After the first few stations from Minna towards Baro permanent buildings are in existence: square, brick buildings, with an annexe consisting of a roof on pillars, used as a waiting-room for native passengers, where they can go for protection from the rain. I noticed, too, that the open trucks, which were all that could be obtained for the unexpected dimensions of the native traffic in the earlier months of the opening of the line, are being converted into covered carriages.
It is good to see on this Baro-Kano Railway, so much used by native passengers, the provision made for their reasonable comfort. They are regarded as human beings, not merely freight. Their fares contribute considerably to the revenue of the railway. There were people in England, and plenty in Nigeria who had not been through the district, who saw in the scheme of the line from Baro to Minna, running as it does parallel with the section from Jebba to Minna, only an unnecessary competing span with the latter stretch, just built, so they said, to satisfy Sir Percy Girouard’s idea, he being “out” to propound a scheme of construction in accordance with his reputation as a railway builder.
Persons who formed so ungenerous a judgment thought of merchandise alone; they took no note of the inhabitants of the land. Such persons should see the immense convenience the line is to the native; to what an extent it has lightened his life, in more ways than one, and then they would recognise both its utility and necessity. This is stated independently of considering the Baro-Minna section in the general, broad policy of railway development.
A gladsome sight at some of the stations south of Minna was bananas brought by women for sale. A bunch of 12 for a penny was the price, which my boy, who made the purchases, told me was double the charge he would pay if marketing for himself. Still, I was eager enough to buy at the higher rate, for I had had no fresh fruit, and, with the exception of onions and potatoes, very few vegetables of the same character for about six months.
The appearance of the fruit showed I was passing into country where the cultivation and climate differed from that lately seen. There were other signs. Flat, open, grassy land, fairly wooded, but not to the extent of marring the landscape view, the general effect in several respects is to make it indistinguishable in appearance from English country. This effect is rather added to than otherwise by an occasional sheet of water. But a characteristic of the tropics is distinguishable in the aristocratic-like palms, standing separately and much higher than the other trees.
Near some villages along the railway are a few small patches of tobacco growing, the long and broad leaf drawing attention to the plant from the surrounding greenery. There is a freshness of verdure in these low-lying lands of more marked kind than the higher, cooler, and drier reaches yield. It is here and still further below in the valleys of the Benue that cotton will be produced if the plant is to be cultivated in any quantity in Northern Nigeria.
The train was due at Baro on Saturday evening, and my plan was to go straight on board a launch, if one was available, leave in the early morning for Lokoja, there to join the first mail stern-wheeler for the sea. During Saturday afternoon a telegram was handed me at a station, sent by Mr E. N. Coleman, Transport Agent of the Niger Company at Baro, who had been a fellow-traveller on the voyage from England, containing an invitation to the hospitality of the bungalow there for the night, and stating that the launch was ready for continuing the journey next day. It was quite dark when the train drew into Baro.