CHAPTER V ZUNGERU TO KANO Everybody his own porter—Religion and missions—Divining water—Carriages patchy in parts—Native passengers—In the track of the slave-raider—Engine sustenance—Kaduna Bridge—A tight-rope performance—Close cultivation—“The lazy negro”—Two civilisations—At Kano. “The line is the thing,” to modify Hamlet’s phrase. To get the track into working order at the earliest possible day, that is the object of all concerned in the construction of a railway, once it has been started. You must have rails laid, locomotives, carriages. All subsidiary matters can be improvised provisionally. It is not necessary to wait until “the last button on the soldiers’ leggings” has been fixed. Thus, on the section from Zungeru to Kano a number of things remain to be done before there is the completeness which is seen south of the Niger. To anybody with whom time is a consideration, a railway, instead of the old method along the cart-road of 282 miles to Kano, is an unspeakable boon. Some novel travelling features appear on Zungeru Station. There has not been sufficient time to enrol a full staff and therefore one must make one’s own arrangements for getting heavy packages into or from the train. First-class passengers can enjoy the unusual experience of obtaining from the Stationmaster partly printed labels, writing on them the destination, then hunting for a glue-pot and themselves affixing the labels. It is a case of every man his own porter. We are not at a fashionable resort, and all who have to do the job undertake it in a laughing spirit. Directly the train moves off you realise you are on your own resources. Private, or even official, hospitality cannot extend to a train where everybody is expected to look after himself in all things for nearly half a week. A 50-foot coach is partitioned into four divisions, all quite bare. In a division—you may be fortunate in having two—you must rig up your little home: a sitting and dining-room by day; a sleeping apartment at night. Each end of the coach has a stove, where the cooks can prepare meals. Minna—38 miles—is reached in two hours, and here the night is spent. In the hot weather passengers put their camp-beds on the open platform, arranging them under the projecting roof if rain threatens. Arrival of the train at Minna marks a busy time, for the line upwards from Baro joining, passengers who have come by the river route are waiting to continue the journey northwards, or others may have come down from that direction.