The first day the _Mungo Park_ made 56 miles, measured by the direct course of the river, to Idah. It was not much to show for the full day’s steaming, but the way had to be picked very warily. Though the broad river was certified as between 6 feet and 7 feet deep, that did not mean all the way across; it only specified the channel along which such a boat as ours could travel. Nor was the channel necessarily in the middle or the side of the river; it might twist from the former to the latter, or _vice versâ_; or it might take a zigzag course. As a matter of fact, it described all these gyrations, with variations made from parts of them. We tacked and turned from bank to bank; then, perhaps, for a few miles heading straight down stream, along the middle of it, presently to revert to forming angles and curves. The guide to these evolutions is the Pilot. A Nupé, clad in the long flowing robe of the Mohamedans, capped by a white turban, Nasaru remains at his post on the bridge from dawn to dusk. He takes no rest or time off. He has his food where he stands. His eyes are unvaryingly directed on the surface of the stream, from which he reads the changing position of the narrow channel. That is the only line we can thread without being caught on a submerged sandbank. How Nasaru remains awake all these hot, monotonous hours, scarcely moving, his gaze fixed on an inappreciably altering, dull scene, is remarkable. His principal movement is to raise his forearm at right-angle from the elbow and extending the fingers as signs to the man at the wheel which way to steer; and, without looking down at the instrument, he frequently uses the telegraph to the engine-room to alter speed. The only occasions during the 14 hours’ run that Nasaru relinquishes duty is when he drops on his knees for the Moslem prayers. He does that on the bridge, at the spot where he stands throughout the day. It is imperative the river be watched so closely and unremittingly, as during the low-water season the channel along which safe travel can be made changes continuously and the course up or back may be quite impracticable on the return. This is due to the sand washed down and the pressure of the current wearing a channel where there is least resistance from irregularity of the banks or any other cause, throwing the displaced sand into the previously-travelled channel. How requisite it is to visually trace the course was proved on our approaching a double channel, one each side of a large sandbank, really big enough to be termed an island. [Illustration: A NUPÉ PILOT ON THE NIGER. (See page 338.)] [Illustration: MANICURE. The fee is twenty cowries, _i.e._, about one-fourteenth of a penny.]