NIGERIA UNDER BRITISH RULE 473 the town to inform the clerks of the amounts they collected from their respective quarters." While this was being done, the Resident and Waziri travelled through eight more towns. On their return to Gaiya at the end of three days the clerks were found to have finished their work. One of the Waziri's scribes, assisted by one of the chief of Gaiya's scribes, were then left to go round the district, making a complete list of the names of the farmers, the amounts they paid, their trade, and the numbers of their households, as had been done by the Resident in Gaiya. The Resident returned with his own clerks and the Waziri to Kano. '' The time actually occupied by myself and staff," writes the Resident, "was seven days at Gaiya and four days* travelling. The result is map, census, and assessment of one district completed, and one jakada (chief tax-gatherer) abolished. I calculate that it will take me some months to complete the map and the assessment of the whole of the Kano district.

In the same time I hope that the junior Residents may be able to accomplish the same work in the other emirates of this, province. . . . The Waziri took a very intelligent interest in this tour." He was present at every interview, and he is soon ** to try his own hand at assessment." It is also the British Resident's opinion that the more important fief-holders may turn out, after some instruction and supervision, to be of real use to the Government. ** As a class," he says, "they are men of refinement and understanding, and existing abuses can hardly be laid to their charge, as their offices have hitherto been merely nominal, and their functions usurped by the big slaves." The process thus described is at work over the entire area of the Mohammedan states, and under it the difficulties attaching to assessment and the reform of the system of collection, both of which are, of course, being carried out upon one design throughout the whole of the states, are rapidly disappearing.

The second difificulty of the new system — the decision