A short stop for water—not the first—is made at 6.45 a.m. at Oshogbo, 187 miles from Lagos, and still one of the hopes of the British Cotton Growing Association. Little more than an hour later the line enters Northern Nigeria. At Offa, the station over the frontier, permits have to be shown to take wines or spirits into the Mohamedan land, even for personal consumption. We are now 1,500 feet above sea level. Jebba, 306 miles, is reached at noon, and here one of the stiff difficulties of railway construction which faced the engineers can be seen. The Niger must be crossed. The easiest way of doing so is from the south mainland to a large island, thence to the north mainland. The south channel is 1,100 feet broad, the north one rather less. The latter has been bridged; the former is still under that operation, which will not be finished for two years, making three in all. The length across the river is the least of the obstacles to be solved. Heavy rises and falls of the water—in a month it may alter from 15 feet to 50 feet—made the work not only hard and hazardous, but impossible at certain periods of the year. But with hundreds of miles of rail completed south and north last November, it would have been an exasperating position to have to wait a further two and a half years for through connection. A civil engineer will tell you that nothing on earth is impossible. It is only a matter of money and time. Well, the same train which carries you from Lagos to its destination at Minna, 161 miles beyond Jebba, covers its course without the traveller having to leave his carriage. The train goes over the Niger by means of a ferry. That, however, is itself a difficult subject by reason of the varying height of the river. The question at issue was how to transport weights, too heavy to be safely lifted, from a fixed level to an alternating one. The carriages are run to the head of an inclined plane and a wire rope fastened to each coach, the other end encircling a winding drum. Another rope bound to the further end of the carriage draws it on the slope of the plane, and the winding machine lets it down. The plane carries the carriages to a trolly bridge resting on the river, and rising and falling with it. The trolly bridge fits to a steam ferry which bears four carriages, so that the entire train is taken over in two journeys. At Jebba Island the reverse process is followed, and a freight engine being coupled up the train proceeds over the north channel bridge and thus onwards. Kooty-Wenji should be made by daylight, and there a halt is made till next morning, as the line has not yet been ballasted, and is therefore not safe to be used at night. At 6 a.m. the train is again on the move, and in less than an hour-and-a-half we draw up at Zungeru, 430 miles from Lagos. The course has been covered in thirty-six hours. A week later the boat train attained a record by doing the journey in twenty-four hours.