“The line is the thing,” to modify Hamlet’s phrase. To get the track into working order at the earliest possible day, that is the object of all concerned in the construction of a railway, once it has been started. You must have rails laid, locomotives, carriages. All subsidiary matters can be improvised provisionally. It is not necessary to wait until “the last button on the soldiers’ leggings” has been fixed. Thus, on the section from Zungeru to Kano a number of things remain to be done before there is the completeness which is seen south of the Niger.
To anybody with whom time is a consideration, a railway, instead of the old method along the cart-road of 282 miles to Kano, is an unspeakable boon.
Some novel travelling features appear on Zungeru Station. There has not been sufficient time to enrol a full staff and therefore one must make one’s own arrangements for getting heavy packages into or from the train. First-class passengers can enjoy the unusual experience of obtaining from the Stationmaster partly printed labels, writing on them the destination, then hunting for a glue-pot and themselves affixing the labels. It is a case of every man his own porter. We are not at a fashionable resort, and all who have to do the job undertake it in a laughing spirit.
Directly the train moves off you realise you are on your own resources. Private, or even official, hospitality cannot extend to a train where everybody is expected to look after himself in all things for nearly half a week. A 50-foot coach is partitioned into four divisions, all quite bare. In a division—you may be fortunate in having two—you must rig up your little home: a sitting and dining-room by day; a sleeping apartment at night. Each end of the coach has a stove, where the cooks can prepare meals.
Minna—38 miles—is reached in two hours, and here the night is spent. In the hot weather passengers put their camp-beds on the open platform, arranging them under the projecting roof if rain threatens.
Arrival of the train at Minna marks a busy time, for the line upwards from Baro joining, passengers who have come by the river route are waiting to continue the journey northwards, or others may have come down from that direction.
Amidst all the bustle of people coming and going, of the excitement of sorting baggage for carriers, of piles of bales and boxes being moved, of loud whistling of locomotives and of shunting engines, I saw a white-robed figure go on his knees, turn his face to the east and bend his head in devotion. It was a Mohamedan silently offering up evening prayer. Religious duty was louder to him than the babel resounding around. He was not ashamed to speak with his Maker in sight of the multitude.
Yet there are worthy folks at home who seek to send missionaries to these people to teach them to worship the same God but in a different way. Why is the money and the energy expended on such missions—which are practically hopeless in Mohamedan countries like this—not deflected to the better purpose of mitigating the vice, the crime and the preventable poverty in the great cities of the United Kingdom, where the triple evils stalk abroad in the daylight, unabashed, unashamed.
At Minna Station one must see Mr A. Newport, the stalwart traffic inspector. I say one “must,” because the first time travelling over the line there are enquiries which have to be satisfied. For instance, change of train is made for the journey continued early next morning. Further, it may not have occurred to a traveller, even thinking out all requirements to the most minute detail, that wood for a fire on the train to cook food would be necessary. Finally, one’s filter may not be within easy access and condensed water be needed for preparing the evening meal.
In all these, and perhaps other instances, Mr Newport is of incalculable aid and value. Whatever the multitude of matters pressing upon him for immediate attention, he always seems willing to accept one more without impatience or irritation. But if everybody going through Minna leaves all these things to be supplied by Mr Newport, it is likely that he will not have a sufficiency of them to satisfy everybody’s expectations. Maxim and moral: When travelling in Nigeria never depend on supplying from another’s provisions that which you have wilfully neglected to provide for yourself.