One must have stood at the extremity of the eastern mole and watched the greedy, muddy-coloured sea absorbing like some insatiable monster the masses of grey rock hurled, at all times of the day and every day in the week, into its depths, to appreciate the colossal difficulties of a task which, brought to a successful issue, will always remain an impressive testimony to human perseverance under climatic and other conditions of perennial difficulty. West Africa has certainly never seen anything comparable to it. Nature disputes with man for every inch of vantage. As the work progresses the sand twists and withes into ever-changing formations; banks arise and disappear only to again re-form; the foreshore on the outer side of the mole grows and swells and rises weekly, threatening to become level with the wall itself and even to overwhelm it; the scour of the sea scoops into the ocean’s floor, thus forcing the advancing mole into deep water, which demands a proportionately larger meal of stone. From out the greyness of the horizon the remains of the _Kano_, _Kittiwake_, _Egga_, and other vessels that once were, lift lamentable spars above the angry breakers. From Abeokuta, thirty miles away, these innumerable tons of granitic boulders must be brought, despatched in “boxes” from the newly-opened quarries to Ebute-Metta by rail. There the “boxes” are lifted from the waggons and hoisted by cranes into lighters, the lighters are towed to the wharf, the “boxes” lifted out of them, run along the mole, and their contents hurled into the sea. Every foot’s advance requires sixty tons of stone. At the accelerated rate of progress now ensured the eastern mole will be finished in four years. The labour and organization required to bring this great work to its present stage—initial steps in West Africa being invariably characterized by endless impediments—have been prodigious. Despite the sombre prognostications one hears in certain quarters, there seems no reasonable doubt that the bar will yield in time, as the forest has yielded, to British genius and pertinacity aided by African muscles, but at a cost which, when the time comes to add up the bill, will prove, I think, much heavier than generally supposed. Lagos is joined to the mainland by two substantial bridges, one connecting the island with another small island called Iddo, which stands between Lagos Island and the continent, and one connecting Iddo with the continent itself at Ebute-Metta. From thence the railway starts on its way northward, traversing the whole of Yorubaland and tapping the Niger at Jebba. CHAPTER VI THE YORUBAS AND THEIR COUNTRY