At low water you may calculate anything beyond the periods given, but you should keep to calculating, not form any conclusion, for the precise, or even approximate, day and hour you reach your destination are largely on the knees of chance, in the matter of silted-in channels and quickly formed sandbanks; and though the skill and alertness of the native Pilot may evade these checks for a long time, he is sure to be caught by them sooner or later and the craft held up from an hour or so to a question of days. I left Lokoja at 8 a.m. aboard the stern-wheeler _Mungo Park_, belonging to the Niger Company. She is the latest passenger-cargo boat on the service, carrying 220 tons on high water, drawing 5 feet, and 130 tons at low water, drawing about 4 feet. There is accommodation for eight saloon passengers, whose quarters are on the upper deck. The vessel has electric light, electrically-operated air fans, and the bedrooms are mosquito-proof. I say bedrooms advisedly, not cabins, for the sleeping apartments are large, roomy apartments, with iron bedsteads which do not need the generally indispensable protection from winged insects of enclosing curtains. Every provision is here for comfort. Though we have no ladies this journey, the skipper, Captain W. H. Stephenson, has shown me, with pride, that their well-being has not been overlooked, for special accommodation has been furnished for them. To me this form of locomotion is ideal of its kind. The barque is sufficiently large to give one the impression of being on an ocean-going ship, whilst the uniform smoothness of the stream sets the mind at rest. I am not oppressed by the uneasiness which ever haunts me on a liner and which prompts anxious looks to discern if there are signs of the wind freshening and enforcing a hasty retirement and abstinence from food. Whatever befalls on the Niger, there is no mal-de-mer. The most sensitive internal organism will not be disturbed. We are propelled by two paddles at the back of the vessel and there are extra large balance rudders for sharp movement of the craft. They are frequently required at this season, as you shall learn. Our average speed is 12 miles an hour. Cargo is carried on the lower deck, where native passengers also settle. There is only one European in the crew, the Captain. The other members are the Chief Engineer and his two assistants, the Pilot, Bos’n, four Quartermasters, and 22 deck hands. With the exception of the Engineers and the Pilot, all are river “boys” from the towns of Onitsha and Aboh and river villages. The Niger Company does four-fifths of the cargo transport up and down the rivers—trading goods up, produce down—making no preference in selection between their own cargoes and those of firms who are side-by-side competitors in trading at dozens of places. The exception to this four-fifths division of carrying is Messrs John Holt, who have their own boats.