Sir Frederick Lugard's Annual Report on Northern Nigeria, which was
published last Saturday, is, as usual, interesting and hopeful reading. Order has been almost completely restored in the Kano and Sokoto provinces, the development of the land goes on rapidly, and immigrants are flowing into the much-harassed province of Bornu. The chiefs are gradually acquiescing in the prohibition of the slave trade, the slave markets have been closed, and many caravans from German territory have been stopped and liberated. The revenue for the Protectorate reached the figure of £357,000, while the expenditure was only £389,400,- £32,000 being a very modest deficit for a country which is still in the first stages of development. Sir Frederick Lugard tells a romantic tale of the ex-Sultan of Sokoto, who took it into his head to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, and called on the peasantry to follow him. The Mandi was to meet them on the road, and there seems to have been a genuine revival of fanaticism. The pilgrimage, however, got into difficulties from lack of supplies, and was easily turned back by Captain Hamilton Browne and fifty men, the ox-Sultan and many of the leaders being slain.
The Tines of Tuesday contained an account of an interest-
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