NIGERIA UNDER BRITISH RULE 483 gability of the minor rivers for any craft larger than canoes was untested.

Under British Administration something has been done to improve the state of the communications. Tracks have been widened into roads ; districts rendered unsafe for travelling by the brigandage of pagan tribes have been policed, and waterways have been opened to navigation. By the opening of the river Gongola, an important tributary of the Benue, last year, an addition was made to the navigable course of the Niger and the Benue, which gives at certain periods of the year 1 100 miles of continuous waterway without a rapid from the Niger mouth, and the time and expense of getting stores into Bornu have been greatly diminished.

In the northern states there are broad caravan roads neatly bordered with hedges as in England, and it has, of course, become part of the work of the Native Administration to maintain and to develop these roads. Roadmaking is one of the subjects to which the attention of the chiefs is being directed in every province. In the present state of the communications the High Commissioner was able last year, accompanied by his secretarial staff and a small military escort, to visit every capital of the Protectorate, with the exception of Sokoto. The tour, which included Yola, Bautchi, Bornu, Kano, Katsena, and Katagum, occupied him about four months, marching at a rate scarcely less rapid than that of his march to Kano and Sokoto in 1903.

Sites were selected during this tour for all the new British stations. Oaths of allegiance were taken from the Emirs of Bautchi and Yola. The Shehu of Bornu, one of the most cultivated and intelligent of the native chiefs of the Protectorate, was installed with much ceremony, and many interesting discussions were held with him upon the principles and application of British policy. A somewhat sullen and recalcitrant chief, who claimed independence in the border town of Hadeija, was also interviewed, and brought to submission and