Many things have been said about this Niger Company’s store at Jos. Some of them were stated to me before I went out from England. They were to the effect that there would be no need to carry things on the voyage or to buy them on the Coast as “everything” could be obtained at Jos. When I reached what may be termed the Jos radius several men told me that the Jos store contained “nothing,” or that it only contained those things which I should not need. Put in practically the exact way uttered, the matter was presented that whatever was asked for at Jos would sure not to be in stock. Now, as in most extreme assertions, the truth was found between the two. I was rather a pitiful-looking object on reaching Naraguta. My boots were literally falling to pieces. They had showed signs of distress weeks earlier, and I had tried to buy a suitable pair both at Kano and at Zaria. Kano had no such article for sale, and the only pair to be purchased at Zaria was at least 5 sizes too large. Oje had tried his hand at keeping the soles from parting from the uppers, by driving nails, extracted from small packing-cases, through the top of the welts. Faithful Oje! He had mended my brown bush-shirt, worn and torn to rags by pushing through thick growth; and, as long as they would hold together, he had sewn my tattered socks. He still “fit,” as he told me, to keep going at the boots. But they had been too severely tried. Riding across streams that reached to the knees, soaking the boots, and the next minute into a blazing sun had as effectually disintegrated the parts as a hydraulicing jet performs similar office on soil and tin. Had readers seen me in the condition at home I am sure they would have compassionately dropped a copper in my hand. At Jos I was shod in a twinkling. Among further requirements, one was as far off from boots as a fountain pen, and that I also obtained. The pen cost no more than 6s. and has been in continual use. But there were a number of things between the two which I was unable to obtain. The Jos store, like every other institution on the tin fields, has been unable to cope with the demands made upon it. The demands have grown at a greater ratio than supplies could be forwarded. The store is an immense convenience. No matter how well equipped a man’s belongings may be when he brings out the hundred-and-one things necessary for a fairly-long residence in a new country where food is only obtainable in limited quantities, it is certain that he will have made some miscalculation of needs. Thus Jos sets the fashion in many things. There is a shortage of stationery, and you receive envelopes made by your correspondents in the country: crude and awkward and very inartistic, but the best that can be done under the circumstances. Suddenly comes along an ordinary envelope, and then, whoever sends you a letter, you will find using this identical kind of envelope. The Jos store has had a stock of stationery!