part I have never employed a native on such work who, when the

skin was separated from the carcass, I could allow to apply the coating of preservative and reset the specimen in the natural, faultless repose which is essential to a finished skin required for scientific purposes. For straightforward skinning, however, good natives are procurable, and with practice can save much of the collector’s time by doing the preliminary work.

Meantime, while hunting preparations were progressing, I had spent some time on shore each day in the native quarters of Lagos. The port at which a traveller disembarks in a land which is foreign always holds the lively interest of novelty, if nothing more, and Lagos had much that was novel. Notwithstanding the fact that the outward aspect from the lagoon is almost entirely European, Lagos is, broadly speaking, a great native city; and it is on that account that it is so attractive to the curious stranger. The European section, which runs chiefly in a line along the long shores of the lagoon, is as a rampart between the sea and the great area of native town which lies hidden behind the solidity and imposing stature of the commercial and domestic buildings of the white man. And it is behind those colonial buildings that one must pass to gain entrance to the true city of primitive native hutments which bears the aspect of the historic antiquity and primitive character of the people who inhabit it. So turning from the main street which runs along the water-front, and walking up one of the side-streets, one finds oneself immediately among curious scenes and curious people in narrow streets which are lined with irregular closely packed native huts on either side—huts of every imaginable shape, and built, for the most part, with a most nondescript collection of materials which owners appear to have gathered together with little or no cost to their pockets. The walls of the huts are of mud, but the roofs, if they are not thatched, and the little dog-kennels of bazaars which are in front of almost every dwelling, are made up with old crate-boards, planks, corrugated iron, pieces of tin, old sacks, canvas— anything; paintless, untidy squalor for the most part, and the sun-basking places of countless lizards that come out from behind the shady cracks.

Were the huts and the streets deserted of human life, Lagos would indeed be a dismal place, and little short of one huge rubbish heap; but it is entirely otherwise, for the scene is crowded— even overcrowded—with life and colour, and hence attractive and sometimes very beautiful, and down the hot dusty streets, which in many instances are very narrow, and in and out of side lanes, one may pass for hours and never be clear of the brilliant cotton-clad throng; every individual of which, whether Yuroba, Egba, Hausa, Arab or Kroo, seems intent on selling or buying something in a veritable hive of trading and industry.

It is an uncommon sight, and a wonderfully picturesque one, to view those busy streets of native Lagos—their fullness of motion and rich, almost Oriental colouring of native dress, worn as a rule with all the grace of perfect physique; bazaars bright with wares exposed for sale; children toddling by the doors; and goats and chickens, at risk of their lives, tripping and feeding among the throng. Time without number, as I passed curiously through those streets, my eye was arrested by little gleams of perfect colouring in a perfect natural native setting—lovely pictures without one single act of preparation or posture—and I confess I sighed and moved on, regretting I was not an artist with genius to catch such scenes, and hold them in all their beauty and simplicity, so that I might show them also to my fellow-men, less fortunate in their freedom to travel.

Wherefrom it may be gathered that I much enjoyed my brief sojourn in Lagos, where I would fain have stayed longer, had not my duties called me to hurry on to Kano.