The great Mamodu himself, once a notorious slave raider and the perpetrator of innumerable infamies, has elected to ride out and meet us. Surrounded by two or three dozen notables and officers of his household, by a scarlet and green robed bodyguard, by four mounted drummers and two mounted trumpeters; ambling gently beneath a large umbrella of many colours held over his head by an attendant, and clad from head to foot in green-grey robes, with a turban of the same colour, Mamodu’s tall, powerful figure and olive complexion—a Nupe with Fulani blood—emerges from the crowd. Trumpets—long thin trumpets blown lustily and not inharmoniously—blare, drums beat, horses curvet and try to bite one another’s necks. Mamodu and his escort dismount and do their gaisua (salutation). We dismount also, advance, shake hands, and become the target for a hundred pairs of dark pupils in bloodshot, whitish-yellow balls, which glare at us over the lower part of dark blue turbans swathed across chin and mouth and nose, while the introduction formally proceeds to the accompaniment of many a guttural “Ah! Um, Um, Um!” At a word from the stalwart gentleman in grey we could be cut down in a couple of minutes with these long, fierce, leather-sheathed swords which hang at every hip. In point of fact, we are a great deal safer on this African road than we should be crossing Trafalgar Square. Presently we shall see the process, here conducted by one Englishman—trusted, and even liked for his own sake, by the people—aided by an assistant, of turning ci-devant slavers and warriors into administrators. In his work this Englishman relies for the pomp and panoply of power upon three policemen, one of whom is old and decrepit. The Bida division covers 5,000 square miles, and Bida itself counts 35,000 souls. The facts suggest a thought or two.

A long, broad stretch of golden sands. Winding through them the clear green water of the reduced Kaduna. Several dug-outs, manned by Nupes, magnificent specimens of muscular development, cross backwards and forwards with men, women, and children conveying wares to market. Small mites, naked and tubby, splash and rollick about on the water’s edge. Lower down stream fishermen are getting out their nets, and, at a shallow ford, shepherds are piloting a flock of sheep across, from whose scattered ranks a chorus of loud bleating arises. A file of pack donkeys stream across the sands to the village on the opposite bank. We watch the sight from the foot of a great tree, from which hang sundry charms, and as we sit there—it is a rendezvous, it seems, and a small market-place in its way—several young women stroll towards us bearing wares in grass platters which they spread close to us on the ground, conversing in low tones broken now and again by the jolly African laughter—the mirth of the child of nature with few cares and fewer responsibilities. The winding river, the golden sands, the blue sky, the two villages—one on either side of the crossing—with their conical thatched roofs, the green of the trees and of the water, the peaceful, quiet human life, combine to make as pretty and as harmonious a picture as you would wish to see.

Tramp, tramp, tramp! The stamping of innumerable feet. The murmur of innumerable voices. The waving of arms, the jangle of iron anklets, and the rising cloud of dust beneath the trampling of bare toes. The dancers range themselves in a wide circle, which slowly revolves in the light of the moon, now lighting up this part, anon the other part, giving a grey and ghostly look to the naked shoulders and close-cropped heads. Aah! Aah! Aah! The chant rises and falls, monotonous, barbaric. Bracelets and anklets, amulets and charms clash and clang again as the wearers thereof bend this way and that, crouching, stooping, flinging the upper part of their bodies backwards, raising high the knee and bringing down the leg with thunderous stamp, shaking themselves from head to foot like a dog emerging from his bath. Naked bodies, but for a strip of jagged leather falling athwart the hips; naked, lithe bodies on which the moon sheds her beams. Aah! Aah! Aah!