The train usually consists of eight coaches, some of them fifty feet long, and therefore easy running at the fairly high speed over certain portions of the line. Meals are served en route, and every attention is received from the inspector of restaurant cars, who was formerly a chief steward in the Elder Dempster fleet. In the course of the journey I witnessed his solicitude, and that of the European head guard, Cyril Richards, for passengers who were not well and unable to take the table meals. The inspector, whose name I regret to have mislaid, had light food brought instead, the charge for which was, in instances, less than a quarter that of the regular menu. Perhaps the action does not appear surprising, but it means a deal in a country where a man feels weak and knows he has little margin of strength to withstand the effect of the climate.[1]
The term sleeping saloon means provision of bed, blankets, and linen. Couches are fitted for rest during the day. Electric light is in all compartments, which are provided with electrically-driven fans and have mosquito-proof windows. Shower baths are another luxury for which there is no extra payment. No doubt it all sounds prosaic enough to the trotter across the European continent. Let him “pad the hoof” in the tropics, or so much as be in an ordinary West African train for several days where he is entirely “on his own,” with a temperature ranging from 90 degrees to 112 degrees in the shade, or with the Harmattan winds bringing scorching dust into his ears, nostrils and the pores of his skin, covering every mouthful before it can enter that avenue. Should he have experienced these things, have a memory, and is inclined to gratitude, then he will take off his hat to the Administration of the Lagos Government Railway, if he does not go so far as to be Biblically impelled and rise up and call the work of their hands blessed.
The traveller wakes for early morning tea to find himself traversing the palm belt. There is a continuous line of the tall, thin, bare trunks, surmounted by the graceful, drooping palms beneath which cluster the kernels which are the main wealth of Southern Nigeria. Palm kernels and palm oil are to Southern Nigeria what coal is to England. There are rumours that that mineral has been located on the lower Niger. Possibly I may be able to say something on the subject as I come down the river on the return journey.
Running through at night, several features of interest are unseen, prominent among them the exceptionally pretty view towards the Sacred Hill at Olokemeji and Ibadan, the largest town in West Africa, though not nearly so frequently spoken of as the much smaller ones of Zaria, Bida, Sokoto and Kano. Each has had the advertisement of war.
A short stop for water—not the first—is made at 6.45 a.m. at Oshogbo, 187 miles from Lagos, and still one of the hopes of the British Cotton Growing Association. Little more than an hour later the line enters Northern Nigeria. At Offa, the station over the frontier, permits have to be shown to take wines or spirits into the Mohamedan land, even for personal consumption. We are now 1,500 feet above sea level.
Jebba, 306 miles, is reached at noon, and here one of the stiff difficulties of railway construction which faced the engineers can be seen. The Niger must be crossed. The easiest way of doing so is from the south mainland to a large island, thence to the north mainland. The south channel is 1,100 feet broad, the north one rather less. The latter has been bridged; the former is still under that operation, which will not be finished for two years, making three in all.
The length across the river is the least of the obstacles to be solved. Heavy rises and falls of the water—in a month it may alter from 15 feet to 50 feet—made the work not only hard and hazardous, but impossible at certain periods of the year. But with hundreds of miles of rail completed south and north last November, it would have been an exasperating position to have to wait a further two and a half years for through connection. A civil engineer will tell you that nothing on earth is impossible. It is only a matter of money and time.
Well, the same train which carries you from Lagos to its destination at Minna, 161 miles beyond Jebba, covers its course without the traveller having to leave his carriage. The train goes over the Niger by means of a ferry. That, however, is itself a difficult subject by reason of the varying height of the river. The question at issue was how to transport weights, too heavy to be safely lifted, from a fixed level to an alternating one.