An amusing crowd it is that scampers along at this work: men, women, and children of all ages and sizes. The most complete freedom of contract obtains. Everybody is free to enter and head a basket, and anybody can give up when they please. In hurrying over the narrow plank to the boat, occasionally bearer and load will overbalance and topple into the river, at which the noise of shouting with which the work is carried on will be heightened by loud laughter, whilst the fallen warrior collects basket and contents from the running stream and completes the task of depositing his charge at its proper destination. CHAPTER XXXVIII LOKOJA—(_continued_) A cosmopolitan town—A Baron Haussman—The Cantonment Magistrate—Some of his duties—Expenditure and economy—King Abigah—A plea for generosity—The hospitals—A black Bishop’s legacy—The missionary question—Critics and the converse. The commercial aspect of Lokoja has occupied the main portion of the preceding chapter, but, of course, a large business centre necessarily attracts other adjuncts of life. The coloured population is 13,484, of whom 11,680 are natives of Nigeria and 1,804 come from Coast towns. The 72 Europeans are composed of 38 Government officials and 34 engaged in the stores and missionary work. Lokoja is a cosmopolitan town, in an African sense. It is Lagos on a small scale. In it you can see the West African of every kind to be met along the Coast belt, from the educated type of the Coast and portly mammies of Sierra Leone to the Mohamedans of other countries. There is thorough segregation. Lokoja proper may be described not even as oblong but in the form of a narrow strip—nail-like—parallel with the Niger. At one end of the strip is the native quarter, forming a kind of oval head to the nail-shaped town. A wide thoroughfare—Camp Road—stretches about a mile. At each side and sometimes a little way back are the European stores, and at the further end—the point—the Government offices and residential bungalows, the barracks, and the hospital. On the excellent principle of keeping European commercial development separate from the purely native administration of the country—so that the former does not disorganise the latter—that is fixed at Kabba. At Lokoja the political officer has the rank only of Cantonment Magistrate, but the heavy duties he performs, the hours I have seen him at his tasks, their multifarious nature, and the way he has of “getting on” with all kinds of people, all mark Mr Bertram Byfield as among the best type of official to be found in British colonies.