CHAPTER VII 
NIGERIAN ENTERPRISE 
Britisa NIGERIA, embracing some 335,700 square miles of 
territory with a population of over 18,700,000 has been 
characterized by the London Times, as “the only British 
dependency in any part of the world, which approaches the 
Indian Empire in magnitude and variety.” ! It lies on the 
West Coast wholly within the tropics, and possesses an 
area equal to that of France and the United Kingdom com- 
bined, densely populated with intelligent and progressive 
peoples, and richly endowed by nature with a variety of soil, 
favorable climatic conditions and economic resources. Al- 
though this wonderful basin of the Niger and its tributaries 
was known to the people of ancient times and referred to by 
the historian Herodotus twenty-five hundred years ago, it 
has been one of the latest portions of Africa to be opened 
to the European world. Its history, however, is as fascinat- 
ing as it is unique. 
It has been shown above 2 how the upper waters of the 
Niger had been discovered and explored by Mungo Park, 
Major Denham, and Captain Clapperton, and how the 
brothers Lander — Richard and John — had paddled down 
this solitary but majestic stream from Boussa to its delta 
during 1830 and 1831, demonstrating at last that its out- 
1 The writer is here speaking of dependencies, not of colonies. He is 
also laboring under the impression prevalent for so many years that Nigeria 
was from 600,000 to 1,000,000 square miles in area. British East Africa 
and Uganda together, Rhodesia, and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, all exceed 
it in area, but cannot be compared with it in density of population and 
fertility of soil. 
2 Chapter 1, Introduction