Thanks to the persistent efforts of one Herr Flegel, the Germans were not slow to recognise this fact. This indefatigable trader and explorer commenced his career as a clerk in a trading house in Lagos. Filled with an ambition to explore and extend German influence, he contrived to ascend the Niger in British mission steamers and trading vessels, spying out the land wherever he went, and ever on the outlook how the British bread he ate might be turned to German account. With much daring and industry, and assisted by German funds, he added much on subsequent trips to our knowledge of some parts of the Niger and Benué.
The result of his inquiries and exploration was to fire the German Colonial Society with the hope of establishing their national influence in the regions beyond the British Protectorate.
Happily the National African Company were as usual wideawake, and soon became aware of the new danger which threatened them. Immediately they set about preparing to forestall any action on the part of the Germans. Already in their self-imposed task of securing Britain’s rights in the Niger they had used up all the profits of their trade, but they had no thought of shrinking from the work. To have the Germans in the Niger would mean irreparable ruin to legitimate commerce, and the flooding of the whole land with the styx-like flood of gin which would inevitably flow in a devastating flood from Hamburg. At this supreme moment it became necessary once for all to secure the Niger basin to Britain. The Company did the writer of these lines the honour of inviting him to take up the task. Accordingly, in February 1885, I found myself once more steaming towards the tropics, while as yet my friends for the most part imagined me recruiting in the Mediterranean from the effects of my recent expedition to Masai-land.
[CHAPTER XXXI.]
THE ROYAL NIGER COMPANY—(Continued).
On the 16th March 1885 we entered the Nun mouth of the River Niger.
Heavy leaden clouds hung overhead, from which rain fell in a steady downpour, and lightning flashed at rapid intervals. From time to time thunder crashed deafeningly about us, or more distantly blended with the monotonous impressive roar of the Atlantic breakers. A steaming atmosphere threw its depressing shroud over the scene, suggesting fever germs, and all manner of liver and stomachic complaints. On all sides stretched a discoloured reach of water, reflecting the leaden tints overhead, and running into the mist-veiled mangrove that ringed the horizon.
As we stood on the deck of the S.S. Apobo, under a dripping awning, we could not but be infected by the melancholy of the scene, and might doubtless have exclaimed in Roman heroics, “We who come to die salute thee,” but that we had to pack our traps and prepare for landing.
A few more miles of steaming into this “white man’s grave,” and our thoughts were diverted from the melancholy of our immediate prospect by a new and more interesting feature. There ahead of us, on the left, where creek and mangrove met, a leviathian-like object stretched its weird length far into the water, and laved its hundred limbs in the placid depths. This was the iron pier of Akassa, the then chief trading centre and depôt of the National African Company.