OUR JOURNEY UP THE NIGER AND BENUE 23 



past six in the morning, working steadily on till eleven, when a 

 halt was called for " chop," and a rest for an hour. Then our 

 way was resumed, till about 3.30 in the afternoon, when a 

 camping-ground was selected with plenty of time to get 

 tents pitched and our meal cooked before sundown. I am 

 a firm believer in regular times for meals and rest in African 

 travelling, both for oneself and one's " boys," who I have 

 always found work better and are more contented as a 

 result. 



The Benue is a fine navigable river all the 200 miles to Ibi, 

 with an average depth of 4 to 5 ft. during the dry season, and a 

 current of four miles an hour that made poling fairly hard work, 

 and there were a great many sand-banks to be avoided. Where 

 the river narrows, the high banks are finely crowned with 

 luxuriant trees, but its prevailing width is a thousand yards 

 at which parts the banks are low and a view is obtained of an 

 open bush country, interspersed with cultivated millet fields, 

 with here and there the skeletons of trees that have been 

 blasted in the bush fires. These were the favourite rallying- 

 points of brilliant blue jays that flickered on and ofE the dry 

 dead boughs like spirit flames in the sunHght, In places 

 along the higher banks the bare mud sides are honeycombed 

 with the nesting-holes of hundreds of scarlet bee-eaters, which 

 on a sudden at the signal of the boats approach, bristled 

 with pointed bills and went off like a battery of guns, shooting 

 out their hve charges with red shrieks into the air. 



Here I will quote an extract from a letter of my brother's, 

 as giving a little picture of the river and our life upon it : 



" We have been doing a good fifteen miles a day of eight 

 hours lately, and altogether travelling incomparably quicker 



