On the 16th March 1885 we entered the Nun mouth of the River Niger.

Heavy leaden clouds hung overhead, from which rain fell in a steady downpour, and lightning flashed at rapid intervals. From time to time thunder crashed deafeningly about us, or more distantly blended with the monotonous impressive roar of the Atlantic breakers. A steaming atmosphere threw its depressing shroud over the scene, suggesting fever germs, and all manner of liver and stomachic complaints. On all sides stretched a discoloured reach of water, reflecting the leaden tints overhead, and running into the mist-veiled mangrove that ringed the horizon.

As we stood on the deck of the S.S. Apobo, under a dripping awning, we could not but be infected by the melancholy of the scene, and might doubtless have exclaimed in Roman heroics, “We who come to die salute thee,” but that we had to pack our traps and prepare for landing.

A few more miles of steaming into this “white man’s grave,” and our thoughts were diverted from the melancholy of our immediate prospect by a new and more interesting feature. There ahead of us, on the left, where creek and mangrove met, a leviathian-like object stretched its weird length far into the water, and laved its hundred limbs in the placid depths. This was the iron pier of Akassa, the then chief trading centre and depÔt of the National African Company.

Soon we were enabled to distinguish the beach strewn with the relics of the ships and barges of other days, and with the boats and canoes still in use. Higher up lay piles of stores and palm-oil casks, while behind rose a series of roomy warehouses built of corrugated iron. Further seaward stood the quarters of the Company’s agents—the whole cosily ensconced in the arms of the mangrove forest, which in the distance looked fascinating, but on closer acquaintance proved to be a fever-breeding quagmire.

Such was Akassa, where throbbed with undying energy the busy current of British commercial life.

With our arrival in the river my days of ease were over, and prompt action and stern work became the order of the day. No one knew where Flegel was, or where he might turn up. With his minute knowledge of the river, he was a rival not to be despised. It behoved me, therefore, to waste no time, and accordingly, having collected such stores as were necessary, I started on my voyage in the steam launch FranÇais two days after reaching Akassa.

For the first hour we steamed up the rapidly narrowing creek till we found ourselves confronted by a dense barrier of mangrove. For an instant we seemed to be insanely heading to wreck and disaster, when all at once the wall of vegetation presented a narrow opening, and we were engulfed in its leafy depths. Could this be the Niger—the mighty river which drained the quarter of a continent—only a stream thirty yards in breadth, and some five in depth, lazily flowing seaward? That stream was formed of Niger water, but it was not the Niger.

Up this insignificant winding waterway our course now lay. First there was mangrove and nothing else simulating the appearance of dry land, alternately exposed as pestilential mud or covered by water, according to the state of the tide. After a time land appeared on the level of the highest tides—the swamp vegetation began to exhibit a less vigorous growth, and was intermingled with other trees and bushes. Each mile made the transformation more marked. The land rose higher and higher; the mangrove trees grew more stunted and fewer in number; terrene plants took their place, and grew in size, in beauty, and in majesty, till the ideal tropical forest spread its romantic depths before our admiring eyes.

Coincidently other developments of the panorama were taking place. The river gathered together its various branches and increased in breadth and depth, till in its full majestic unity it sunned its broad bosom in the tropic glare—a magnificent stream from a mile to a mile and a half broad.

With the gathering together of the various branches and the improvement in the physical conditions, evidences of human occupation began to show themselves.

For the first eight hours not the faintest trace of man had been discernible. Then appeared a deserted fishing weir, next an old plantation, by-and-by a new clearing, and immediately after a canoe propelled by two women, which was seen creeping slowly along under the river’s banks.

At last, towards sunset, a couple of villages were sighted, and thenceforward man proclaimed his sway over the land, giving animation to the scene, with now and then a picturesque effect.

As we continued our course our eyes were greeted by the sight of much that Lander and his successors had only dreamed of as the possible to be. Already trade had laid a prosaic hand on the great highway of Tale and Travel—the river sacred to romance, whose “golden sands,” by the alchemy of its touch, are now transmuted to a golden freight of palm oil.

The surging screws, the puff of steam and clang of machinery, break the impressive stillness of the forest, and fill the tropic air with their unhallowed echoes, driving the hippo from his favourite pool, the crocodile from the yellow sand-bank. Amid such sounds, the shrill scream of the parrot, and the indignant chatter of the monkey, strike upon the ear with a strange sense of incongruity.

Here and there the graceless front of a trading station, with its whitewashed corrugated iron walls and roof of European design, glares forth unblushingly from its bosky niche of palm and silk cotton tree. Thence issues the matter of fact trader—no longer in the picturesque disarray of the “palm oil ruffian,” but resplendent in the dazzling glory of a well-starched shirt and snow white duck trousers—who strolls down to the landing-place through a garden aglow with sunflowers and walks shaded by a canopy of trailing vines and other creepers.

The natives around the station share in the unromantic changes. They still carry about with them an air of picturesque sansculottic barbarity, but jarring elements have been superadded. The negro has degenerated into that hybrid creature the “nigger,” bids you “good morning” as he asks for a pipe of tobacco or a nip of gin, or calls your attention to his lawn-tennis hat—the latest fashion, and almost his sole dress.

The only circumstance which serves to maintain an air of romance about him is the knowledge we possess that he still loves his neighbour to the extent of becoming at times literally one flesh with him.

Everywhere there is evidence that the trader is in possession. The missionary has accompanied him, eager in the cause of Christ and humanity. Not unfrequently the sweet tones of the church bell may be heard ringing silver clear from the cathedral gloom of the forest. They call, alas! to those who will not hear, though doubtless to the yearning ear of faith those sweetly solemn sounds shape themselves into a prophecy of the coming good destined to re-echo some day through every forest depth and wide waste of jungle.

Meanwhile, whatever be the future of Christianity in these lands, one thing becomes abundantly clear to us as we continue our ascent of the river, namely, that it is not the only religious force which is penetrating the sodden mass of Niger heathenism. Islam, with untiring missionary enterprise, has entered the field and thrown down the gauntlet to the older religion for the possession of the natives. Unhappily so far, as compared with the advancing tide of Mohammedanism, the progress of the Christian faith is practically at a standstill. Half way between the Delta and Lokoja the pioneer Moslem outposts are found wielding a marked and yearly increasing influence on the ideas and habits of the natives. With each mile nearer the Sudan that influence becomes more and more discernible, till before we have reached the confines of Gandu we have altogether left behind the congenial trinity—fetishism, cannibalism, and the gin bottle—and find the erewhile unwashed barbarian in a measure clothed and in his right mind, instinct with religious activity and enthusiasm, and wonderfully far advanced in the arts and industries. Here it is clear that we are in the presence of no assumed veneer, no mere formality, no extraneous influences to bolster up a savage people to the semblance of higher things, but face to face with a force which has taken deep root in the lives of the inhabitants and altogether transformed them.

On nearing Lokoja we bade adieu to the reeking plains and dense forest region, and entered a picturesque section of lofty table-topped and peaked mountains, delighting the eye by their varied shape and rugged aspect—here stern and threatening with bare precipices; there basking under the tropic sun in smiling slopes, beautified and shaded by groups of trees; at other places swelling upwards and towering into fantastic peaks. But however delightful to us as passengers and spectators, this part of the journey was anything but pleasant to our skipper, whose whole thoughts were absorbed by the hidden rocks in the river-bed and the fierce currents which swirled around them.

The passage, however, was safely accomplished on the evening of the 25th, and we anchored off Lokoja just as the last glints of sunshine passed from the hill-tops, and gave place to the sepia shades of evening.

In continuing our journey it now behoved us to proceed with more circumspection. We had reached the southern confines of Gandu, the western half of the great Fillani (Fulah) Empire. At this time MalikÉ, Emir of NupÉ, held a complete monopoly of the trade between the Company and the rest of Gandu. We were only too well aware that any attempt to break through this monopoly would be strenuously resisted by him, and that therefore if he scented the object of our expedition to his liege lord at Gandu, we might bid adieu to all hopes of advancing inland. As our presence could not be kept secret from him, we thought it well to send him a letter merely to intimate that we were passing.

On the 28th we left Lokoja and pushed on to Rabba, at work now in dead earnest, making up loads in the small hold of the launch, where we were nearly roasted alive. At various stations porters were shipped secretly and stowed away in barges, everything being made ready for a surprise-march the moment we landed.

On the 8th April we reached Rabba, from which our land march was to commence. MalikÉ was still expecting a visit from us at Bida, when we were actually landing a hundred miles to the west with a hundred and twenty men, two educated negro traders, one Arab interpreter, and two Europeans besides myself. So completely had all our plans been laid that we started on the following day, leaving the chiefs and headmen dumfounded and perplexed, not knowing what to do without instructions from the capital.

Our first feelings of joy on leaving Rabba behind were speedily damped when one of my European companions got his leg broken, and had to be promptly returned to the launch. Soon a shoal of troubles and worries descended on us. The headmen of the various districts began to throw every possible obstacle in our way, refusing us guides, porters, and food. The men, unaccustomed to scanty fare and the steady grind of a caravan march, mutinied, and tried to force us to turn back. They threatened to murder us, and more than once presented their rifles at us by way of intimidation. One man tried to stab me, and was only secured after a terrific struggle, the porters passively looking on. Yet it was a matter of life and death to us that we should press forward in spite of all opposition—a few days might mean ruin to the expedition, by giving the emir’s messenger time to come up with us. The thought inspired us to redouble our exertions. We fought like men at bay, though we were but two against a hundred and twenty; and happily by dint of machiavellian strategy and diplomacy, with not a little determined flourishing of revolvers, we came out of the battle triumphant—safe beyond the clutches of MalikÉ, and complete masters of the situation.

It is quite beyond the scope of this chapter to tell how we continued our way through NupÉ to Kontakora, and thence by way of Yauri, the Niger, and Gulbi-n-Gindi to Jega, Sokoto, and Wurnu, where the Sultan of Sokoto had established his court.

Here we were in a region teeming with varied interest, having reached the religious, political, and commercial centre of the Western and Central Sudan. We could hardly believe our senses, and realise that we were in the heart of Africa, among a people popularly called negroes. Rather did it seem to us as if, worn out by the tiresome miles and the monotonous jogging of our horses, we had fallen asleep, and in a dream imagined ourselves in some part of Moorish Africa. A blazing sun beat down with terrific effect upon a parched land, in which here and there appeared green oases of acacia, baobab and doum palm, in which nestled villages and towns half hid by the grateful shadow of the foliage.

On all hands, as we pushed along, we were reminded of Mohammedan customs, of eastern amplitude of dress, if not of gorgeousness of colour. Everything bore the impress of Moorish ideas and North African civilisation. In the early dewy mornings, in the sultry heats of noontide, at the close of the tropic day, we could hear the sacred call to prayer. By the wayside, far from mosque and town, were to be seen spots marked off by stones, which with silent eloquence invited the dusty and footsore traveller to stay his weary march and wean his thoughts for a moment from his worldly affairs.

The types of men, the fashions in dress, were of the most varied character.

Specially interesting were those mysterious people the Fillani, or Fulah, numbers of whom passed us from time to time. Simple herdsmen, semi-nomadic in habit, and semi-serfs in position at the beginning of this century—warriors and Mohammedan propagandists a few years later—they are now the rulers of a hundred races between the Atlantic and Bornu. Portentously picturesque, with their voluminous garments, their massive turbans, and litham-veiled faces, they pranced along on gorgeously caparisoned horses with the dignified bearing of the Moor.

More numerous were the Haussa, the most intelligent and industrious of black races.

Very different from this interesting people were the Tuareg visitors from the plateau lands of Asben, who stalked past us in artistically ragged dresses, with eyes which seemed to glow in the shadow of their face cloth and overhanging turban with the fiercest of human passions.

On the 24th May the goal of our expedition was reached, and the object of our mission attained a very few days after. No time was then lost in proceeding to Gandu, where similar success met our efforts; and then with treaties written in Arabic, sealed with the seals of the two Sultans, and signed by their respective wazirs, practically placing their two empires under a British Protectorate, and giving all commercial privileges to the National African Company, we commenced, with no small elation, our return home.

The one unpleasant occurrence which marked our journey coastwards was the stealing of my journals and personal effects, though happily the precious treaties remained safe. Rabba was duly reached, and thence we continued our way down the river in canoes to Lokoja. On the way the German expedition, which had meanwhile been set afoot with a view to forestalling other nations in the regions we had just quitted, was met moving up the river, all unconscious of the fact that not a yard of ground from Timbuktu to Akassa, or from Bornu to Yoruba, had been left on which to plant the flag of the Fatherland.

Within seven months after leaving Liverpool I was back home again, my work successfully accomplished in a much shorter time than at the outset I had dared to hope.

Next year our Government, now awake to the errors of the past, and recognising the incontestable claims and magnificent patriotic enterprise of the National African Company, granted it a Royal Charter, and the right to the title of Royal Niger Company, which it now bears.

The Right Honourable Lord Aberdare was its first Governor, and Sir George Goldie—to whose diplomatic genius and untiring industry this country as well as the Company owes so much—was the Deputy-Chairman. Around these gathered as counsellors and advisers many who had been among the pioneers of British trade and influence on the Niger, and had assisted in preparing the way for the magnificent national undertaking they have lived to see inaugurated. Among these are the Messrs. Miller, Mr. Edgar, and Mr. Croft, whose names cannot but find an honourable place in the annals of the Company.

Of the career, bright with promise, upon which the Company has thus entered, it is unnecessary to speak at length. Already good results are flowing from the new administration. The gin traffic has been taken in hand, suppressed where possible, and restricted elsewhere by enormous duties. Arms and gunpowder are also no longer sold wholesale to the savage natives. The resources of the country are being tested and developed as they never were before, and with the most gratifying results.

In closing this record of Niger exploration we cannot do better than quote the prophetic words of M‘Queen—applicable still, though later than they might have been in approaching fulfilment. He it was who first conclusively demonstrated the course and termination of the great river. His was the first warning of the certainty of the French advance; his the clear vision which foresaw the necessity of a Chartered Company. Let him, then, speak for the future, foretelling what is to come, as he foretold what is now past, in the concluding words of his Commercial Survey of the Region.

“I have thus, though feebly, I confess, in comparison to the magnitude of the subject brought forward, completed the object which I had in view, namely, to call the attention of the British Government, and the power and energies of our people, to an honour of the first rank, and at the same time endeavoured to rouse the resource and enterprise of our merchants to engage in a trade of the first magnitude. By means of the Niger and its tributary streams, it is quite evident that the whole trade of Central Africa may be rendered exclusively and permanently our own.... To support and carry into execution the measures necessary to accomplish this undertaking is worthy of the ministry of Great Britain, and worthy of the first country of the world. It will confer immortal honour on our native land, lasting glory on the name and reign of George the Fourth, bring immense and permanent advantages to Britain, and bestow incalculable blessings and benefits on Africa. Agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, learning and religion, will spread rapidly and widely over a country abounding in the richest productions whether on the surface of the earth or below it, but at present a country overspread with the most abject servitude, and sunk in the deepest ignorance, superstition, and barbarity. Every obstacle will vanish before judicious and patient exertions. The glory of our Creator, the good of mankind, the prosperity of our country, the interest of the present and the welfare of future generations—glory, honour, interest call us, and united point out the sure path to gain the important end. Let but the noble Union Ensign wave over and be planted by the stream of the mighty Niger, and the deepest wounds of Africa are healed.”