26o A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY pressed upon the Soudan from the north and east, we may observe that the chronological order of civilisation in the Haussa States was almost coincident with the ascending degrees of latitude.

Next after the civilisation of these southern states followed the rise and domination of Zaria, a province which, even in the nineteenth century, the Fulani historian describes as the most extensive of the Haussa States.

It is probable that the early prosperity of Zaria may have been contemporary with that of Daura and Biram in the north, but I am obliged reluctantly to abandon the history of these Haussa States for lack of material. References to Daura as an old and still existing state are frequent in the Kano chronicle, and Dr. Barth specially commends Daura, of which the capital is at the present day a town of some importance, to the notice of the antiquarian for the interest of the legends which attach to it. The only legend with which I am acquainted is one resembling that already related in connection with the foundation of Kano, and attributes the foundation of the town to a strong man who killed there the " dodo " or fetish lion.

'' Dodo," I may say, is a native word signifying the King of Beasts, and may apply equally to rhinoceros, elephant, or any other great wild animal. The myth may, I think, be taken to indicate that, in the time of this hero, the worship of the goddess was substituted for the worship of the fetish, and it is interesting to observe that here, as in the early history of Songhay, the memory of the destruction of the fetish is preserved as an historic era in local tradition. The latitude of Daura is not far from the latitude of Gao, and such facts, collected from wholly different sources, tend to confirm the theory that there was a time when the fetish worship now confined to the belt of the southern coast extended far to the north.

The sign-posts in the almost forgotten ways of ancient local history are few, but they point to the conclusion that at some very early period a general and widespread religious