SOCIETY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN. 103 



NOTES ON HAUSALAND AND ITS PEOPLE. 



By F. S. MAXWELL, B.A., Sierra Leone. 



(Bead 27th January, 1906.) 



1. GEOGRAPHICAL. 



Hausaland is included within your Protectorate of Northern 

 Nigeria, which, next to India, is the largest dependency of the 

 British Crown. Nigeria, be it known, is not a place name, and 

 cannot be found on any map of Africa made out more than twelve 

 years ago. It is applied to a number of self-governing native states, 

 in the Western Sudan and the valley of the Niger, which within 

 recent years have accepted the protection of Great Britain. The 

 portion known as Southern Nigeria, which now forms with Lagos one 

 political entity, and which first accepted British protection and 

 suzerainty, was, for a long time before the name Nigeria was coined, 

 known as the Oil Rivers Protectorate. Before the union with Lagos 

 its seat of government was Old Calabar. The portion known as 

 Northern Nigeria corresponds to the region which was formerly the 

 sphere of operations of the Royal Niger Company. This company 

 was in regard to this portion of West Africa what the East India 

 Company was to India. It controlled its own armies, maintained its 

 own police, and exercised jurisdiction and a sort of protection within 

 the sphere of its operations. It practically enjoyed the monopoly of 

 the trade, and it was from it that the British Government ultimately 

 took over the protection of these states from the aggression of other 

 white powers and the tender mercies of one another. Northern 

 Nigeria includes a portion of the area known to moderns as the 

 Sudan and to the ancients by various names, such as Nigritia, 



