A Yoruba village watchman in tree. Jebba district, Northern Nigeria, circa 1910.

Silver gelatin print photograph on card stock, 80 x 130 mm, tipped onto a page (165 x 125 mm) removed from a disbound traveller’s album, photographer’s inscription beneath image in ink: ‘Native Watchman. Shewing how he protects himself from wild animals during the night’; lengthier pencil inscription in the same hand to verso of print (only partially legible); the print has lost a little contrast but has excellent detail.

From an album compiled by an anonymous English visitor working on the railway in and around Jebba, Northern Nigeria, prior to World War One. Jebba is a Yoruba township situated near the great bend in the middle River Niger.