NIGERIA UNDER BRITISH RULE 481 sovereign, and head of the Provincial Court, to surveying, map-making, and reporting on the economic, commercial, and social conditions of the province. Each Resident writes for the information of the High Commissioner a report upon his province, which has hitherto been monthly, but which will, as conditions become more normal, be submitted at longer intervals. Thus at headquarters a body of information respecting the entire Protectorate is being gradually accumulated, while the maps and descriptions of routes also sent in regularly by the Residents form material for filling up the outline of the Nigerian map. The prototype of the Resident of Nigeria is probably to be found in the Deputy Commissioner of India, but the circumstances, though parallel, are of course far from similar. Assistant Residents are placed in charge of specified districts under the Resident, and in consequence of the cordial co-operation and remarkable administrative aptitudes of the Fulani, when they once understand that oppression and tyranny are forbidden, the work of the provinces is being carried on with a smaller number of white men than might have been imagined possible.

There are now in all, counting non-commissioned officers and civil subordinates, about 400 white men in the Northern Nigerian service, which, allowing for one-third absent on leave, as under the rules of West African service they have a right to be, leaves about 270 on duty. With this number the whole service of the Protectorate— military, legal, medical, and administrative — is performed over an area which successive boundary concessions have reduced to about 300,000 square miles. The organisation of the Medical Service, with a system of hospitals and white nurses at headquarters, doctors at out-stations, and sanitary regulations, which are now being carried generally into effect, has greatly reduced the number of casualties from sickness, which at first subtracted substantially from the list of white men available for service, and often threw the machinery of 2 H