very shy and timid pagan tribes. These are amenable under just treatment to regular labour on short terms and prompt pay, as has been proved in the final stages of the completion of the Riga-Chikum-Naraguta road, although such labour is quite foreign to them. Harsh and unjust handling would send them flying to the inaccessible hills. While on this subject I am also bound to say that the political staff of the Bauchi province is hopelessly and dangerously undermanned, or was when I left the country last January. It is tempting Providence to allow three hundred white prospectors to go wandering over the face of a vast country like this (27,000 square miles) with a political staff amounting to no more than thirteen all told; and that number, a purely nominal one, be it stated. Twenty political officers at least should be permanently on duty in the province. The question of transport has been a difficult one and still remains so. The situation has been somewhat alleviated by the construction of a road connecting Naraguta with the Baro-Kano railway at Riga-Chikum, although, following that road for its whole (then) completed length, I fail to see for my part that it will be of much use in the rains without a series of pontoons over the rivers which cut it at frequent intervals, and no measure of the kind was in contemplation last January. Possibly the situation has changed since. The scarcity and the distance of the villages and, consequently, of food supplies for men and beasts, from the road is also a drawback. But doubtless the road will fall into disuse and turn out to have been more or less a waste of money with the completion of the railway which, mercifully, be it said, has been started from Zaria instead of following the deserted country from Riga-Chikum as was originally proposed. This railway is being constructed in the direction of Naraguta. But not to Naraguta itself, which is wise, for the development of the industry in that immediate neighbourhood is still a sufficiently doubtful quantity to permit at least of the supposition that the centre of gravity may shift to Bukuru or some other spot. The railway traverses the region where the Kano tin deposits are situate—virtually the only ones not entirely alluvial in character. At the present time the road chiefly used for the transport of the tin is that opened and maintained by the Niger Company between the mines and Loko on the Benue, a distance of 180 miles. The Niger Company have established ferries across the rivers and organised a system of carriers and donkeys. But at best the route is not an ideal one, costs a great deal to keep open, and is hardly capable of dealing with more than 500 tons _per annum_. I found complaints rife as to the alleged favouritism shown by the company in its management of the transport, but I failed to discover any specific facts justifying them. Of course the company enjoys a complete monopoly of that