246 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY of Medicine, of Iron-smelting, of Salt-working, and of Blacksmiths, &c. The generally accepted religion was a form of paganism in which a goddess was supreme, and in which the manner of worship would seem to have had something in common with the worship of Venus or Astarte, from which Housal, one of the earliest recorded kings of Egypt, took his name. It is on the authority of Macrizi that I give this meaning of the name of Housal, and I am not so rash as to assume from the mere similarity of sound that the same meaning attaches to the name of Haussa, or, as it is sometimes written, Houssaland. I only note the fact that the origin of the name of Haussa is unknown, and that the great common bond of the people who bear it would seem to have been their religion and their language. If this name had its origin in their religion, it would have been the same name wherever their language was spoken. The form of their religion differed from that of the Ju-ju worship of the coasts, and at the present day the pagans of Yoruba express themselves in terms of horror when speaking of the fetish worship and human sacrifices of Benin.

This universal worship of a supreme goddess appears to have given rise to the tradition that the Haussa States were at one time under the domination of a woman, whose seat of government was said to have been at Zaria. Early tradition attributes to her the founding of the town, and associates a colossal statue of her with some remarkable rocks which bore the name of Almena, to the south-east of the present position of Zaria. But Sultan Bello, who repeats the tradition that the seven provinces of Haussa were at one time under the domination of one queen, says that the name of the queen was Amina, that she was a daughter of the Prince of Zaria, and that she subdued the seven provinces of Haussa by force of arms, making them all tributary to her, and conquering also