THE NATURAL HIGHWAY TO THE UPLANDS OF THE NORTH A casual visitor provided by private kindness with the hospitality of a stern-wheeler and not, therefore, exposed to the discomforts (soon, it is to be hoped, to be a thing of the past, with the completion of railway communications between Lagos and Zungeru) with which an inexcusably inefficient service of river-boats afflicts the unhappy official on his way to Northern Nigeria, packed like a sardine, and feeding as best he can, may be pardoned for finding much of captivating interest in 400 miles of leisurely steaming, with many a halt _en route_, from Forcados to Baro, the starting-point of the Northern Nigerian Railway to Kano. The heat of the afternoons, the myriad insect visitors which are heralded by the lighting of the lamps, blacken the cloth and invade every part of the person accessible to their attentions, the stifling nights, spent, may be, at anchor under the lee of perpendicular banks; these are trifles not worthy of mention by comparison with the rewards they bring. Kaleidoscopic varieties of scenic effects enchant the eye as hour follows hour and day follows day on the bosom of this wonderful Niger, passing from serpentine curves so narrow that the revolving paddles seem in imminent danger of sinking into the bank itself or snapping against some one of the many floating snags, to ever broadening and majestic proportions with vistas of eternal forest, of villages nestling amid banana groves, of busy fishermen flinging their nets, of occasional dark massive heads lifted a brief second from the deeps to disappear silently as they arose, of brilliant blue kingfishers darting hither and thither. Now the river flows through some natural greenhouse of palms and ferns, whose nodding fronds are reflected in the still green waters, now past a fringe of matted creepers gay with purple convolvulus pierced at intervals with the grey upstanding hole of the silk cotton tree. Here its course is broken by long stretches of fine hummocky sand across whose shining surface stalk the egret and the crane, the adjoining rushes noisy with the cackle of the spur-winged geese. Here it glides expanding between open plains bordered with reeds, only to narrow once more as the plain heaves upward and the tall vegetable growth gives way to arid granite outcrops, ascending towards the far horizon into high tablelands. If at dawn the Niger veils its secrets in billowy mists of white, at sunset the sense of mystery deepens. For that, I think, is the principal charm of this great highway into the heart of Negro Africa, the sense of mystery it inspires. Cradled in mystery, for two thousand years it defied the inquisitiveness of the outer world, guarded from the north by dangerous shoals and rapids; hiding its outlet in a fan-shaped maze of creeks. To-day when its sanctuaries are violated, its waters churned and smitten by strange and ugly craft, it is still mysterious, vast and unconquered.