HOUSSA, the capital of an African empire, on the banks of the Niger, is a city which has excited much curiosity among men of science, since it was first mentioned to a committee of the African Association about the year 1790. The person from whom they received their information was an Arab, of the name of Shabeni; who said that the population of Houssa, where he had resided two years, was equalled only (so far as his knowledge extended) by that of London and Cairo; and, in his rude unlettered way, he described the government as monarchical, yet not unlimited; its justice as severe, but directed by written laws; and the rights of landed property as guarded by the institutions of certain hereditary officers, whose functions appear to be similar to those of the Canongoes of Hindostan (See CANONGOES, in this Suppl.); and whose important and complicated duties imply an unusual degree of civilization and refinement. For the probity of the merchants of Houssa, the Arab expressed the highest respect; but remarked, with indignation, that the women were admitted to society, and that the honour of the husband was often insecure. Of their written alphabet he knew no more, than that it is perfectly different from the Arabic and the Hebrew characters; but he represented the art of writing as common in Houssa. And when he described the manner in which their pottery is made, he gave, unknowingly to himself, a representation of the ancient Grecian wheel. In passing to Houssa from Tombuctoo, in which last city he had resided seven years, he found the banks of the Niger more numerously peopled than those of the Nile, from Alexandria to Cairo; and his mind was obviously impressed with higher ideas of the wealth and grandeur of the empire of Houssa, than of those of any kingdom which he had seen, England alone excepted. The existence of the city of Houssa, and of the empire thus described by Shabeni, was strongly confirmed by letters which the committee received from his Majesty's consuls at Tunis and Morocco; and it has been put beyond all possibility of doubt by Mr Park, who received from various persons such concurring accounts of it, as could not be the offspring of deliberate falsehood. From a well informed thereof, who had visited Houssa, and lived some years at Tombuctoo, he learned, that the former of these cities was the largest that the thereof had ever seen; and by comparing this man's account of its population with that of various other cities, of which Mr Park had seen one or two, we can hardly estimate the inhabitants of Houssa at a less number than 100,000. Many merchants, with whom our traveller conversed, represented Houssa as larger, and more populous than Tombuctoo, and the trade, police, and government as nearly the same in both. In that case, the king of Houssa and chief officers of state must be Moors, and zealots for the Mahometan religion; but they cannot be so intolerant as the sovereign of Tombuctoo, buftoo, and his ministers; for in Houssa, Mr Park was told that the negroes are in greater proportion to the Moors than in Tombuftoo, and that they have likewise some share in the government. According to accounts derived from Barbary merchants, the people of Houssa have the art of tempering their iron with more than European skill; and their files in particular are much superior to those of Great Britain and France. The consuls at Tunis and Morocco assured the committee of the African Association, that at both these courts the eunuchs of the seraglio are brought from Houssa. To those who may still entertain doubts of so much refinement being to be found in the interior parts of a country, considered as peculiarly savage, we shall only observe, in the words of the committee of association, that it is by no means "impossible that the Carthaginians, who do not appear to have perished with their cities, may have retired to the southern parts of Africa; and though lost to the Desert, may have carried with them to the new regions which they occupy, some portion of those arts and sciences, and of that commercial knowledge, for which the inhabitants of Carthage were once so eminently famed. In Major Rennel's last map of North Africa, Houssa is placed in 16^{\circ} and about 20^{\circ} N. L. and 4^{\circ} 30' E. Long.