370 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY Under the division which was made of the Company's territories on the surrender of the charter, the principal centres of its commercial and administrative activity passed, with the river valley south of Ida, to Southern Nigeria. In Northern Nigeria its occupation was represented only by the outposts which have been named upon the river, and by an agency established in Ilorin.

In 1897, practically, though not actually, the last year of the Company's administration, a campaign against the Mohammedan state of Nupe, which at that time held both banks of the Niger above Lokoja, was forced upon the Company by the persistent slave-raiding of the Mohammedans in trade areas farther south.

The campaign gave occasion for the most careful organisation of the military forces of the Company. It was recognised as involving perhaps the existence of British authority in the country. An additional number of officers from the regular army were lent specially to the Company by the War Office, and the campaign was conducted at very considerable expense upon the lines of European war. The military operations were directed against Bida, the capital of Nupe, situated on the northern side of the river, and were completely successful in their immediate results. The town was captured, the emir was deposed, a portion of his territory which lay upon the southern bank of the river was declared independent of the suzerainty of Nupe, and a new emir was placed upon the throne.

But in accentuating, by the precautions which it rendered necessary, the difference between Mohammedan civilisation to the north of the confluence and pagan barbarism to the south, this war gave, as has been already said, a very serious indication of the enlargement of the proportions which the problem of British occupation was likely to assume when any attempt should be made to establish white authority in the Northern Territories. The Company did not feel itself to be in a position to make a permanent occupation of Bida. As soon as