280 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY tory. We have seen that conquests had been effected on the East, and the domination of Bornu over Kanem had been substituted for the ancient domination of Kanem over Bornu. Campaigns, though not always successful, had been carried out in the West, and the Haussa States at a somewhat later date became one by one tributary, though not in any true sense subject to Bornu.

Ali Ghajideni in the fifteenth century reorganised the Empire of Bornu. His immediate successors enlarged and aggrandised it. Edris Alawoma, at the end of the sixteenth century, undertook the special task of consolidating it and binding its somewhat heterogeneous elements into one political whole. He once more gave attention to the pagan Soy, who continued at that date to defy the power of Bornu in independent fastnesses of their own. Having reduced them with much difficulty to submission in the north-western portions of his territory, he carried away a great number of the people, and the remainder fled eastward to Kanem. He marched then south-westward against other pagan tribes, and it is especially mentioned in recounting his campaigns that he achieved his success mainly by the force of his muskets. He then undertook a great campaign against Kano, which must have occurred during the worst period of the misfortunes of Kano, during that twenty years when, the spirit of the Kano people being broken, they were obliged "to sit at home and be afraid." Nevertheless, though the strong places of the province of Kano fell into the hands of Bornu, the town itself succeeded in maintaining its independence. As this fact is acknowledged by the Bornu chronicle, it may be held to be undoubtedly accurate. After Kano, Edris turned his arms northwards towards the Berbers of the desert, and attacked the " five tribes " or Berbers of Asben, with whom it has been mentioned that Gober during all this period of its history maintained a perpetual war.

Here, too, Edris was victorious to the extent of impos-