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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

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(e) Ex-non-commissioned officers of Royal Engineers now serving. The Com- mittee desire that I should inform you that Colonel Close can speak with personal knowledge of the qualifications of Messrs. Kingston, Healy and Woram; that they are by no means as might appear from some of the correspondence an inferior type of Ordnance Surveyor, but the best that could have been chosen. They were selected with great care, and they represent, not, of course, the university type, but the best class of subordinates. Most large surveys employ this type of official. The men selected for Northern Nigeria are thoroughly reliable, and have considerable experience of survey work at home and in Africa, and if employed on suitable work they should be of the utmost value.

I have, &c.,

9991

No. 11.

NIGERIA.

L. HARCOURT.

The GOVERNOR-GENERAL to THE SECRETARY OF STATE.

(Confidential.)

(Received 17th March, 1914.)

SIR,

Government House, Lagos, 18th February, 1914. I HAVE the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your confidential despatch of January 26th,* relative to the Survey Department of the Northern Provinces.

2. It is with greatest regret that I learn from the enclosed letters from Colonel Close, R.E., Director-General of the Ordnance Survey, that my remarks regarding the three surveyors supplied by his Department have been so strongly resented by him. I had not at the time seen Mr. Kingston, and I had intended to convey in my despatch that I was reporting to you the views expressed to me by Mr. Collard, and not my own personal conclusions. It may in the circumstances be advisable for me to make this matter a little clearer.

3. The Survey Department of Northern Nigeria was only organised last year and, in view of the pressure of work in connection with the minefield and other matters, its strength was raised from 8 to 18 in the present year's Estimates. Of the existing eight men, five were non-commissioned officers, R.E. It was hoped that for the new posts civilians might be obtained who would permanently enter the Civil Service, so that their training and knowledge of local conditions would not be wasted to the local Government on their return to the Army. It was understood that there was a very great difficulty in obtaining suitable candidates for these posts, and it was suggested that young men with university training and an aptitude for mathematics, &c., should be selected and trained locally (I will presently explain why I considered that a local training would suffice). The immediate urgency was to obtain three or four skilled surveyors who would be able to take these new men in hand. The Ordnance Survey kindly consented to select three trained surveyors. The five non-commissioned officers, R.E., already holding appointments in the Survey Department had done, and are doing, excellent work, but it was felt that they were hardly of the class to undertake the training of the new officers, and I had hoped to place the three new trained men on the higher grade of pay (£400-£500) as senior officers in the Department. I learnt, however, from Mr. Collard that the men sent out by the Ordnance Department were themselves ex-non-commissioned officers, R.F., and he informed me that, after a conversation with Mr. Kingston (the first to arrive), he had gathered that the work they had hitherto been employed on was of a different class from what is at present required in the Northern Provinces and by no means so arduous. He feared that, when they found what the work was, they would not care to remain. Colonel Close's suggestion that my words conveyed a threat to employ them on uncongenial work in order to force their resignation imputes to me (or to Mr. Collard) such a lack of any sense of justice or fair play that I feel sure that The words used in no way on reconsideration he would wish to withdraw it.

justified such an interpretation. Meanwhile, in default of the junior civilians for training, Mr. Kingston has been employed on the current work of the Department. Mr. Collard recently reported to me that he had done admirable work, and that the

• No. 10.

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impression conveyed to him by Mr. Kingston himself in his original conversation with him had been quite dispelled. I was about to inform you of this.

4. I must explain the nature of the local work, and the reason why I stated in a former paragraph that I hoped that men with local training (aided by natural aptitude and supplemented by instructional courses at the Royal Geographical Society or elsewhere) would suffice to meet our requirements. In the Northern Provinces there is no survey properly so called being undertaken, nor, in the exigen- cies of the revenue, do I see any prospect of undertaking any such work in the near future. The duties of the Survey Department consist in making plans of mining properties, or of lands required on lease, of setting out new stations and of marking out new roads and similar work. I had also hoped to undertake the compilation of the large mass of routes and compass surveys of political and military officers which have accumulated in every province for some years past. The two or three highly trained surveyors in the Department--or surveyors borrowed from the Southern Provinces staff (as already done in the case of the preliminary framework for the minesfield survey)—could, as occasion demanded, set out the framework on which to

tie

these surveys.

Work of the kind I have described does not demand the highest expert training, nor is any great amount of co-ordination required with the surveys of the Southern Provinces. In addition to these duties, which will form the bulk of the current work of the Survey Department for some time, and have hitherto formed its sole and only work, there are two other tasks which I had set before the Department.

L

The first is the formation of a Survey School for the training of natives of the Northern Provinces, the second the revenue survey of the Kano district. Since my former despatches have, I fear, giyen rise to misunderstanding due to necessity of being brief in the pressure of work-I offer no apology for entering at some detail into these matters. The pupils who are being trained in the Survey School are young men who cannot speak a word of English. They are learning some of them quite recently enrolled--to write Hausa in the English character, and to do sums in simple arithmetic. They are extremely promising material, energetic, industrious and enthusiastic in their work. The Instructor of this school must necessarily be a man who speaks Hausa well, and is selected for his influence over, and his sympathy with, the natives, and not for high survey qualifications. It is largely with the pupils trained in this school that the revenue survey of Kano district is to be undertaken. The fields they measure during the early courses they are now undergoing form the nucleus of that survey. The Protectorate cannot afford-nor is there any necessity

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at this stage for an elaborate cadastral survey such as is usually understood by the term revenue survey." At the same time I am myself so anxious for an eventual survey of all Nigeria, and so fully alive to the vital importance of instituting from the very beginning a well organised system in order that no work may be thrown away, that I propose to you that Major Guggisberg should be given the title of Surveyor-General, and should act as adviser in all these matters. Some years ago I suggested to Colonel Close (as he may no doubt remember) that we should fix all the main points in Northern Nigeria, which were at that time connected by telegraph, by a system of telegraphic signals from Lagos. Thanks to his great interest Captain Ommanney was appointed, and he carried out this work successfully. We have. therefore, a series of fixed points already, and, at my suggestion, over a year aga Major Guggisberg detailed a party of trained surveyors from Southern Nigeria to lay out a base line at Kano. With these aids the revenue survey, such as it was intended to be, would embark on its work and, both in its inauguration and in the prosecution of its work, I looked for the continued supervision and advice of the Surveyor-General. Owing, however, to the absence of any staff, it has not as yet begun, and it is unlikely to make much progress this year.

The topo-

In the Southern Provinces survey is of a wholly different nature. graphical sections of skilled surveyors under the supervision of Major Guggisberg are gradually compiling a map which, I suppose, is intended to take its place in the geodetic survey of the world. It is estimated that it will take at least 25 years to complete this map in the Southern Provinces alone, which are only one-third of the area of the Northern Provinces. In addition to this, the Cadastral Branch is engaged in a land survey of Lagos Island which will compare in accuracy and wealth of detail with the most complete ordnance surveys in the United Kingdom.

In these circumstance the phrase "the co-ordination of the surveys of the Northern and Southern Provinces may convey a wrong impression, but it has a