scripts written in Hausa, on their own initiative, by natives.
One was a poem called "Waka'l Sirati" produced by an old mallam of Argungu, a place where one might expect to get a good deal of manuscript, for it has not been destroyed within the last two or three centuries, as have most other Nigerian towns.
The second was a letter written by a mallam of Beibei, a town in Ariawa, which no mallam, who has seen it, has been able to read.
The third was a letter from a horse-boy, containing a complaint against a soldier, of which again no mallam could make head or tail.
In addition to this I have procured from mallams a good deal of Hausa manuscript and have gone through it with them and with other mallams. While they could generally understand what they had written themselves they read other men's writing with the greatest difficulty.
All, however, read Arabic manuscript with some facility, so that it appears to be the language rather than the letters which puzzles them. From this I infer that the only literature which Hausa possesses is really oral, not written, and consists of proverbs, simple poems, and war songs.
Many poems can hardly be understood without some knowledge of Arabic; they teem with references to Muhammad, the prophets, &c.
They have occasionally been committed to writing. Most mallams, however, know all the well-known songs by heart.
For example, in the song of the mallam of the
