THE AUTHOR.
VIEW OF KANO CITY.
CHAPTER II
KANO, NORTHERN NIGERIA, THE COMMERCIAL METROPOLIS OF THE WESTERN SUDAN
Twice a week a mixed passenger train runs from Lagos to Kano, which, despite its crude discomfort, must serve the traveller who wishes to go north, for there is no other way for the present.
When the time came for me to set out upon that journey, to say I was astonished at the crowds of natives at the station and at the confusion would be to put it very mildly. Drowning the sound of clanking trucks and blasts of engine whistles in the station, arose the deafening cries of instruction and abuse of a highly excited, hustling mob about to board the train, after bidding demonstrative farewells to two or three generations of relations and friends. Din and confusion reigned supreme; there was no calm eddy there, no steady head or hand to order silence or orderliness. One might be forgiven if, for the moment, one thought, as I did, that I had mistaken my direction and had entered a native market-place, in which a great sale was going on and the bidding eager and heated, in a volcanic atmosphere of excitement.
Patience was necessary, I assure you, to carry master and boys and baggage through the jostling of some hundreds of people, past the ticket-desks of distracted native clerks, who were being overwhelmed by a fiercely gesticulating, clamouring mob, that know, by force of primitive environment, only their rude desires and nothing of manners. And when the train had finally been boarded and the journey begun, I found it was necessary to keep hold on patience throughout, for many stations on the way held something of the same fearful din and disorder.
Much could be done by strict measures on the part of the railway authorities to “tone down” and regulate such native shortcomings, which white men would surely welcome, for it is little less than unchecked raw exuberance that is prevalent among them—perfectly good-natured, as a rule—which interferes with the quick and systematic disposition of the service, and which is not in keeping with the fitness of things in modern travel.
But such circumstances are among the drawbacks which unprecedented prosperity has brought in its wake. Nigeria, rich beyond all possible estimate in natural resources, has come, and is coming, into her own; no longer gradually and steadily as cautious and perhaps wise men might wish, but by leaps and bounds in keeping with the impatient spirit of the age. So that laggards are apt to be left behind, or things which are primitive become out of date; and that is what has happened with the Nigerian railway, which was built, no doubt, and run for the little needs of the colony as they existed a few years ago, but which is not now an adequate nor well regulated service, and fails sadly to fall in line with the astonishing progress of present-day commerce. Hence, in part, the cause of the congestion and confusion at the stations which is so prevalent to-day.