latter season, since the former rains are eagerly absorbed by the soil, which with every thing else is then exceedingly dry from the prevalence of the harmattan winds immediately previous. Many large trees are then washed away and drifted into the channel, which are very troublesome to travellers on the river. There are extensive forests on the banks, from which fuel could be obtained in abundance, and which would furnish considerable freight in the form of timber to both Abbeokuta and Lagos. It offers also fine facilities in some places for water-power.
Above Abbeokuta, on account of the very rocky character of its bed, the Ogun is not navigable even for canoes. At places, however, where it intersects the roads, canoes could in the rainy season be used with advantage to convey goods and passengers across, but the natives use instead large calabashes, on which the passenger sits, the ferryman swimming and pushing his freight before him. They not only prefer the use of calabashes, but will have nothing whatever to do with canoes, and affect to despise those who use them. Not unfrequently I heard the term "agayen" reproachfully applied by the people of the interior towns to my interpreter and other persons from places on or near the sea-coast. The word simply means canoe-men.
I crossed the Ogun in three places above Abbeokuta;
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