past the ruins of Sansandig, as far as Diafarabe. In 1887 the gunboat made a more extended voyage, reaching the port of Timbuktu, and correcting the mapping of the river down to that point. In 1894–1895 attention was directed to the middle and lower Niger, to which several expeditions started from the coast of Guinea. A still more important expedition was that of Lieutenant Hourst, who, starting from Timbuktu in January 1896, navigated the Niger from that point to its mouth, executing a careful survey of the river and the various obstructions to navigation. A voyage made in 1897 by Lieutenant de Chevigné showed that at low water the section between Timbuktu and Ansongo presents great difficulties, but the voyage from Timbuktu to Say was again successfully accomplished in 1899 by Captain Granderye. In 1901 Captain E. Lenfant ascended the river with a flotilla from its mouth to Say, and he demonstrated the “normal practicability” of the route, despite the Bussa rapids. The delta of the Niger has been partially surveyed since it became British territory by various ship captains, officials of the Royal Niger Company and others, including Sir Harry Johnston, sometime British consul for the Oil Rivers.
In addition to the main stream, the Niger basin was made known by exploration during the last quarter of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th. The journeys of the German traveller G. A. Krause (north from the Gold Coast, 1886–1887) and the French Captain Binger (Senegal to Ivory Coast, 1887–1889) first defined its southern limits by revealing the unexpected northward extension of the basins of the Guinea coast streams, especially the Volta and Komoe, a fact which explained the absence of important tributaries within the Niger bend. This was crossed for the first time, in its fullest extent, by Colonel P. L. Monteil (French) in 1890–1891. At the eastern end of the basin much light has been thrown on the system of the Benue. In 1851 Barth crossed the Benue at its junction with the Faro, but the region of its sources was first explored by Flegel (1882–1884), who traversed the whole southern basin of the river and reached Ngaundere. Other German travellers added to the knowledge of the southern tributaries, the Tarabba, Donga and others, which in the rains bring down a large body of water from the highlands of southern Adamawa. British travellers who have done work in the same region are Sir W. Wallace, L. H. Moseley, W. P. Hewby, P. A. Talbot and Captain Claud Alexander. The last-named two were members of an expedition led by Lieut. Boyd-Alexander, who himself crossed Africa from the Niger to the Nile. Messrs Talbot and Claud Alexander surveyed the country between Ibi on the Benue and Lake Chad, mapping (1904) a considerable part of the Gongola.[1] In 1854 the Benue itself was ascended 400 m. by the “Pleiad” expedition, and in 1889 to 1312° E., and the Kebbi to Bifara by Major (afterwards Sir Claude) Macdonald, further progress towards the Tuburi marsh being prevented by the shallowness of the water. The upper basin of the Benue was also traversed by the French expeditions of Mizon (1892) and Maistre (1892–1893), the latter passing to the south of the Tuburi marsh without definitely settling the hydrographical question connected with it. This was accomplished by Captain Lenfant in 1903. He ascended the Kebbi and discovered the Lata Fall, continuing up the river to its point of issue from Tuburi. Crossing the marshes he found and navigated the narrow river leading to the Logone. Save for the porterage round the Lata Fall the whole journey from the mouth of the Niger to Lake Chad was made by water. The Benue in the neighbourhood of Yola was mapped in 1903–1904 by an Anglo-German boundary commission.
From 1904 onwards the French undertook works on the Niger between Bamako—whence there is railway communication with the Senegal—and Ansongo with a view to deepening the channel and removing obstructions to navigation. In 1910 the British began dredging with the object of obtaining from the mouth of the river to Baro a minimum depth of 6 ft. of water.
Authorities.—Mungo Park, Travels in the Interior Districts of Africa . . . in the Years 1795, 1796 and 1797 (London, 1799). A geographical appendix by Major James Rennell summarizes the information then available about the Niger. R. and J. Lander, Journal of an Expedition to explore the Course and Termination of the Niger . . . (3 vols. London, 1833); H. Barth, Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa . . ., vols. iv. and v. (London, 1857–1358); Gen. J. S. Gallieni, Mission d’exploration du Haut Niger . . . (Paris, 1885); E. Caron, De Saint Louis au Port de Timbouktou; Voyage d’une canonnière française (Paris, 1891); M. Hourst, Sur le Niger et au pays des Touaregs (Paris, 1898), English translation, French Enterprise in Africa . . . Exploration of the Niger (London, 1898). The political references in this book are marked by jealous hostility to the British. Col. J. K. Trotter, The Niger Sources . . . (London, 1897); Sir H. H. Johnston, “The Niger Delta,” Proc. R.G.S. (December 1888); Sir F. Lugard, “An Expedition to Borgu on the Niger,” Geo. Jnl. (September 1895); E. Lenfant, Le Niger; voie ouverte à notre empire africain (Paris, 1903), chiefly a demonstration that the Bussa rapids are not an absolute bar to navigation.
The foregoing books deal almost entirely with the Niger. For the Benue see, besides Barth’s Travels, A. F. Mockler Ferryman, Up the Niger; Narrative of Major Claude Macdonald’s Mission to the Niger and Benue Rivers . . . (London, 1892); L. Mizon, “Itinéraire de la source de la Benóué au confident des rivières Kadeï et Mambéré” and other papers in the Bull. Soc. Géog. Paris for 1895 and 1896; C. Maistre, À travers l’Afrique central du Congo au Niger (Paris, 1895); E. Lenfant, La Grande Route du Chad (Paris, 1905); Col. L. Jackson, “The Anglo-German Boundary Expedition in Nigeria,” Geo. Jnl. (July 1905); P. A. Talbot, “Survey Work by the Alexander Gosling Expedition: Northern Nigeria 1904–1905,” idem (February 1906); Boyd Alexander, From the Niger to the Nile, vol. i. (London, 1907). The British Blue Books, Correspondence relating to Railway Construction in Nigeria (1905) and Further Correspondence, &c. (1909), contain information about the navigability of the lower Niger and of the Kaduna. The best maps are those published by the French and British War Offices; an Atlas du cours du Niger de Tombouctou aux rapides de Boussa in 50 sheets on the scale of 1:50,000, by Lieut. Hourst and others, was published in Paris in 1899. (F. R. C.)
NIGERIA, a British protectorate in West Africa occupying the lower basin of the Niger and the country between that river and Lake Chad, including the Fula empire (i.e. the Hausa States) and the greater part of Bornu. It embraces most of the territory in the square formed by the meridians of 3° and 14° E and the parallels of 4° and 14° N, and has an area of about 338,000 sq. m. The protectorate is bounded W., N. and N.E. by French possessions (Dahomey, Upper Senegal and Niger colony, and Chad territory), S.E. by the German colony of Cameroon and S. by the Atlantic.
Physical Features.—The country is divisible, broadly, into three zones running parallel with the coast: (1) the delta, (2) forest region, giving place to (3) the plateau region. The coast line, some 500 m. in length, extends along the Gulf of Guinea from 2° 46′ 55″ E. to 8° 45′ E. ending at the Rio del Rey, the point where the great bend eastwards of the continent ceases and the land turns south. The Niger (q.v.), which enters the protectorate at its N.W. corner and flows thence S.E. to the Atlantic, receives, 250 m. from the sea, the Benue, which, rising in the mountains of Adamawa south of Lake Chad, flows west across the plateau. Into the huge delta of the Niger several other rivers (the “Oil Rivers”) empty themselves; the chief being, on the west, the Benin (q.v.), and on the east the Brass. East of the Niger delta is that formed by the Imo or Opobo, Bonny and other streams, and still farther east is the Calabar estuary, mainly formed by the Cross river (q.v.). West of the Niger delta are several independent streams discharging into lagoons, which here line the coast. The most westerly of these streams, the Ogun, enters the Lagos lagoon, which is connected by navigable waterways with the Niger (see Lagos).
- ↑ Captain Claud Alexander died of fever in northern Nigeria on the 30th of November 1904. His brother, Lieut. Boyd Alexander, in a subsequent expedition across Africa was murdered in Wadai on the 2nd of April 1910.
