BRITISH ADMINISTRATION 425 formed the accompaniment of their daily existence. With the inveterate determination of Englishmen to have some form of sport, a polo ground was among the earliest of the public institutions established by the soldiers at headquarters. But it was the work itself which furnished the real attraction of the life, and had the small body of Europeans who formed the first British staff been polled for their opinions, there would not probably have been found one who wished to turn back from the task which grew day by day under their hands.

In view of the pessimism which appears in some quarters to be gaining ground with regard to the capacities of the English race, I may perhaps without indiscretion quote a passage from one of the latest of my husband's despatches, which shows at least how in his opinion the staff working under him have sustained the promise of the first year's performance. '* There are no words of praise," he writes under date of August 1905, ''that I can find too strong to describe the indefatigable efforts and the enthusiasm for their task which has been shown by the Political Staff. By their ceaseless devotion to duty they have not only increased the revenue in the way that I have shown, but have brought order, peace, and security out of chaos, have established an effective judicial system, and have substituted progress and development for misrule and stagnation." This is satisfactory reading for those who doubt whether the Englishmen of to-day are capable of the same achievements as their fathers, and it must be counted as not the least among the advantages of the colonial development of the Empire that by its very roughness it gives opportunity for the exercise in individuals of qualities which under less stimulating circumstances might perhaps lie dormant through the whole course of a too easy life. The names, alas, of more than one of the first small Nigerian group are engraved now upon tombstones on that border of the Empire which they helped to make. They live in the memory of good service done, and their work accomplished is, as they would have wished it to be, their monument.