Niger

as the singers sang the harvesting songs of Rabba
and Egbom. Morning found the waters whirling
around the points of templed Bafo, south, tribu¬
tary-laden, from the unceasing jungle, till near
Lokoja, through the forest stretches, the river
sighted such another as itself, on as ardent a mission,
pouring south. They joined and greeted with a
rush of waters, Kwara and Benue, then poured in a
broadening and quickening stream by the moun¬
tains of Dekina, tall and barren, their sandy slopes
gleaming in the hot sun-glare. Ida saw them pass
as the afternoon came ; from Asaba that night the
wood-carvers looked from the faces of their imaged
devils and saw the Great River’s water gleam under
a moonless sky, down the forest tracks to Ndoni.
But morning found the traveller in a low dank
land ; reeds whistled in the strange salt wind that
came from the place the sunrise had not yet touched.
The waters flowed slow with silt, and broke and
spun in long slow eddies through the hot mist.
As the day rose they split in a dozen streams and
quested west, the Nun, the Brass, New Calibar,
Bonny, Opobo and Wari. Mangroves clawed at
them with dripping roots. The day-heat rose and
passed over the uncertain flow, till remote in the
sunset, by a dozen mouths, the waters that rose in
the far-off mountains of Liberia passed out to the
open sea.
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.
THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, GLASGOW