284 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY the Moors. He brought it through terrible suffering from a distant country. Then the roots of this people were separated from the trunk, and the chastisement which they underwent was exemplary." But, if at the end of the sixteenth century the body of the Songhay Empire stood ready for the axe, there were offshoots to which the felling of the trunk was destined to impart perhaps only the more vigour. In the western province, Masina, already mentioned as having established in the eleventh century, with the help of its Fulani population, an independence which, though it had paid tribute to many rulers, was sacrificed to none, was destined yet to play a part of some importance in the future of the country. In the east the Viceroyalty of Dandi, including the territory of the independent Sultans of Kebbi, the practically independent Haussa States, and the State of Borgu, with its neighbouring territory of Southern Gurma, was the refuge of all that was yet loyal to the old traditions of Songhay. The dynasty of Kebbi, founded in rebellion, was vigorous with the old vigour of conquering Songhay, and it had not cut itself off from the prosperity of the empire to accept a tame share in its defeat. To the Moor who knew no difference between them, Kebbi had a lesson of its own to teach.

Beyond the rampart which was created from Kebbi to Nupe by these states of the Eastern Niger lay Haussaland, a congeries of states, Mohammedan and pagan, of great fertility, of no little local industry, famous from the earliest times for their commercial and agricultural activity, but containing populations composed of such extraordinarily diverse elements that internecine war was their habitual condition. Their lack of internal cohesion deprived them, notwithstanding the many advantages of their position, of external strength. Though one or other in turn assumed a locally dominant position, they can hardly be said either to have made or to have resisted conquest, but under all conquest they preserved their individuality and per-