Adventure Magazine Cover, March 20, 1925 — page 103: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HRS APS The Grotesq of N'gib 2 ag ues bid Oy Ll. SamsonMiller Author of “‘Obei,” “Niger Witches,” etc. MN HE accommodation of the Niger River steamers imposes one sweeping division of voyagers— upper decks for whites, lower for colored—or it was unlikely that Bill Roach would have been mixing the smoke of his old Kanembu pipe with the aroma of the selected Havana of Sir Samuel Mons. For Roach, if the tales of the trading stations came anywhere near the facts, had poached much ivory from the sphere of influence of the Royal Sokoto Company, whereas Sir Samuel’s name had appeared in the last list of King’s Birthday Honors, thanks to his predominance in the tin fields of Northern Nigeria. The extremes of scallywaggism and plu- tocracy were marked in Roach’s khaki rags and his mosquito-bitten, hard-featured face under the close-cut sun-bleached hair, and the stoutish, assured financier, immacu- late in the white mess dress of the tropics. Imagine, then, the amusement among our little home-going crowd of traders, officials and missionaries when Roach barked from his corner of the smoking- room that he would block Mons from Fake bing the rich tin deposits of N’gibbidi, and keep out the R. S. C., too. “You nor the Company will muss up N’gibbidi whilst I’m above ground,” were his words. Mons half turned his round dark head to the speaker with amused inquiry, which ended in a significant arching of his thick brows. A touch of sun, or a poor fellow gone looney on the solitudes and hardships, or a scallywag got to thinking he was another Emperoro of the Sahara because a few village chiefs had knelt to him and thrown dust on their heads. Perhaps. But Africa holds many strange mysteries, and Roach’s knowledge of the western bulge in the pear of Africa, widely designated as ‘‘Negroland,”’ was said to be uncanny. It was said of him he could “think black,” as we say of those who know the involved mental processes and illogicality of the blacks. For myself I won- dered if his fiat to Mons was to be dis- dained. I had something to go on. Years before the discovery of the tin fields which awakened the Pagan Belt out of the cannibalism, fetichism and the G- strings of the slumbering primitive, to der- bies and trousers, corsets and dragging gingham skirts, pneumonia and harmonicas Roach had penetrated the N’gibbidi country. I was at the time a proud youngster in my first months as a full-fledged agent of the R. S. C., being in charge of the N’gua station on the Upper Niger. Roach came in one day with a Kroo follower—a giant whom he had dubbed ‘‘Tiny’”—and a single barter pack. He was going to the Pagan Belt, then hostile or ‘‘closed’”’ country, with this single barter pack and no weapon. “Only government jackanapes tote guns,” he had scoffed. Naturally he had not taken an officer of the company into his confidence, but I overheard Tiny say hopefully— “Dis time we get dat ting—fortune, marsa.”’ MICLOOO