Specie is made up into boxes, each containing £300, weighing 80 lbs. This is in silver coins, gold having practically no circulation in the country. A mine manager makes his personal provision for taking the money from the Finance Department to his own place. The usual plan is for the manager or one of his principal assistants, carrying firearms, to travel with his own carriers, who bear the money on their heads. The Niger Company’s plan differs. A European accompanies the specie and has as a guard for it four dogarie, i.e., policemen belonging to one of the native rulers. Then, besides each carrier bearing a load, there is another between each of them as a relief. So if any of the men fall out his relief takes the load, which prevents the gang stopping or a box passing from the direct view of the European. When long journeys are undertaken stops must be made sometimes overnight, but the method of working is to get the men over the ground as quickly as can be done with as few stops as possible. Although the Finance Department was established for the mines it is of very great service to anybody travelling through the country who may require cash. All that is necessary is a telegram from the bank where the traveller has a deposit to the Niger Company’s Finance Department authorising payment of the sum asked for. And a feature of the department is the patience and courtesy of the one in charge, Mr E. B. Simmonds, in dealing with the many matters, occasionally novel ones, which come before him from men strange to the country. Another Niger Company department at Jos, separate from the others, is that of Transport. Than transport no matter is of greater importance to the mines. Everything depends upon it. By “everything” is meant the primary items of food and machinery, on which all else rests. Even were the soil capable of being cultivated to an extent which would yield food for the labourers brought from other parts of the Protectorate, at least some years would have to pass before the process was in operation. Food must, therefore, be imported from the districts where it is grown. It has been said there is not sufficient food in the country to satisfy the requirements of the 12,000 or so labourers on the mines. As, with insignificant exceptions, these labourers are all natives of Northern Nigeria, and no foodstuff to speak of crosses the border inwards, it is obvious that previous to coming on the tin fields they must have eaten indigenous products. I am sure that any difficulty in obtaining sufficient labour is largely, if not wholly, a question of food supply, and that supply cannot flow unless there are efficient channels for its passage: transport.