170 CONSULTATION OF THE COMMISSIONERS. 
settlers at the Model Farm required a modificatiou of 
them, and more prompt measures. A consultation was 
therefore held on the 3rd February by Captain Allen 
and Mr. Cook,— the two remaining Commissioners, — 
on the steps most advisable to be taken under these cir- 
cumstances. The latter gentleman strongly urged the 
necessity of our immediate departure for the coast, in 
order to ascend the Niger at once, in search of Mr. 
Carr, and for the relief of the settlers at the Model 
Farm. He was of “ opinion that the river will have 
reached nearly the lowest in January, and as by the 
middle of March the quicksands which compose the 
greater part of its bed will become so drained and 
consolidated, as to throw the stream into one channel, 
it will be found deeper and more rapid at that time 
than after it begins to rise, or before it has reached its 
lowest.” 
He “ thought it improbable that a river which Park 
describes at Sego to be ‘ as broad and deep as the 
Thames a,t Westminster,’ and which in its course 
through a country more or less mountainous, of up- 
wards of a thousand miles, must receive many large 
rivers as tributaries before it is joined by the Chadda, 
can afterwards dwindle into an insignificant stream, 
not having a depth of five or six feet. 
Captain Allen agreed with Mr. Commissioner Cook 
that the additional information of this alleged attack 
on the model farm rendered it expedient to return to 
the coast with a view to enter the river as soon as 
