ABSTRACT
IT was a sweltering morning when we anchored in the wind-swept Lagos Roads, and in spite of the claims of its rival Sierra Leone, Lagos is by far the most important town in Western Africa. Glancing shorewards you see the inevitable line of yellow beach, but no forest behind it, and the slender shaft of a lighthouse rising above the tumbling surf: Beyond lies a wide lagoon, and upon a low island therein stands what is really a handsome town, and not the conglomeration of galvanised sheds and mud huts which forms so many West African settlements. Here are fine stores, well-built houses, banks, mission - schools, and Government buildings, all imposing in their way. In Lagos, as in Sierra Leone, there are many well-educated coloured merchants dwelling in luxurious houses after the European style, and most have been trained commercially in England. Lagos and Freetown (" Sa Leone "), as has been said, have long
been under missionary influence, and in this city most of the black population are Christians, and probably better acquainted with the Scriptures than are the white traders as a rule. Still, some of these converts do curious things at times, and the relations. between European and African are occasionally strained. When speaking to an educated man of colour it is always desirable to allude to his people as "Africans "-the word negro is generally an affront.
