Chap. XLIV. WATER-COMMUNICATION. 221 
of these pagans. Of course in a country politically 
rent into so many petty principalities, where every 
little community, as in ancient times in Latium and 
Greece, forms a separate little state in opposition 
to its neighbours, no considerable intercourse is pos- 
sible, and those natural highroads with which nature 
has provided these countries, and the immense field 
therefore which is open in these regions to human 
industry and activity, must remain unproductive 
under such circumstances ; but it will be turned to 
account as soon as the restless spirit of the European 
shall bring these countries within the sphere of his 
activity. This period must come. Indeed I am 
persuaded that in less than fifty years European 
boats will keep up a regular annual intercourse be- 
tween the great basin of the Tsad and the Bay of 
Biyafra. 
An almost uninterrupted communication has been 
opened by Nature herself; for, from the mouth of the 
Kwara to the confluence of the river Benuwe with the 
mayo Kebbi, there is a natural passage navigable with- 
out further obstruction for boats of about four feet in 
depth, and the mayo Kebbi itself, in its present shallow 
state, seems to be navigable for canoes, or flat-bot- 
tomed boats like those of the natives, which I have no 
doubt may, during the highest state of the inundation, 
go as far as Dawa in the Tuburi country, where Dr. 
Yogel was struck by that large sheet of wetter which 
to him seemed to be an independent central lake, but 
