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shuttle themselves, but also they gather the ingredients for their dyesbrown from guinea-corn pith, red from reeds, navy blue from the indigo plant—and make them up for themselves. Their patterns are usually arrangements of lines of simple colours of varying widths and intervals, which are extremely attractive: more ornate patterns are sometimes introduced in double thicknesses. In the Bunu country a special craft is the weaving of "burial cloths" of red, white, and yellow wools (unravelled from European cloths). They are in the form of gigantic bandages about 12 inches wide, and often as much as 30 feet in length, and are employed by the wealthy men of neighbouring tribes. When a rich man dies a strip of this cloth is sometimes thrown over the roof of his house, and there remains until the obsequies are completed. In Koton-Karifi about a third of the women (most of the older ones) are spinners, twisting little bobbins on stones held in their laps, and most of the remainder are weavers who buy from these spinners. Good prices are also obtained in the markets for the local cotton, which hardly suffices local needs. The recovery in the European price of cotton has produced a greater amount of production, and there is likely to be further increases if the price is dependable.

In Koton-Karifi there is an hereditary class of dyers, and outside every village there are to be found their evil-smelling pits. These are usually about 8 feet deep by 3 feet wide and lined with native cement, and are filled to within a foot of the brim. The dye used is that obtained from the indigo plant, pounded up and baked into balls in wood ashes. Many beautiful shades are made from this one dye.

The Bassa Komos of Koton-Karifi make a graceful pottery in bowls of different sizes; they are made by women by hand, and though without a wheel their shape is usually faultless. They are decorated with pitting relieved by fine parallel lines, but their greatest feature is their jet-black colour and highly polished appearance. The black colour is produced by spraying these pots while still red-hot with the water in which guineacorn has been boiled; the effect is very similar to that of Roman pottery. The price is ridiculously small: a medium pot can be obtained in the Koton-Karifi market for one penny.

The Gwaris of Koton-Karifi are very expert at basket making, and often produce work with artistic patterns. The Kakandas make excellent mats from the leaves of the fan-palm, dyed in various shades and woven with great cunning.

There is a large fishing industry on both banks of the Niger, and on the Benue, by nets of different kinds which have been described exhaustively by many writers; they also employ traps set in little dams in running water. Between the Koton-Karifi hills and the river there is a line of fishing swamps, the rights over which are hereditary and jealously guarded. Sometimes poison is used to stupefy the fish, but its use is not encouraged.

The only native musical instrument that calls for comment is the canoe drum. This is a log of wood about 30 inches long and about 12 in diameter, hollowed out from one end, which is then plugged. A slit about 3 inches wide runs longitudinally down one side for the greater part of the length. The drum is beaten with a stick on the lip of this slit, and the peculiar rhythm of the canoe drums coming across the still water of the Niger, once heard, is not easily forgotten.

All over the province there are native markets, of which the most important are those of Isanlu, Gerinya, Okeni, Ajaokuta, and KotonKarifi the first two are the largest, and 2750 and 2500 traders have been counted respectively on an ordinary market day. Each of these represents between 60 and 70 tons of produce brought in for sale each market day; at Isanlu about 20 tons of this is dried fish brought by Nupe women from the Niger. There are intervals between market days: for example, Isanlu is held every eight days, Gerinya every four, Okeni every other day, and so on, while Lokoja market is a permanent one. Almost every village has a market, which is more or less well attended, according to its accessibility and population.

These markets are fed by the network of native paths that join village to village across Africa. The paths are cleared back to a width of 6 feet, but are not "made" in any sense; they are traversable on foot at all times, and where there are reliable bridges they may be used by cycle or motor cycle. These native bridges are very rough and are liable to rot very quickly. Roads fit for motors have been made, and are usually passable, between Lokoja and Okeni and Lokoja and Kabba, between Okeni and Ajaokuta, Southern Provinces (vid Ibillo) and Kabba, and between Kabba and Aiere (for Southern Provinces) and Isanlu. A road has also been made north from Lokoja along the west bank of the Niger as far as Jemata; at this point the river is crossed by ferry, and the road continues from Adaha to Koton-Karifi and on to Gerinya on the Gurara, where by means of another ferry contact is made with the roads of the Niger Province and the north.

Cicatricing is very commonly practised among the women, and varies from mere parallel lines filled up with small scars at right angles, like rungs of a ladder, to the elaborate ornamentation of circles and lizards.

Most of the natives are animists, a rather vague expression that may be used of most tribes. They believe that by sacrificial propitiation of the in-dwelling spirits, evil may be averted from their heads. They go to the local juju-man, who by divination, such as the throwing of cowries on squares and other patterns in cloth or beads, complicated with that mass of inessential paraphernalia of sacred skulls (animal) and charmed skins and iron bells that accompany such ceremonies, tells them of some evil that is coming, and orders them to sacrifice a chicken or to put down pounded yam food at a certain place for the use of the spirit. This is

usually at the foot of a rock or big tree, and as the food always disappears, and the ordinary native is far too frightened to take it, it may be assumed. that it becomes a profit to the juju-man in addition to his ordinary fee.

Different festivals are intimately connected with the crops, such as the eating of new yams and the time of the guinea-corn harvest. In Kabba some of these festivals are celebrated by a select circle of men on one or other of the sacred hills that overhang the town. In many of the festivals a prominent part is taken by a figure completely dressed in green leaves.

The most prominent feature of the Yoruba-speaking tribes living west of the Niger is the honourable craft of rain-making. All independent chiefs and every chief of importance (except some in Igbedde) are held to have powers of creating or calling rain. The actual ceremonies that are supposed to produce the rain are secret, and can only be inferred to involve the use of sympathetic magic with water, veiled in a cloud of attendant bluff. The power is certainly associated with hills, and the more successful exponents are those that live on hills. In most cases the power rests in the chief, but in some, as at Okeni, it belongs to a follower. At Okeni the Ozumi, who holds this office, bears as a badge a crown of the long pinions that are trailed by the night-flying goatsucker. These are dark brown, and may be held, symbolically, to represent storm clouds; they are worn during the act of rain-making, but are taken off when it is desired to stop rainfall. Though one cannot credit that these men have power to control the elements, as the native firmly believes, the coincidences that one has observed personally are remarkable, and might even give pause for thought. It is not uncommon to be told by these ancients that you will not have rain, and to march with rain all round you while none falls in the part where you happen to be.

The ordinary native customs of marriage and burial maintain in the province, except that the Bassa Komos still have marriage by capture. This is a formality and no real violence is used, the bride being seized on her way to or from market, but the parents know that it is going to take place, and in most cases so does the lady. Her family are then entitled to capture a bride from the family of the husband. All burials are in the house or compound of the deceased, and take place at once, except in Igbirra, where the body is often smoked and preserved for several months. On the death of an Obaro of Kabba or a chief of Aiere, one or more slaves, in addition to those slaughtered on the roads leading into the town or buried alive with the dead man, were conducted to the top of a rock near the town and pushed over the edge.

As far as is known nothing has been written about this province except for Lokoja, to which reference is often made; not a surprising circumstance considering that Lokoja is a European-made town. It was founded by the ill-fated expedition which reached the Niger in August 1841, with the object of founding a model farm or settlement of trained

natives from the West Indies and Sierra Leone under European supervision. For this purpose a piece of land was obtained near the confluence of the Niger and Benue from the Atta of Idah, though as to his rights over the site there is still a considerable dispute, by a treaty which was never ratified by the Imperial Government. The site of the model farm was on what Lander called Stirling Hill, a low spur from Patti, near the present Lokoja Market; the whole area granted by the Attah extended from the Ba River just north of Lokoja to the Osara, along the west bank of the Niger. For the best part of a year the colonists remained there, until in the end their labourers mutinied and they were subjected to raids from the Fillani: they were however relieved by the Wilberforce, and reached Plymouth in November 1842. The whole expedition had lost 49 Europeans out of a total of 145, and had caused considerable expenditure of capital with no return. Owing to this set-back nothing further took place until 1854, when in August Doctor Baikie passed the place on his entering the Benue, but he returned to the sea without staying at Lokoja for any time. In 1857 Doctor Baikie again had charge of an expedition, and was appointed Consular Agent at Lokoja by the Foreign Office. He came out in the Dayspring, which was shortly afterwards wrecked higher up the river, and established his headquarters at Gbebe (opposite Lokoja and a few miles downstream). In 1860 he crossed to the site of the old model farm (at Lokoja), where with the assistance of Glover he formed a native settlement, largely of freed slaves. Thus Lokoja came into being under Baikie's protection, and gradually reached its present site.

During the last hundred years, until the coming of the British Administration, the country was more or less continuously exposed to Fillani raids from Bida. According to native accounts the first European to penetrate the interior of Kabba was an unknown white man who accompanied the Fillani Emir, Umoru Magaji of Bida, on his attack on the Igbirra country about 1875. He would seem to have been a military adviser to the Fillani, and is said to have shot rockets at the Igbirra villages and set them on fire. There are old men still living in Kabba who saw this man, and they give various details such as the fact that he climbed the sacred hill at Kabba and examined the country through a glass.

The first official visitors to the hinterland of Lokoja came in 1895. They were two or three British officers, with a few native soldiers, under Captain Turner, who came from the Igbirras and built a fort on the Ashuta Hill outside Kabba, where they lived for some time and observed the Fillani, who were at Ogidi. In 1897 Colonel Vandeleur with a column of the Niger Company Constabulary marched from Lokoja to Ohura (in Bunu) to intercept the Fillani round Kabba; they marched on Kabba and missed the Fillani, who had retired through Yagba. There was a slight pause at Kabba, and then they marched to the Niger,

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