, the people of Gober, whom he admits to have been free-born, and to have descended from the Copts of Egypt. Curiously, the manuscript obtained by the Niger Company in Kano, which professes to carry the history of that town from mythical times to the period of the Fulani conquest in the beginning of the nineteenth century, gives a certain corroboration to this view. ''The chief of the people of Kano," it says, "was named Berbushay. He was a black, strong man, and a lover of hunting." Bushay, as has been already said, means the land of slaves. *' Ber" is frequently used to signify man. Therefore the name of this first chief of Kano may well be taken to signify ** a man from the land of slaves." A man from the land of slaves is far from being necessarily a slave, but the coincidence may be taken to justify, in part at least, the statement of Bello. The story of the founding of Kano town by this hero has a Herculean flavour. He achieved, it is said, many labours, and, having one day killed an elephant with his spear, he carried the animal for a long distance on his head. Where he put it down was the site of Kano town. He himself lived on the Hill Dalla, which is now within the walls of Kano, and he had a family of seven children. He was of course a pagan. It is said of him that "he inherited the customs of Dalla, which were handed down through the pagan families," and this mystic inheritance of Dalla appears to have made of him the high priest, as well as chief, of the pagan tribes who owned his sway. These spread far on all sides of Kano, and they gathered