Nigeria is, at present, arbitrarily divided into two units, “Southern” and “Northern;” the division corresponds with the historical events which have distinguished the assumption of British control, and is to that extent inevitable. But to-day, with internal communications and administrative control rapidly extending, this situation presents many drawbacks. In the absence of any considered scheme of general constructive policy laid down at home, the existence of two separate Governments with ideals necessarily influenced by the personal idiosyncrasies of frequently changing heads in a territory geographically united, through which the channels of a singularly intensive internal trade have flowed for centuries, must of necessity tend to promote divergencies in the treatment of public questions, and, therefore, create numerous difficulties for the future. I propose to deal with this subject in greater detail later on. [Illustration: JU-JU ISLAND NEAR JEBBA. (_Photo by Mr. E. Firmin._)] [Illustration: SHIPPING PALM-OIL ON THE NIGER AT HIGH WATER.] Meantime it would seem necessary at the outset to emphasize two facts which the public mind does not appear to have realized. The first is that Nigeria, both in size and in population, is not only the most considerable of our tropical dependencies in Africa, but is the most considerable and the wealthiest of all our tropical dependencies (India, of course, excepted). Embracing an area of 332,960 square miles, Nigeria is thus equal in size to the German Empire, Italy and Holland, while its population, though not yet ascertained with accuracy, can hardly amount to less than fifteen millions, being double that of British East Africa and Uganda with Nyassaland thrown in, and nearly three times as numerous as the native population comprised in the South African Union. The second is that nowhere else in tropical or sub-tropical Africa is the British administrator faced, at least on a large scale, with a Mohammedan population, already to be counted in millions and increasing year by year with significant rapidity. Until a few years ago the work of Great Britain in West Africa, apart from a few trifling exceptions, was confined to the administration of the Pagan Negro. The position is very different now. In the southern regions of the Protectorate, where its progression is a modern phenomenon, Islam is, from the administrative point of view, a purely social factor. But in the northern regions, where Mohammedan rule has been established for centuries, under the Hausas, and in more recent times under the Fulani, Islam has brought its laws, its taxation, its schools and its learning. It is there a political as well as a religious and social force, solidly entrenched. This fact which, administratively speaking, need not alarm us—unless the Administration is goaded into adopting a hostile attitude towards its Mohammedan subjects—does, however, invest Nigeria with an additional interest of its