THE HAUSSA STATES 243 to him for religious festivals. There was a pagan goddess who had many names, amongst them Gonkie and Shemsusu. This goddess lived upon a walled hill which was guarded day and night, and none were allowed to approach her except Berbushay himself. Her religious festivals took place twice a year, and on these occasions the people from north and south and east and west brought black animals for sacrifice. It may be mentioned in connection with this custom that, according to the account given by Captain Clapperton, the pagan natives of Yoruba and Nupe still assemble once a year round a high hill, and sacrifice a black bull and a black sheep and a black dog.

The custom was that, when the sacrifices were made, Berbushay went in alone to the enclosure of the goddess, and apparently his intercourse with her conferred some special sanctity upon him, for when he came out, he cried to the people : ** I am the heir of Dalla, and whether you will or not you must serve me." And the people replied: **We serve you without fear." There were also in connection with this ceremony mystic rites, during which the people divested themselves of their clothing, but the description given in this very imperfect translation is too vague to be comprehensible. A learned investigator will perhaps some day ascertain whether these primitive customs, dedicated to the worship of a female deity in the Soudan, have any connection with the sanctity of the black stone of the Caaba, and the pagan rites of naked worship with which Astarte, or the Venus Erycina of the Phoenicians, was once honoured within the walls of Mecca. If the paganism of the Soudan were shown to be Identical with that superseded by Islam on the shores of the Red Sea during the lifetime of the prophet, it would be a curious and instructive example of the continuity of history that It should be tracked to its last stronghold in equatorial Africa, and abolished to-day, after an interval of more than a thousand years, by a far-off pulsation of the same moral and Intellectual forces.

This Berbushay was also a prophet. He foretold the