On Monday Colonel Trotter read before the Geographical Society a
most interesting paper on the sources of the Niger. Colonel Trotter, who was the principal officer in the Anglo- French Delimitation Commission of 1895, pointed oat that previous to the Commission nothing was known as to the Niger sources. The Commission met with many difficulties in reaching the sources of the Niger, but ultimately found them near Tembi Kunda (8.36 north 'attitude and 10.33 west longitude). For example, the guides, after they had gone a certain distance, declined to point out the actual source, declaring that it was the seat of the devil, whom, as Colonel Trotter quaintly adds, they had no anxiety to meet, though they are devil-worshippers. " They believe that any one who looks on the Niger source incurs the wrath of the devil and will die within the year, and they regard the water as poisonous. Our own experience rather confirmed the native views of the water." In spite, however, of the failure of the guides the fountain-head was reached,—" a tiny stream issuing from a moss-covered rock." It is needless to say that the Commission were not the first there. No one ever is that. They found the inevitable initials cut on the rock and in a small pool a bottle with a note giving the date at which a certain French officer, Captain Brouet, had placed them there. In getting to and returning from the sources of the Niger the Commission passed through many strange and unknown places. In one place they found Pagan villages intermixed with Mahommedan. The Mahommedan were always enormously in advance of the Pagan. Colonel Trotter ended by a word of praise for the light-heartedness of the West African. "It was a country where the worst jokes never failed to be appreciated."
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