46 files changed, 34578 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d7b82bc
--- /dev/null
+++ b/.gitattributes
@@ -0,0 +1,4 @@
+*.txt text eol=lf
+*.htm text eol=lf
+*.html text eol=lf
+*.md text eol=lf
diff --git a/75580-0.txt b/75580-0.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..81ecad4
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-0.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,14553 @@
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75580 ***
+
+
+
+
+
+AFFAIRS OF WEST AFRICA
+
+[Illustration: ON FISHING BENT—SOUTHERN NIGERIA]
+
+
+
+
+                                AFFAIRS OF
+                               WEST AFRICA
+
+                                    BY
+                             EDMUND D. MOREL
+                                (E. D. M.)
+                MEMBER OF THE WEST AFRICAN SECTION OF THE
+                      LIVERPOOL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
+
+                       WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS
+
+                              [Illustration]
+
+                                  LONDON
+                            WILLIAM HEINEMANN
+                                   1902
+
+                         (_All rights reserved_)
+
+
+
+
+TO MY WIFE
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+Whatever its defects—and, no doubt, they are many and various—the Author
+claims for this volume that it is, at least, an honest attempt to deal
+with the problems, racial, political and commercial, yearly increasing in
+magnitude, connected with the administration of Western Africa by Great
+Britain and by the other Powers of Western Europe which participated in
+the scramble for African territory. As such it is respectfully submitted
+to the thinking Public. The Author considers it advisable to state
+that he has no commercial interests in West Africa, and is, therefore,
+uninfluenced by considerations of a personal nature, in emphasising
+the importance of the part played by the merchant on the West African
+stage. He also deems it right to say that the West African Section of
+the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce is neither responsible nor answerable
+for the opinions expressed herein. The Author hereby acknowledges the
+courtesy of the Editor of the _Pall Mall Gazette_, the Editor-Proprietor
+of _West Africa_, the Editor of the _Contemporary Review_, and the
+Editorial Committee of the _Journal of the African Society_, in
+permitting the incorporation of certain matter contributed by himself,
+from time to time, to those publications. His sincere thanks are due to
+Major Ronald Ross, F.R.C.S., F.R.S., C.B., for the chapter which that
+distinguished scientist has specially written at the Author’s request. To
+other kind friends and acquaintances who have good-humouredly submitted
+to cross-examination, and have allowed themselves to be victimised by the
+Author’s importunities generally, grateful appreciation is due, and is
+thankfully acknowledged.
+
+    HAWARDEN, 1902.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+  CHAP.                                                               PAGE
+
+          FOREWORD—MARY KINGSLEY                                      xiii
+
+                                 PART I
+
+       I. FIVE YEARS OF BRITISH TRADE WITH WESTERN AFRICA                1
+
+      II. THE OLD AND THE NEW                                            7
+
+     III. THE REAL AND THE IDEAL                                        11
+
+      IV. SOME NECESSARY REFORMS                                        20
+
+                            PART II.—NIGERIA
+
+       V. THE DISCOVERY OF NORTHERN NIGERIA                             35
+
+      VI. THE DISCOVERY OF NORTHERN NIGERIA—(_cont._)                   43
+
+     VII. THE HAUSAS AND THEIR EMPORIUM                                 52
+
+    VIII. THE HAUSAS AND THEIR EMPORIUM—(_cont._)                       59
+
+      IX. THE NATIONAL INDUSTRY OF SOUTHERN NIGERIA                     74
+
+       X. THE ADMINISTRATION OF NORTHERN NIGERIA                        83
+
+      XI. THE FINANCES OF NIGERIA                                       89
+
+     XII. MOHAMMEDANS, SLAVE-RAIDING AND DOMESTIC SERVITUDE             94
+
+    XIII. THE PRINCIPAL PRODUCTS OF NIGERIA                            110
+
+     XIV. RUBBER-COLLECTING IN NIGERIA                                 119
+
+      XV. THE FULANI IN NIGERIA                                        125
+
+     XVI. THE FULANI IN WEST AFRICAN HISTORY                           130
+
+    XVII. ORIGIN OF THE FULANI                                         136
+
+                                PART III
+
+   XVIII. SANITARY AFFAIRS IN WEST AFRICA. BY MAJOR RONALD ROSS, C.B.  153
+
+     XIX. LAND TENURE AND LABOUR IN WEST AFRICA                        170
+
+      XX. A COTTON INDUSTRY FOR WEST AFRICA                            188
+
+     XXI. THE MAHOGANY TRADE                                           201
+
+    XXII. ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA                                         208
+
+   XXIII. ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA—(_cont._)                               224
+
+                   PART IV.—THE FRENCH IN WEST AFRICA
+
+   XXIV. ANGLO-FRENCH RELATIONS IN WEST AFRICA                         238
+
+    XXV. TEN YEARS OF FRENCH ACTION IN WEST AFRICA                     249
+
+   XXVI. THE COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL CONDITION OF THE FRENCH
+           POSSESSIONS                                                 265
+
+  XXVII. FRENCH AND BRITISH MANAGEMENT IN WEST AFRICA                  276
+
+                     PART V.—MONOPOLY IN WEST AFRICA
+
+  XXVIII. THE CONCESSIONS RÉGIME IN FRENCH CONGO                       285
+
+    XXIX. INTERNATIONAL INTERESTS AND MONOPOLY                         297
+
+     XXX. THE HISTORY OF THE CONGO STATE                               312
+
+    XXXI. THE DOMAINE PRIVÉ                                            327
+
+   XXXII. THE “TRADE” OF THE CONGO STATE                               343
+
+                                APPENDIX
+
+  SIERRA LEONE (EXPENDITURE, LOANS, EXPORTS, &C.)                      355
+
+  GOLD COAST (EXPENDITURE, LOANS, EXPORTS, &C.)                        356
+
+  LAGOS (EXPENDITURE, LOANS, EXPORTS, &C.)                             359
+
+  DAHOMEY (COMPARATIVE TABLE OF DUTIES)                                360
+
+  THE DAHOMEY RAILWAY                                                  362
+
+  FRENCH GUINEA RAILWAY                                                364
+
+  WEST AFRICAN MAHOGANY TRADE                                          365
+
+  THE GOLD COAST MINING INDUSTRY                                       367
+
+  BRITISH POSSESSIONS IN WEST AFRICA (POPULATION AND AREA)             370
+
+  THE RABINEK CASE                                                     371
+
+  INDEX                                                                373
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+
+  _On Fishing Bent, Southern Nigeria_                        _Frontispiece_
+
+                                                              _Facing page_
+
+  *_A Pure-bred Kano Man (Hausa)_                                       54
+
+  *_A Hausa from Yola_                                                  56
+
+  _Hausa Loom and Spool_                                                62
+
+  _Hausas Drilling_                                                     68
+
+  _Making Palm-oil_                                                     74
+
+  _Duke-Town, Old Calabar, Southern Nigeria_                            76
+
+  _Filling Palm-oil Barrels, Southern Nigeria_                          78
+
+  _A Palm-kernel Market in Southern Nigeria_                            80
+
+  _A Mohammedan Chief and his Standard-Bearer_                         100
+
+  _Mandingo Muslims_                                                   106
+
+  _A Baobab—The Giant of West African Flora_                           116
+
+  _Washing Rubber_                                                     122
+
+  _Fulani Sword_                                                       126
+
+  *_Pure-bred Fulani Girl, Adamawa_                                    128
+
+  _Fulani Chief, Futa-Jallon_                                          130
+
+  _Half-caste Fulani Girl, Futa-Jallon_                                134
+
+  _Low-caste Fulani, Western Sudan_                                    136
+
+  _Pure-bred Fulani Girl, Futa-Jallon_                                 140
+
+  _Fulani House, Futa-Jallon_                                          142
+
+  _Fulani Cattle-pen_                                                  146
+
+  _A Half-caste Fulani Girl and a Susu_                                148
+
+  _The Idle Native! Market Scene in West Africa_                       176
+
+  _West African “Young Hopefuls”_                                      180
+
+  _An Ibo Family Group, Southern Nigeria_                              186
+
+  _Travelling on the Niger in the Dry Season_                          196
+
+  _Felling a Mahogany-tree_                                            202
+
+  _Squaring the Tree_                                                  202
+
+  _Dragging the Squared Log through the Bush_                          204
+
+  _Sapelli, Southern Nigeria’s principal Timber Port_                  204
+
+  _A Susu Mallam_                                                      218
+
+  _Fulani Mallam_                                                      228
+
+  _Susu Chief and Staff_                                               278
+
+  _Ashanti Field Force at Cape Coast ~en route~ for Kumasi_            280
+
+  _Return of Ashanti Field Force_                                      282
+
+  _The Victim of a Rubber Raid_                                        334
+
+                                  MAPS
+
+  _Northern Part of Africa_                                             38
+
+  _Northern Nigeria_                                                    84
+
+  _Sketch Map showing Harbour Improvement Scheme, Ivory Coast_  _page_ 273
+
+_Photographs marked thus * are reproduced from “Adamawa” by kind
+permission of Mr. Ernst Vohsen (Dietrich Reimer). The author is indebted
+(through the kindness of a friend) to Dr. Maclaud, of the French Guinea
+Administration, for several of the photographs here reproduced._
+
+
+
+
+FOREWORD
+
+MARY KINGSLEY
+
+    “Mary Kingsley—the heir and sustainer of a great name, one of
+    the ablest of that remarkable band of wandering writers, men
+    and women, who are the eyes and ears of our nascent Empire,
+    who are bringing home to England, that weary Titan, her tasks,
+    her faults, her problems—Mary Kingsley has gone from us.”—Mrs.
+    HUMPHRY WARD.
+
+
+Those who had the honour of knowing Mary Kingsley, and corresponding
+with her on West African affairs, who have studied her writings and
+her speeches, who realise all that this “good woman with a gigantic
+intellect” might have done for the Empire in West Africa had she lived,
+can with difficulty reconcile themselves to the inscrutable decree of
+Providence which robbed us of her presence. One of her greatest admirers
+to whom I was expressing the other day much the same feeling, expressed
+a different view. “Miss Kingsley’s work was done”—he said in effect—“she
+was the pioneer, she showed the way. That was her allotted task: the
+fruit of her labours will come in due season.” It may be so. Indeed,
+when we think of what Mary Kingsley accomplished in the few short years
+which she devoted to West Africa, the thought arises whether there is
+not an element of unconscious selfishness in the desire that she might
+have been spared. The nature of the work she had undertaken, the intense
+fervour with which she devoted herself body and soul to preaching the
+morals it was given her to inculcate, the utter brain weariness which at
+times she was fain to admit—no mortal being could have endured for very
+long so perpetual a mental and physical strain. It was a passing heavy
+load for a weak woman of indifferent health to bear, and in death Mary
+Kingsley has perhaps achieved a greater triumph, a success more striking
+and profound, than living on she would have attained. Death has had the
+effect of rapidly fertilising the seeds she sowed, and from her ashes
+have sprung forces gathering daily in power which, united in a common
+aim, are taking up her burden and carrying it along the path she pointed
+out, assured that every year will bring fresh helpers, be the obstacles
+ever so great. _La verité est en marche_, and although the spirit of
+the hour is not precisely favourable to that patient investigation of
+West African problems which affords the only guarantee of political and
+administrative success, the phase is but a fleeting one, and when the
+present fashionable policy of force and hurry is found by practical tests
+to be even more sterile in useful results than the apathy which preceded
+it, the main truths Mary Kingsley taught will appeal to thinking men with
+an eloquence all the greater for having been temporarily obscured.
+
+On the personal aspect of Mary Kingsley’s character one would fain dwell
+at length. Few women, I believe, have inspired all sorts and conditions
+of men with so intense a respect, so wondering an admiration. Few women
+are able, as Mary Kingsley was able, to draw forth, by the magic of
+her earnest personality, the best in a man. She was so unassuming, so
+unaffected, such a womanly woman in every sense of the word, that it
+appeared almost incredible she should have grasped the essentialities
+of West African politics with such comprehensiveness and scientific
+perception; mastered, as no one had done before—in the sense, at any
+rate, of being able to impart the knowledge to the world—the intricacies
+of native custom and native law, or have affronted the physical
+perils she made so light of. Eminent politicians and administrators,
+distinguished men of letters, world-renowned scientists, commercial
+magnates, were regular visitors at her modest residence, and one and
+all drew from her inexhaustible store. The least of those to whom she
+extended the privilege of her friendship were always welcome, and
+never failed to leave her presence without feeling that her words of
+sympathy and encouragement were a fresh incentive to push onward, never
+losing hope and fortified against disappointment. The truest, kindest,
+staunchest friend that ever breathed—such was Mary Kingsley; and we who
+knew her, and have lost her, know also that something has gone out of our
+lives which can never be replaced. In a passage of singular beauty, Mrs.
+Alice Stopford Green thus closes a tribute[1] to the dead friend whose
+work she herself is doing so much to carry on: “She laid her armour down
+when she asked to be carried out to the unfathomable Ocean, alone in
+death as she had been alone in life, going out with her last wish from
+the bitter strife of men to the immensities where she sought the will of
+God.”
+
+
+
+
+PART I
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+FIVE YEARS OF BRITISH TRADE WITH WESTERN AFRICA
+
+    “West Africa, that great feeding-ground for British
+    manufactures.”—MARY KINGSLEY.
+
+
+One still—but too often, alas!—meets with people who wonder why England
+should bother about West Africa at all, and pooh-pooh the idea that we
+have interests there at the present time worth looking after, while as
+for the future possibilities of that huge country as a field for British
+enterprise, they simply will not trouble themselves to give the matter a
+moment’s consideration.
+
+Now figures are very uninteresting things, no doubt, to the average
+reader; but they possess a practical significance superior to any number
+of the most glowing dissertations, and I trust my readers will forgive me
+if I make, as a basis of justification for inflicting this volume upon
+them, a few sets of figures which I would respectfully suggest as worthy
+of their attentive consideration. The statistics are compiled from the
+Custom House returns, and they show the extent, nature and distribution
+of British trade in Western Africa during the last few years. In perusing
+them, three facts should be borne in mind: first, that, although
+Europeans have been engaged in commercial transactions on the West
+Coast for upwards of five hundred and fifty years, those transactions
+were, prior to the abolition of the over-sea slave trade, confined,
+with very few exceptions[2]—so far as the exports from West Africa were
+concerned—to the human cargo, and to gold dust and ivory: that the trade
+in palm oil and kernels, which are now the staple articles of export
+from West Africa, is therefore of comparatively recent growth, and that
+the mahogany trade and the rubber trade have only come into existence—to
+any appreciable extent—within the last few years, a fair indication
+of the fertility and producing power and almost boundless resources
+of West Africa. Secondly, that the extensive business relationship
+which has been built up between Great Britain and West Africa, in the
+shape of a legitimate commerce, has grown to its present proportions
+under circumstances absolutely disadvantageous to development, without
+railways, with but few roads, with intertribal wars often preventing
+the circulation of trade for months at a time, by merely scratching the
+surface of the most prolific region in the world. Thirdly, that the
+figures given below do but show the actual volume of Britain’s trade with
+West Africa and the wages earned by thousands of English men and women
+who directly and indirectly benefit by that trade; the British capital
+invested in West Africa in factories, machinery, craft for navigating the
+rivers, coaling depôts, surf-boats and lighters, stores and the like, to
+which must now be added railway material, dredging apparatus, batteries
+and soon, we may hope, cotton gins, not to mention a fleet of some sixty
+steamers employed in the carrying trade and passenger traffic—all these
+things have to be taken into account in estimating West Africa’s worth to
+Great Britain.
+
+The total values of British produce and manufactures[3] shipped to the
+_British possessions in West Africa_ in the five years 1896-1900 were
+respectively as follows:
+
+    1896              £1,828,395
+    1897               1,763,461
+    1898               1,999,505
+    1899               2,116,080
+    1900               2,148,149
+                      ----------
+         Gross total  £9,855,590
+
+Percentage of increase in five years, 17½ per cent.
+
+The total values of British produce and manufactures shipped to the
+_possessions of Foreign Powers_ in West Africa in the five years
+1896-1900 were respectively as follows:
+
+    1896                £970,080
+    1897               1,002,318
+    1898               1,247,994
+    1899               1,490,603
+    1900               2,145,349
+                      ----------
+         Gross total  £6,856,344
+
+Percentage of increase in five years, 121 per cent.
+
+If we add these two totals together, we find that the value of British
+produce and manufactures shipped to _West Africa_ in the period mentioned
+was £16,711,934, which is a percentage of increase of 138 per cent.
+
+From the British export trade we turn to the British import trade with
+West Africa.
+
+The total values of raw produce imported by Great Britain _from British
+West Africa_ in the five years 1896-1900 were respectively as follows:
+
+    1896              £2,223,925
+    1897               2,153,412
+    1898               2,352,285
+    1899               2,427,946
+    1900               2,137,023
+                     -----------
+        Gross total  £11,294,591
+
+The total values of raw produce imported by Great Britain from the
+_possessions of Foreign Powers_ in West Africa in the five years
+1896-1900 were respectively as follows:
+
+    1896                £333,803
+    1897                 553,130
+    1898                 622,287
+    1899                 651,043
+    1900                 806,077
+                      ----------
+         Gross total  £2,966,340
+
+These two totals added together show that Great Britain imported West
+African produce in the period under review to the amount of £14,260,931.
+
+The value of Great Britain’s direct commerce with West Africa in the five
+years 1896-1900 was, therefore, £30,972,865. To this might be added a
+further sum of £1,750,888, representing foreign and colonial merchandise
+shipped to West Africa from British ports in the years mentioned.[4]
+
+It is interesting, and valuable, to see which, among the possessions of
+Foreign Powers in West Africa, were the chief absorbers of British goods
+and the chief exporters of raw produce to Great Britain. Examination
+yields the following knowledge:
+
+Principal possessions of Foreign Powers which absorbed in five years
+£6,856,344 of British goods:[5]
+
+            French.   Portuguese.   German.   Others.
+               £           £           £         £
+    1896    348,258     402,445      68,355   151,022
+    1897    401,224     360,121      91,320   149,653
+    1898    531,848     438,320     109,580   178,246
+    1899    693,255     503,788     126,047   167,513
+    1900    709,900   1,084,072[6]  120,910   212,175
+
+Principal possessions of Foreign Powers which exported to Great Britain
+in five years £2,966,340 of raw produce:
+
+            French.   Portuguese.   German.   Others.
+               £           £           £         £
+    1896    203,442      33,937      42,001    54,423
+    1897    312,430     116,554      68,194    55,952
+    1898    431,192      85,544      35,165    70,186
+    1899    461,267      68,021      48,736    73,019
+    1900    534,727      75,037      94,681   101,632
+
+The French possessions are, it will be observed, far and away our
+principal markets and our principal suppliers among the possessions of
+Foreign Powers. Our exports to and imports from the French possessions
+amounted together to £4,627,543, or just under 50 per cent. of our total
+export and import trade with the possessions of Foreign Powers together.
+The increasing importance of the French possessions in West Africa as a
+market for the sale of British goods and as suppliers of British home
+markets is a fact which it is of the utmost consequence for British
+statesmen to lay to heart. The subject is one which I shall refer to
+later on. It is already one of the dominant factors of West African
+politics affecting Great Britain, and is destined to become so more
+and more as the years go on, for France is in a territorial sense the
+mistress of West Africa, and may become so in a commercial sense as well.
+
+The general conclusions to be drawn from a study of these figures are
+various. First and foremost there is the clearly established fact
+that British trade with West Africa is expanding enormously and has
+almost unlimited prospects before it, now that serious and concentrated
+efforts are being made on all sides to open up the untapped wealth of
+the interior by the means of roads and railways and by the improvement
+of navigable waterways, while the cessation of intertribal warfare in
+many districts must entail a large increase in the population, and
+therefore, in the native capacity for production and purchase. It is
+also demonstrated that every year West Africa absorbs a larger quantity
+of British manufactured goods: that the exports of British manufactured
+goods are steadily increasing to British West Africa and increasing to an
+extraordinary degree to the possessions of Foreign Powers in West Africa,
+especially to the French possessions: that Great Britain is consolidating
+her hold upon the carrying trade of West Africa as testified by the
+increased quantity of foreign and colonial manufactures shipped to West
+Africa from British ports: that the Continent—Germany[7] chiefly—is
+receiving a greater amount of raw produce from the British possessions in
+West Africa, a deduction which can be fairly drawn from the stationary
+aspect of the importation by Great Britain of such produce from her own
+West African possessions. And the final conclusion is this, that, in
+view of the restricted extent of the British possessions in West Africa,
+compared with the possessions of Foreign Powers in that part of the
+world, the latter offer a very much vaster field for the sale of British
+goods. Consequently, it is the bounden duty of the British Government
+and the British Chambers of Commerce, while in no way neglecting the
+brilliant possibilities which the British West African possessions offer
+under wise administration for the enterprise of Englishmen, to be ever
+on the alert to look to the future and to protect British trade with the
+possessions of the Foreign Powers in West Africa against legislation
+tending to close the door of those possessions against it; and to insist
+that, whenever international treaties guaranteeing freedom of trade to
+the subjects of all nations exist in West Africa, they shall be rigidly
+adhered to by the signatories. In this respect British diplomacy has
+shown itself singularly lax. But the mischief already committed may
+even yet be remedied, and further dangers which loom ahead averted, if
+the British public will only realise before it is too late the enormous
+issues at stake.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE OLD AND THE NEW
+
+    “The past has gone with its follies and its waste.... Let us
+    then face the present and contemplate the future.”
+
+
+In the previous chapter we discussed in practical fashion the grounds
+upon which the British public is called upon to devote more attention
+to the affairs of West Africa than it does at present, and an attempt—I
+hope a successful attempt—was made to show how very short-sighted and
+singularly misinformed is the opinion which would disinterest itself from
+a part of the world where the possibilities of commercial development
+are so strikingly manifest. There has never been such urgent need for
+an intelligent appreciation, on the part of the British public, of the
+problems which confront this country in West Africa. In a few short years
+the policy of Great Britain in West Africa has undergone a complete
+change. Events have followed one another with bewildering rapidity.
+Official indifference has been galvanised into life by French activity,
+and after a brief but dangerous period of international rivalry, British
+political rights have been established over a considerable extent of
+territory, not, however, nearly so considerable as a pacific, consistent,
+well-thought-out programme adopted some years previously would have
+brought, had our merchant-pioneers been listened to, and had successive
+Governments been able to throw off the paralysing influence of the
+resolution of 1865. There is a story told of a certain Minister in charge
+of the Foreign Office—it was related to me by one of those present at the
+interview—which illustrates very forcibly the feeling which prevailed in
+Government circles in those days. A deputation of merchants waited upon
+his Excellency with the request that he would permit the hoisting of the
+Union Jack on certain parts of the West African littoral where British
+merchants had long been trading, and where the rulers of the country
+were genuinely desirous of receiving a British protectorate. _Pro-formâ_
+treaties were produced by the deputation between these rulers and the
+resident merchants. The merchants asked for no reward. There was no
+question of expenditure involved. All that the Government was required
+to do was to meet the wishes of the chiefs. The deputation pointed out
+that, so far as the relations between the natives and the commercial
+representatives of Great Britain were concerned, the acceptance of the
+Government would in no wise alter them, but would simply have the effect
+of cementing a friendly understanding which already existed. But, urged
+the deputation, the treaties, if agreed to by the Government, would prove
+an invaluable diplomatic instrument if the time came, as it seemed likely
+to do, when England might find herself faced in West Africa by foreign
+competition. The Minister flung the treaties across the table.
+
+It was a time of wasted opportunities, when a little political foresight
+would have conferred upon this country great future benefit, and it seems
+extraordinary, but is unhappily true, that the same failure to look ahead
+as regards West Africa appears to afflict our Foreign Office to-day
+despite the lessons of the past. Of this, more anon.
+
+But if successive Governments showed unpardonable negligence in
+safeguarding British interests in West Africa, for decade after decade,
+down to the very time when the French had worked their way so far
+southward into the natural _hinterlands_ of our old Colonies that action
+became imperative if anything was to be saved from the wreck, the British
+press and public were greatly to blame also. I well remember that at the
+very height of the recent Anglo-French controversy which culminated in
+the Convention of 1898, when rival English and French expeditions were
+rushing hither and thither through the territories west of the Niger,
+and when British and French efforts were concentrated upon wringing
+out of the unfortunate Borgu Chiefs all sorts, kinds, and conditions
+of agreements, sowing Union Jacks and Tricolors by the wayside, the
+well-known editor of an equally well-known newspaper to which I then
+contributed, asked me to show him Nikki[8] on the map, as he had not the
+least idea where it was.
+
+Mr. Chamberlain came into power just at the moment when French enterprise
+in the West African uplands had reached its maximum of threatening
+intensity, and he set himself to vigorously counteract it as far as he
+could. The invertebrate policy had, however, compromised the situation
+almost beyond remedy, and had it not been for Mr. Joseph Thomson’s
+success in obtaining treaty rights with the Emirs of Sokoto and Bornu in
+1884 on behalf of the National African Company of Merchants—subsequently
+the Royal Niger Company—and, it may be added, for the loyal adherence
+of those native States to the treaties passed with the Company, the
+magnificent possession of Northern Nigeria would have gone the way of
+Futa Jallon, of Mossi, and of so many other countries lying at the back
+of our Colonies; that is to say, would have fallen into French hands.
+The man who deserves the most credit for saving Northern Nigeria to the
+Empire is Sir George Taubman Goldie, and however one may deplore some
+of the uses to which he put his Charter—things we are paying for now
+in the French Congo and elsewhere—it is but common fairness to assert
+that, if it had not been for Sir George Goldie, the possessions of Great
+Britain in West Africa would have been reduced by about one half. It is
+a matter for some surprise that the Government should not have succeeded
+in securing the continuation of Sir George Goldie’s co-operation in West
+Africa after the Royal Niger Company’s Charter was cancelled. An old
+opponent has lately said of him that “there is no one more competent
+to guide our West African Administration on practical, humanitarian,
+economical, prudent, and statesmanlike lines, no one more fitted to take
+a high position in West African affairs political and commercial,” a
+statement which will meet with wide acceptance.
+
+But this, after all, is ancient history, and what we are chiefly
+concerned with now, is the present. What we are called upon to seriously
+consider is the general trend of England’s policy in West Africa,
+administrative, financial, political and commercial. Internationally,
+we are secure in the possession of our territories. The only rivalry we
+have to fear is the peaceful rivalry of commerce, but commerce is the
+explanation of our presence in West Africa: it constitutes the sinews of
+our administration, and its requirements demand the constant vigilance,
+the most careful attention of the official world.
+
+It is the bounden duty of those who, believing in the immense importance
+of West Africa to Great Britain, and similarly believing that the present
+policy which is being pursued by Great Britain in West Africa is open on
+several grounds to grave objection, to say so, and to give their reasons
+for saying so, with the assured conviction that, however unpopular their
+arguments may be, the general interest demands that they should be put
+forward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE REAL AND THE IDEAL
+
+    “The nature of the natives, the climate, everything is against
+    precipitate and hasty action. To advance slowly, leaving no
+    bad or unfinished work behind, to gain the respect and liking
+    of the natives, and only to use force when compelled as a last
+    resource to do so, are the means which in my humble opinion
+    lead to success in West Africa. To quote from the words of a
+    celebrated French traveller: ‘Do not let us dream of a hasty
+    transformation of Africa. Let us employ a method, slow but
+    sure. Let us try and teach the natives what knowledge we have
+    acquired, and not try and make them learn in a few years
+    what it has taken us twenty centuries to learn.’”—SIR CLAUDE
+    MACDONALD in Liverpool, 1892.
+
+    “These figures are surprising. One would naturally have
+    expected that as the trade increased the proportion of
+    expenditure would have decreased.... From that date, however,
+    the expenditure has advanced by leaps and bounds, and in 1900
+    amounted to 28 per cent. of the exports. In other words, the
+    expenditure has increased more rapidly than the trade....
+    If, however, the expenditure had been on the basis of former
+    years ... we could have given over £1,000,000 worth additional
+    European goods in exchange for the same amount of produce. In
+    other words, the heavier the expenditure the higher price must
+    the merchant ask for his European goods, or the less he is able
+    to give for native produce. This must have the double effect
+    of reducing the demand for manufactures and diminishing the
+    energy of the natives in gathering produce. There is another
+    possibility which should not be lost sight of: our colonies
+    are hemmed in by our French and German neighbours. If in
+    consequence of increased expenditure and the resulting heavier
+    taxes we are unable to offer the natives as large a quantity of
+    manufactures and as good a price as our competitors are enabled
+    to do, produce which is grown on the borders of our Colonies
+    may be diverted to foreign territory with a consequent loss of
+    trade to this country.”—Mr. ARTHUR HUTTON, President African
+    Section, Manchester Chamber of Commerce.[9]
+
+
+A wise man has said that there is no way of conveying a rebuke so
+efficiently as upon the back of a compliment, and as a preliminary
+to criticism of certain phases of British administration in West
+Africa, a measure of praise is both just and needful. To avoid
+personalities—whether in the sense of praise or otherwise—should be
+the constant endeavour of any critic in approaching the subject under
+discussion, because it is primarily the system, and not the agents of
+the system, which is in question. Unfortunately the Crown Colony system
+being what it is, a despotism—though by no means necessarily a tyrannical
+despotism—there is great difficulty, if not actual impossibility, in
+altogether avoiding the personal equation.
+
+The revolution in British West African policy is indelibly associated
+with the advent to power of the present Colonial Secretary, the
+Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain. His entry upon the scene was
+contemporaneous with the culmination of certain events which must
+infallibly have modified our previous attitude in relation to West Africa
+whoever the statesmen responsible at the time might have been. The point
+need not be laboured, but it is often overlooked. Be that as it may,
+it is an undoubted fact—a fact redounding greatly to Mr. Chamberlain’s
+credit—that no Colonial Secretary before him has displayed so lively and
+personal an interest, both publicly and privately, in the affairs of
+British West Africa, an interest which has continued unabated during the
+entire period of his administration. In specific directions the result
+has been all to the good. Railways, the preliminary surveys of which had
+been made by direction of Mr. Chamberlain’s predecessor, the Marquis
+of Ripon, before he quitted office, have been constructed; others are
+commenced; the routes of more have been surveyed. The study of malaria
+has received the right honourable gentleman’s warmest support. A general
+publicity has been given to British West Africa by its identification
+with so powerful a politician as Mr. Chamberlain, which has materially
+contributed to remove it from the rut of oblivion and popular ignorance.
+It may also be added that the Colonial Secretary’s confident public
+declarations in respect to the future of the gold-mining industry in the
+Gold Coast has done much to attract capital to that Colony, and that
+the damper which he recently felt it wise to apply to the introduction
+of the more undesirable elements connected with the revival, under
+modern conditions, of gold-mining enterprise in a part of the coast
+celebrated for its former export of the precious metal, was entirely
+to his honour, although it would perhaps have been more useful had it
+come somewhat earlier in the day; while the memorandum he caused to be
+drawn up in September 1901 embodying the principle of treating native
+labourers on the Gold Coast, is perhaps the most admirable document
+ever issued from the Colonial Office.[10] In like manner, it can be
+taken for granted that all officials in West Africa are animated by
+the best of intentions, and however profoundly one may differ, from
+time to time, from certain of their actions, it is always essential to
+bear in mind that the system under which they work—the inconvenience of
+which not a few of them in private conversation readily admit—leaves
+the door wide open to the commitment of errors for which the system is
+in the first place responsible, while the climate is most trying to
+the constitutions and temper of Europeans. But it is unreasonable, and
+subversive of the true interests of the Empire, that the tendency should
+be encouraged to denounce honest criticism of a specific act of policy
+in West Africa with which this or that official must in the nature of
+things be associated, although he need not be, and often is not, the
+originator of it, as a personal attack upon an absent man, to be resented
+as an outrage and stigmatised almost as a crime, as an offence at any
+rate against common decency and fairness. The contention is absurd, and
+mischievous and unfair. The autocratic power which the Crown Colony
+system confers upon West African Governors, District Commissioners, and
+military commandants makes it absolutely essential that independent
+criticism, so long as it is legitimate, should be exercised by the public
+at home, whether or no full sanction has been obtained by a particular
+official from the Colonial Office for the application of measures
+giving rise to criticism, or whether the measures have been initiated
+by the Colonial Office itself. By public criticism alone can we hope
+to avoid the repetition of such deplorable mistakes as led to the Hut
+Tax war in Sierra Leone and the last Ashanti outbreak; the framing of
+legislation far in advance of the needs of the country and antagonistic
+to native feeling, which interest and duty alike imperatively demand,
+should be taken into consideration; the constant recurrence of punitive
+expeditions, which in another portion of our Tropical African Empire have
+worked such incalculable injury; and financial embarrassments, outcome of
+mismanagement, extravagance, and errors of policy.
+
+There is always danger in reaction, as in the body physical, so in the
+body politic; and it is not altogether astonishing, perhaps, that the
+long spell of official apathy in West Africa, being suddenly changed
+to precipitate action, should have given rise to some objectionable
+features. But it cannot be admitted that the latter, instead of being
+a passing phenomenon, should take permanent root, and become part
+and parcel of the new order of things. If this be the case, we shall
+presently be witnessing yet another reaction in West Africa, and with
+embarrassed finances, a yearly expenditure far in excess of any visible
+increase in producing power, increased taxation, a native population
+alienated and disorganised, and energetic rivals forging ahead while
+we continue to struggle painfully in a quagmire of self-imposed
+difficulties, the public will lapse once more into its old attitude of
+indifference tinged with dislike, until some brilliant gentleman at the
+Foreign Office, deeming the moment opportune, hands over a further slice
+of British West Africa to a Foreign Power, in exchange for cod-fisheries,
+or something equally vital to the Empire’s prosperity.[11] The forward
+policy in West Africa has had its uses; it has served its purpose. We
+are secure in the possession of a large territory some 700,000 square
+miles in extent, unsurpassed in natural wealth by any other region in
+the globe, containing a population of probably 30,000,000 to 35,000,000
+souls, of whose habits and customs we possess but the haziest knowledge,
+whose very languages we are in the main ignorant of; a population
+composed of the most diverse elements, the resources of whose widely
+scattered habitat are barely tapped, whose willing co-operation, which is
+essential to the success of our rule, can only be gained by scientific,
+painstaking study and the most tactful, sympathetic treatment. Now should
+be a close time for British West Africa. The country needs political
+rest. It has been turned topsy-turvy by European rivalry; old landmarks
+have been swept away; the boundaries of Native States altered to suit the
+exigencies of European diplomacy; immemorial trade roads interfered with.
+The native requires breathing space. Official activity should in the main
+be limited to the construction, with due regard to method and economy,
+of certain indispensable public works, collecting data concerning the
+native peoples and respective regions in which they dwell, strengthening
+native authority so rudely disturbed by recent events; in protecting
+commerce, encouraging capital, fostering native industries—perfecting
+those in existence and preparing the ground for others; in short, a work
+of gradual, sure, systematic consolidation. It should be our object to
+intermeddle as little as possible with native institutions, abide with
+scrupulous exactitude to both the spirit and the letter of our treaties
+with the Chiefs; develop the native peoples along the lines of their own
+civilisation both in the case of Mohammedans and Pagans; use conciliation
+in preference to dictation, gold rather than the sword. Administrative
+extravagance should be rigidly held in check for fear of burdening new
+Colonies with a load of debt; the soldier and the policeman should be
+kept in the background, only to be used as a last extremity. Commerce,
+good roads, _and statesmanship_ should be our preferable choice of
+weapons for mitigating evils, some at least of which the example of
+Europe in the past has intensified, others lying in deep-rooted religious
+beliefs, requiring careful preliminary investigation and thorough
+understanding before being made the object of official action, and then
+only of a repressive nature after every pacific inducement had been tried
+in vain. Patience, more patience, and again patience. That should be,
+ought to be, the corner-stone of British policy in West Africa. It was
+the tortoise that won the race; not the hare.
+
+Unfortunately the hare is the more popular beast just now, and the
+forward policy is as much in evidence in British West Africa to-day as it
+was five years ago, with the result that what may have been justifiable
+then bids fair, if it be not stopped in time, to be disastrous now that
+the necessity for it has passed away with the close of international
+competition. Energy is being misapplied and misdirected. Let it be
+conceded that the existing basis of rule in West Africa, the Crown Colony
+system, is the worst in the world to stand the strain of a naturally
+active directing influence at headquarters; let it be admitted that it
+is a clumsy, inelastic instrument which allows the governed no voice
+in the government, which places the suppliers of revenue, both direct
+and indirect, in the position of having no effective control over the
+expenditure of that revenue, which permits of the jeopardising of years
+of commercial effort by some ill-considered legislative act—let these
+and many other counts against the Crown Colony system be admitted. The
+fact nevertheless remains that that system is capable of reform, of
+modification, of being moulded in accordance with the requirements of
+the case. The task should not be beyond the capacity of statecraft. Is
+it to be seriously maintained that British statesmanship has sunk so low
+that machinery suitable to a bygone age cannot be improved and brought
+more into line with our altered situation: that we must needs cling to
+every ancient wheel and rivet though they be clogged with superfluous
+matter, and eaten through with rust? If the machine which it was sought
+to preserve intact had done yeoman service in past days, there might
+be some excuse for hesitating to supply it with new works. But that is
+emphatically not so with the West African machine.
+
+And it is positively heart-breaking to see that the last few years, far
+from bringing any reforms, far from holding out the hope of reform in
+the future, have but accentuated the evil. We cannot, it is true, lose
+any more territory, unless we care to give away that which is assured
+to us by international agreement. But in almost every other respect the
+Crown Colony system, as it prevails in West Africa, and under the new
+circumstances in which it is performing its functions, is building up
+a legacy of trouble which can only be contemplated with equanimity, or
+viewed with indifference, by the thoughtless; by those good people who
+refuse to walk save in pleasant places, who constitutionally dislike
+criticism as much as a cat objects to a wetting.
+
+Haste and hurry are the order of the day in British West Africa.
+Expenditure is going up by leaps and bounds,[12] altogether apart from
+expenditure on public works. In the case of public works, large and
+costly undertakings are arranged for on the most unpractical lines,
+with no effort to benefit by competition, no putting out to tender,
+no safeguards without which a business man of ordinary intelligence
+will surround himself in order that he may be sure of getting the best
+value for his money. An extraordinary theory in economics has become
+fashionable. It is that the higher the revenue of a given West African
+Colony the more prosperous that Colony must be, quite oblivious of the
+effect which every increase of taxation has upon the volume of trade in
+the way of reduction, and driving it away to the neighbouring territory
+of a foreign rival. If a West African Colony shows in a given year
+an increase of £10,000 in revenue, obtained from increased taxation,
+jubilation in official quarters is excessive: but either nothing is
+heard of the falling off in trade accompanying the increase in revenue,
+or it is explained in some other way. The fact that there is a gain
+in revenue is held to be proof positive of an abounding prosperity
+and wise management. Every fresh increase in revenue is followed by a
+corresponding increase in expenditure. The one is made to keep pace with
+the other. It does not always succeed, because the expenditure is not
+infrequently in excess of the revenue _quand même_. It is also becoming
+the usual thing to financially assist these Colonies by “loans” or
+“grants-in-aid” or “advances” quite on the West Indian model, while the
+official reports invariably lead off with the reassuring statement that
+“this Colony has no public debt”: a little farther on, casual reference
+to the “grant-in-aid” may be discovered by the aid of a microscope,
+tucked away in some obscure corner, a footnote for choice. Lagos, Sierra
+Leone, the Gold Coast, Nigeria, are all at the present moment in the
+enjoyment of Imperial loans: Sierra Leone for the Railway and the late
+Hut-Tax war, Lagos for the Railway, the Gold Coast for the Railway and
+Ashanti war, Nigeria for the purchase of the Niger Co.’s treaties with
+the natives (the terms of which we have not adhered to), and for raising
+an army. Meantime, our neighbours the French are—in their West Coast
+Colonies proper, where comparison alone is possible—making their own
+Colonies pay a considerable part in the expenses of Railway construction;
+taxing their trade less, spending less on administration, governing more
+cheaply and quite as well—better by a long way in some cases.
+
+The producing power of our Colonies, that is to say, the export trade,
+the only true test of prosperity in West Africa, is either increasing
+slowly by comparison with the expenditure, or it is stagnant, or it is
+retrogressing. When it is increasing, the increase is much below the
+corresponding ratio of increased expenditure. “Large doses”—veritable
+purgatives—of European conceived legislation are being thrust down the
+throats of the bewildered natives. The number of Ordinances passed in the
+British West African Colonies during the last few years, especially in
+Southern Nigeria,[13] is simply amazing. Most of them are far in advance
+of the times and cannot but remain a dead letter because, thank goodness,
+the existing machinery is not yet sufficiently extensive to carry them
+out. To make as few Ordinances as possible, and to ensure that such as
+are made shall be permanently useful, does not appear to enter into
+the official conception; and in the face of the growing objections to
+this rapidity and fertility of the official brain in forming premature
+legislation, not only on the part of the natives who are getting more
+and more confused, and—as the French put it—_déséquilibrés_, but by all
+people in affairs on the Coast who would desire that officialdom should
+move more slowly, carrying at each step real and understanding consent:
+the work of drafting portentous decrees, the exact meaning of which
+the very lawyers at home cannot comprehend, or reconcile with avowed
+intentions, goes merrily on.
+
+Punitive expedition follows punitive expedition. We have had a war in
+Sierra Leone, a war in Ashanti, two expeditions in the Gambia, a big
+expedition up the Cross River in Southern Nigeria, together with minor
+affrays, while in Northern Nigeria, which so far is producing no revenue
+and has not attracted a single merchant (and but one exploring expedition
+for possible mining purposes), one punitive expedition succeeds another
+at an interval of a few weeks at most. I will not now labour the case of
+Northern Nigeria, as that most interesting portion of our West African
+dominions is discussed at some length farther on, but it is quite evident
+that the attention of Parliament to the expenditure of Northern Nigeria
+is becoming increasingly urgent. Lagos alone, under the able guidance
+of Sir William MacGregor, has known the blessings of peace. Long may it
+continue to do so.
+
+Specific instances and examples of these general statements will be found
+scattered throughout this volume. It was, however, necessary to place
+them in collective form. In the next chapter, endeavour will be made to
+briefly indicate the lines upon which certain reforms might be attempted
+and the reasons for those reforms. Official optimism notwithstanding,
+it is an undoubted fact that, if something is not very shortly done to
+improve the prevailing system, the majority of the British West African
+Colonies will drift into a morass of financial confusion paralysing
+to their development and progress, while the native population within
+them will be comparatively poorer than in the neighbouring Colonies of
+commercial rivals.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+SOME NECESSARY REFORMS
+
+    “It is well known also that this personal system, at its
+    best, is full of abuses of the worst kind politically; the
+    Administrators and those who influence them, get to have
+    favourites, and even chiefs have their legitimate power,
+    influence and dignity interfered with because they refuse to
+    pay homage to their views. In consequence of all this, an
+    apparently successful Administrator is usually and sharply
+    followed by even worse confusion and more protracted wars than
+    were known before his advent. It is the history of all weak
+    despotic systems, having no basis in the country or among
+    the people sought to be governed or influenced.”—“The Crown
+    Colonies of Great Britain” (chapter vi. West Africa), by C. S.
+    Salmon, formerly Colonial Secretary and Administrator of the
+    Gold Coast, &c.
+
+    “The inhabitants of the country and the mercantile community
+    who provide the whole of the revenues, have no voice at all in
+    the governing of their Colonies and the expenditure of these
+    revenues, and I sincerely hope that the day is not far distant
+    when the African community will rise up and protest against
+    this Crown Colony system of government”—Mr. ARTHUR HUTTON,
+    President of the African Section of the Manchester Chamber of
+    Commerce. (Extract from speech delivered.)
+
+
+It will, I think, be conceded that, notwithstanding the extraordinarily
+important and revolutionising discoveries of Major Ross, to whom the
+entire credit of recent demonstrations belongs, the admirable work
+performed by the Liverpool[14] and London schools in the study of
+tropical disease and sanitary improvements on the West Coast, the chances
+of British West Africa ever becoming a possession where English men
+and women can flourish and multiply, is excessively remote; so remote,
+indeed, as to be outside the sphere of useful discussion. In fact,
+with the one possible exception of the Futa-Jallon uplands, when the
+Konakry-Kurussa railway line has connected them with the coast, West
+Africa as a whole is unsuitable, and will, according to all reasonable
+supposition, always remain unsuitable for European _colonisation_. The
+dominion of British West Africa must, therefore, be regarded not in the
+light of a colony properly so called, but as a vast tropical estate.
+
+From that postulate arises a query, or rather, series of queries. What
+are we in West Africa for? What do we hope to do there? What object took
+us there? What main purpose keeps us there? The answer is not for a
+moment in doubt. Commerce took us to West Africa; commerce keeps and will
+keep us in West Africa. It is the _fons et origo_ of our presence in West
+Africa. The day that it ceases to be so, West Africa ceases to be of use
+to the Empire. It will become a costly plaything, and the British people
+is too essentially practical a people to care long for toys of that kind.
+As in every other part of the world, commerce in West Africa is the
+outcome of supply and demand. There is a demand for the products of West
+Africa on the markets of the world, and there is a demand in West Africa
+for the products of European industrialism. The increased circulation of
+a portable currency in West Africa in the shape of silver coinage will
+facilitate the operations of commerce, but will not dislodge or alter the
+fundamental nature of that commerce. The development of a mining industry
+in this or that portion of West Africa will, while it lasts, modify the
+conditions of trade in the portion affected, but commerce will remain the
+backbone, as it ever has been, of European intercourse with West Africa.
+
+There is nothing that need occasion regret at the contemplation of the
+truth. Commerce is the greatest civilising agent. The steps upward in
+the ethical development of the human race have been synonymous with
+the spread of commercial relations, and the creation of the means and
+measures whereby their promotion has been successively extended. The
+most backward peoples to-day are, generally speaking, those whose
+secluded habitat renders their commercial transactions with the outside
+world scanty and precarious. In these days, when the noble meaning
+which attaches to “philanthropy” and “civilisation” is made the cloak
+to cover in West Africa so much that is vile, the excuse both sincerely
+and hypocritically given to explain away so much that is in painful
+contradiction, one needs, perhaps, to be reminded that such commonplace
+things as commerce and improved means of communication will do more
+to benefit the native than any number of attempts to impose laws and
+institutions unfamiliar to him, by violent even if well-meaning measures
+of so-called reform.[15] As a nation we should gain much and lose nothing
+in frankly admitting to ourselves that it is due neither to a desire
+to mend the ways of priestly theocracies, nor to alter the tyranny of
+the strong over the weak, which has led to the incorporation within
+the Empire of some thirty-five millions of West African natives, but
+the belief that West Africa constitutes a vast outlet for the free and
+unfettered development of British trade, and an equally vast field for
+the cultivation of products of economic necessity to ourselves. Thorough
+realisation of the fact would lead to more accurate appreciation and a
+truer sense of the direction which our policy should take in West Africa,
+if ultimate success and not failure is to attend it.
+
+Commercial development is then in an especial and peculiar degree the
+_raison d’être_ of our presence in West Africa.
+
+Now what are the principal factors in British West African commerce, and
+how are their claims to consideration in the administration of British
+West Africa treated under the Crown Colony system? Obviously the two
+principal factors are the European merchant and his customer, the native.
+The merchant directly supplies, the native indirectly supplies, the
+revenue which pays for the salaries of the officials and the general
+up-keep of the government, and if it be true, as it undoubtedly is,
+that the burden of taxation ultimately falls upon the native producer,
+it is equally true that, without the enterprise of the merchant, there
+would be no revenue and consequently no local funds for the support
+of administrative machinery. It follows, therefore, as a matter of
+simple justice, that the merchant should have a voice in the framing of
+legislation calculated to affect the internal politics, and consequently
+the commerce of our West African possessions. Apart from its justice,
+the claim of the merchant to representation in the affairs of our West
+African Empire has many features in its favour. He enjoys an expert’s
+knowledge, gained by long years of actual contact with the peoples of
+Western Africa. Experience has given him an insight into their customs
+and laws; an acquaintance with their peculiarities, with the working
+of their minds, with their inbred conservatism, which officials whose
+residence in West Africa—broken, as it is, by long intervals of leave—is
+usually of a very temporary or flitting nature, cannot hope to attain at
+any rate with the same completeness; and a mastery, even if it be only an
+instinctive mastery, of certain special characteristics which underlie
+native conceptions, and which have to be reckoned with in dealing with
+them. The merchant is consequently well fitted to be a most valuable
+assistant in the administration of British Western Africa.
+
+The fact is recognised by the French and Germans who share with us the
+vast proportion of influence in West Africa properly so called. Ever
+practical, the Germans have created an Advisory Board (_Kolonial-rath_)
+to their Colonial Office, composed for the most part of the leading
+men in the West African trade. The present Colonial Advisory Board has
+twelve merchants sitting on its Council.[16] In French West Africa,
+but on somewhat different lines, the merchant is similarly treated, and
+just recently the representations of the French merchants to M. Décrais,
+the then Colonial Minister of France, averted a great evil threatening
+the Ivory Coast in the contemplated cession to King Leopold’s nominee,
+M. Empain, of a practical monopoly over the whole of the gold-bearing
+districts of that dependency, although M. Empain[17] had the most
+influential support at his back.
+
+The French system, though far from perfect, is incomparably superior
+to anything we have in this country. It differs somewhat in the
+various Colonies, but is substantially composed of two Organisms, the
+Metropolitan Organism and the Colonial Organism. Under these dual
+Organisms, every Colony which is not directly represented in the French
+Parliament is represented at the Colonial Office by a delegate elected
+by vote of the white inhabitants of such Colony. In French Guinea, where
+the administration in force is in advance of that of any other French (or
+English for that matter) West African possession, a commercial delegate
+is regularly elected, and at the present moment a merchant, M. Gaboriau,
+representing the interests of that Colony, is attached to the Colonial
+Office. The weak point in the arrangement is, that the officials in the
+respective Colonies as well as the merchants have the right to vote in
+the election of a representative, with the result that very often the
+officials are in a majority. When that happens, a French politician, who
+can use his influence in promoting the officials who vote for him, is
+appointed. Each colony possesses a “Superior Council” or “Administrative
+Council” composed of the Governor, the heads of departments, and two or
+more merchants. In Senegal the merchant councillors have always enjoyed
+considerable power, and no step affecting the interests of the Colony is
+ever taken without the concurrence of the great Bordeaux merchant firms,
+which between them centralise the ground-nut trade (they themselves
+built it up), the staple industry of Senegal. Moreover, Senegal is
+particularly favoured in that it boasts a Deputy in the Chamber and a
+local General Council which enjoys large financial responsibility, the
+merchants—provided they do not fall out among themselves—being always in
+a majority in the said General Council.
+
+With us matters are altogether different. England, which passes for
+a country where common-sense is the cardinal virtue, refuses to her
+merchants any recognised _status_ in the administrative machinery of
+West Africa. It has been accurately asserted that the merchant is the
+_uitlander_ of British West Africa. He is seldom, if ever, consulted in
+the affairs of the country, and although Mr. Chamberlain has on more
+than one occasion given verbal assurances that no legislative acts
+affecting the natives (and _de facto_ calculated to influence native
+production—or, in other words, trade) would be promulgated without
+previously being submitted to the merchants for their opinion, decrees of
+the highest importance embodying a kind of revolution in our historical
+native policy in regard to the laws of native land tenure have just
+become law in Southern Nigeria, not only without the merchants being
+consulted, but without their being advised in any other way than by a
+perusal of the published Ordinances in the local Government Gazette. From
+time to time—and during the last two years with increasing frequency,
+consistency, and earnestness—the Liverpool and Manchester Chambers of
+Commerce, which between them represent the majority of the commercial
+interests of Great Britain in West Africa,[18] have approached the
+Foreign and Colonial Offices on their own initiative, sometimes
+supported by as many as ten or twelve other leading chambers in the
+Kingdom voicing industrial interests more or less directly affected by
+specific occurrences. When—I am speaking now of recent times—the Foreign
+Office has been either memorialised or waited upon by deputations from
+the Chambers, the question at issue has been one of international import,
+such for instance as the differential tariff against British goods in the
+French West African Colonies (1898), and the violation of the Berlin Act
+in the Congo Basin (1901 and 1902). In the first case, the action of the
+Chambers was surprisingly successful; in the second case, success has not
+yet attended their efforts.
+
+When, as in the majority of instances, the Colonial Office has been
+waited upon or written to, the object has referred to some legislation
+either contemplated or assented to, or to some measure of internal policy
+towards a native tribe or ruler. I cannot find that the Colonial Office
+has on any single occasion, in a matter of importance, consented to adopt
+the views of the men who, as subsequent events have manifestly proved,
+saw clearer than the permanent officials, and whose advice, if taken,
+would have avoided the perpetration of serious mistakes. In 1895 the
+Manchester Chamber and the local Chamber at Cape Coast strongly advised
+“that the King of Ashanti (Prempreh) be allowed to reserve all the rights
+that he now exercises over his people,” but that a British resident
+should be established at his Court, as the best means of ensuring a
+lasting peace with the Ashanti people, who, if they had erred, also
+had—as is historically admitted—grounds of legitimate complaint against
+the British authorities on various occasions. Prempreh, however, was
+arrested and deported, and from that moment the Ashantis never ceased to
+intrigue against the British until their discontent, fanned into flame by
+the injudicious proceedings of Governor Hodgson, broke forth once more
+and led to the last sanguinary expedition, which involved an expenditure
+of a quarter of a million of money.
+
+But the most notable instance at once, of the value of the merchants’
+expert knowledge and of the fatuity of lightly rejecting their counsel,
+is provided in the lamentable chapter in the history of Sierra Leone
+which began with the enforcement of the Hut Tax Ordinance in 1898, and
+which is not yet closed, whatever officialdom may say to the contrary.
+As I propose discussing this subject in some detail later on, it is
+sufficient to state here that the merchants almost went on their bended
+knees, figuratively speaking, in seeking to turn the Colonial Office
+from its purpose; that they entirely failed; that they were met by
+official assurances which were afterwards shown to be entirely erroneous;
+that their predictions and warnings were fulfilled to the letter; that
+their views were subsequently substantiated in every respect by the
+Special Commissioner despatched later by the Colonial Office to make
+investigations as to the origin of the rising, and that the persistent
+refusal of the Colonial Office to abide by the Special Commissioner’s
+report has reduced our oldest West African possession to such a
+condition that, if the railway now in course of construction through
+the eastern district does not—and there appears little or no hope that
+it will—entirely alter the present state of affairs, Sierra Leone under
+the present _régime_, and with the pressure of French competition in the
+neighbouring territories, is irretrievably ruined.
+
+Is it not time that in this respect at least something was done to
+bring the management of British West Africa more into line with modern
+requirements, and at a period when the commercial position of Great
+Britain in West Africa is everywhere threatened by foreign competition,
+to establish some working arrangement—call it a West African Council or
+Advisory Board or anything you please—whereby the accumulated experience
+of the men who are supplying the Government with the wherewithal to
+govern, should be used as an auxiliary force for the promotion of the
+general interests of Great Britain in West Africa? The nucleus of such a
+council or Advisory Board could be at once supplied.
+
+It is said that the merchants cannot agree amongst themselves. The plea
+lacks in truthfulness, and it is permissible to doubt whether it is
+sincerely put forward. Unquestionably there are rivalries in the West
+African trade. What trade is without them? But to argue that competition
+in trade is a bar to co-operation in matters affecting the general
+welfare of the country is a very narrow-minded position to take up.
+It is converting a legitimate, natural, and healthy phenomenon into a
+disqualification which nothing justifies. Where should we be in West
+Africa to-day but for our merchant pioneers? Suppose they had endorsed
+the official resolution of 1865 by withdrawing from the Coast, would the
+Union Jack be floating in West Africa except in Sierra Leone to-day? If
+the merchant had been devoid of political conception, and content to
+let his horizon be confined to those petty but inevitable aspects of
+commercialism which consist in under-selling a competitor, would not the
+abandonment of the Gold Coast have followed the battle of Katamansu, and
+would the richest portion of the Niger Valley be a British Protectorate
+to-day? Let those who suggest that the British merchant in West Africa
+is incapable of rising above sordid motives of self-interest remember
+MacGregor Laird. The merchant has everywhere preceded the administrator
+in West Africa. In his case the old adage must be reversed. It has been
+the flag which has followed trade, not trade the flag.[19]
+
+It is also said that the merchants are not unanimous with regard to
+certain features of West African policy. But can any one single out a
+body of men among whom variations of opinion on specific points do not
+occur? Do all the members of a Cabinet invariably see eye to eye on a
+particular measure to be introduced? Are not the very modifications which
+any given Bill must go through before being finally drafted and approved
+by the Cabinet as a whole a guarantee that legislation evolved from
+the interchange of ideas among the sundry persons concerned—and who,
+unless they be devoid of individuality, cannot all think alike on every
+point—will be the better for the destructive and constructive criticism
+to which it has been subjected? The merchants are in substantial
+agreement in what they consider the vital principles of British policy
+in West Africa, principles which informed public opinion is at last
+beginning to realise the urgency of upholding. No material divergency
+of views will be found among merchants as to the absolute necessity of
+respecting native land tenure, the need of careful finance, the danger
+of constant military operations, the indispensableness of preserving
+native institutions. If there be a charge against the merchants, it
+is that they have not hitherto sufficiently exercised their power of
+influencing successive Governments. They have not risen as they should
+have done to the height of their duties and responsibilities. They have
+allowed outsiders to perform a difficult and generally ungrateful work,
+which they themselves should have taken in hand—that of calling public
+attention to the urgency of reforms in West African administration. At
+critical moments they have been weak-kneed, and fearful of giving offence
+when they should have been resolute in standing by convictions which
+they knew to be sound. Their attitude is now happily undergoing a change
+which, if maintained, is bound to have lasting results for good.
+
+At no previous period in the history of British West Africa has
+the co-operation of the great merchant community in the task of
+administration been so pressing a necessity as it is to-day. Never could
+better use be made of such co-operation by the department responsible
+for West Africa as at present. In the increasing notice which is
+being given on all sides to West African affairs consequent upon the
+remarkable growth of European relations with that country and with the
+birth in West Africa of a modern mining industry, a host of dangerous
+advisers is arising. We see old errors creeping back in the guise of
+new verities, old misconceptions gaining fresh lease of life, exploded
+theories crowding forward to mislead and confuse. Appeals to force as
+the solution of all difficulties arising out of contact with a primitive
+people, contemptuous disregard of native laws and customs—the “damned
+nigger” theory in all its perennial beauty, insistent requests for lavish
+expenditure, heedless of plain economic facts, and so forth—these are the
+order of the day. Upon elementary errors of geography are grafted the
+crudest notions of the political and social condition of the Negro, the
+most amazing ignorance of history and past experience in every branch of
+West African lore. By a plausible inversion of facts, opponents of the
+wild and whirling talk indulged in regarding West Africa are denounced
+as sentimentalists, although it so happens that the denouncers draw the
+material which serves them as a basis for their contentions from that
+very discredited sentimentalism responsible for so many errors in West
+Africa, which portrays the native as an abject being, brutish, lazy,
+and degraded, greatly honoured by the bestowal of a bible, a suit of
+clothes; and a shilling, with a possible extra threepence thrown in as
+subsistence-money, for a hard day’s work. No doubt it is possible to
+exaggerate the importance of these _ad captandum_ effusions, but their
+volume is, perhaps, calculated to momentarily drown the voice of reason.
+Parrot-like reiteration, if sufficiently sustained, is apt sometimes to
+impress.
+
+At such a time the assistance of a trained body of men thoroughly
+conversant with the affairs of Western Africa, in a position to point to
+past experiences, to vested interests, to technical knowledge as their
+claim to competency, and to the feeding of the administrative machine
+as their claim to consideration, ought surely to commend itself to the
+Authorities. To persist much longer in the rejection of that assistance
+would be equally short-sighted and unjust.
+
+Another and an equally important question connected with the management
+of our West African Possessions, is the question of the Crown Agents. If
+any one attempted to define the duties of that body, he would be hard
+put to it to do so. They are here, there and everywhere, and their
+interference puts a premium upon extravagance and waste. The Crown Agents
+are an anomaly which ought to disappear. At present they constitute a
+sort of half-way house between the Colonial Office and the West African
+Governors, and are a positive obstacle to sound finance and good business
+methods. Enough examples of the extraordinary ways of the Crown Agents
+could be given to fill a volume. The West African Colonies are hampered
+right and left by the powers conferred upon this body. The Colonies
+are not allowed to purchase what they require in the shape of stores,
+equipment, material and so forth on the open market. Everything has to
+go through the Crown Agents, with the natural result that the Colonies
+have to pay 40 per cent. and 50 per cent. more than they would have to if
+allowed to invite tenders on their own account. Look at the way in which
+these railways have been and are being built.
+
+The construction is, apparently, the monopoly of one particular firm
+(under the direction of the Crown Agents); a firm which, as far as can be
+gathered, had had but little experience in railway construction before,
+metaphorically speaking, falling upon its feet in West Africa.
+
+The same firm holds the position of “consulting engineers” to the
+Colonial Office. Surely it is anomalous, from the purely business
+point of view, that a firm retained as “consulting engineers” to a
+Government Department in charge of West Africa should also be the actual
+constructors of the West African railways! The two parts strike one as
+incompatible. Consulting engineers, one would imagine, would be advisers
+and arbiters. All contracts should be publicly and openly tendered for.
+A very widespread impression prevails that the time and cost expended in
+the construction of these railways have been very great. The Gold Coast
+Railway was begun in February 1898; it is officially estimated to reach
+Kumasi early in 1904. Assuming that it does, it will have taken six years
+to build, which works out at about twenty-eight miles per annum—the
+distance from Sekondi to Kumasi being 169¼ miles.
+
+It is as yet too early to say definitely what the cost of the line will
+average per mile. Official estimates, we know, are not always reliable.
+In this case, even the official estimate is very high, viz. £8000
+per mile for the Sekondi-Tarkwa section, and £6300 per mile for the
+Tarkwa-Kumasi section.
+
+That dissatisfaction with the policy pursued up to the present (that is
+to say, the policy of constructing these railways under the “Department
+System,” or, otherwise stated, leaving their construction to the
+Crown Agents), is not confined to merchants, mine-managers and other
+revenue-payers of the West African Colonies, but is held by competent and
+highly placed officials, I reproduce the following remarks of Sir William
+MacGregor, made on the occasion of a visit to the Manchester Chamber of
+Commerce in 1900, and in reply to the following question of Mr. Arthur
+Hutton’s[20]:
+
+    “Do you think, from what you have seen, it (_i.e._ railway
+    construction) would be better done by contract?”
+
+    SIR WILLIAM MACGREGOR: “I believe at the present moment—and I
+    have said so to the Secretary of State—_I believe there would
+    be men living who are now rotting in their graves, if it had
+    been taken out of the control of the Crown Agents_....”[21]
+
+It is competently estimated that the Lagos railway, begun in 1896, will
+have cost £10,000[22] per mile by the time its 125 miles are in full
+working order—an enormous rate. The Crown Agents, through whom the
+moneys have been advanced to the Colony, exact 5 per cent. interest,
+whereas with the security they have to offer, they should easily be able
+to get them—and probably have got them—from the Treasury at 3 per cent.
+Why should the Colony be saddled with an extra 2[23] per cent. interest
+and find its liability for the current year on the railway loan increased
+to the enormous total of £54,000, or, say, 22 per cent. of the entire
+revenue?[24] Why should all indents be sent through the Crown Agents? The
+delays which this ridiculous system entail are only second in point of
+importance to the squandering of the public funds which goes on under it.
+The Crown Agents appear to think that they know more about the material
+needs of the Colonies than the officials in charge of the Colonies
+themselves. Two instances have been recently brought to my notice
+which would be laughable were they not so deplorably unbusiness-like.
+A certain West African Colony required a two-ton engine for a short,
+light railway. The request was duly put forward. After months of delay
+an eight-ton engine was sent out, too heavy, of course, for the rails to
+support it. It was entirely useless. Again, a scheme was drawn up for the
+construction of a bridge by the local official responsible. An estimate
+was made, and the plans and so forth were forwarded home. The bridge
+was urgently required. Months elapsed; then the Crown Agents, who knew
+nothing of the local conditions, instead of despatching the materials,
+sent out an entirely different counter-scheme, far more elaborate, far
+more costly, and totally unsuited to local requirements. The Colony is
+still waiting for its bridge.[25] I can only repeat that, whether avowed
+or not—in many cases, of course, it manifestly cannot be avowed—the Crown
+Agents are looked upon in official and commercial circles in West Africa
+as an unmitigated nuisance and a stumbling-block to progress.
+
+The needs of British West Africa at the present time may be resumed thus:
+(1) A Council or Advisory Board in which the merchant element shall be
+widely represented; (2) Tight control over the military element—fewer
+punitive expeditions, and more tact and patience in dealing with native
+races, the officials whose administration is virgin of wars to be looked
+upon as deserving of prior promotion; (3) Economy in Administration;
+(4) Thorough financial overhaul; (5) Elimination of the Crown Agents;
+(6) Open tenders for all public works; (7) Sanitation; (8) Scientific
+study of native peoples, laws and languages; (9) Scientific study of
+native products and improvement of native industries; (10) Maintenance
+and not murder of native institutions, upholding and strengthening of
+the power of the Chiefs; non-interference with domestic slavery in
+the Protectorates; preservation of native land-tenure; (11) A Civil
+Service on the lines of the Indian Civil Service; (12) A Civilian
+Governor-General.
+
+
+
+
+PART II
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+THE DISCOVERY OF NORTHERN NIGERIA
+
+
+The nineteenth century will ever be memorable for the exploration of the
+interior of the African Continent. It is difficult to realise when we
+read in the daily newspapers of steamers plying upon Tanganyika, ocean
+steamers of 4000 tons burthen ploughing their way through the brown
+waters of the Lower Congo, gun-boats patrolling the Niger, railways
+piercing alike the deserts of the Eastern Sudan and the forests of
+Equatoria, telegraphs extending in a network of lines across the Western
+Sudan and athwart the Great Central Lakes—it seems difficult, I say,
+when we read of these things to remember that at the close of the
+eighteenth century the interior of Africa was to all intents and purposes
+a blank, and that, even within the memory of most of us, the extent of
+geographical knowledge we possessed respecting vast regions many times
+larger than European Russia had made no progress since the days of
+Herodotus and Pliny. What a colossal work it has been, this solving of
+riddles which had baffled the world for ages upon ages! What prodigies
+of labour, of courage, of self-abnegation have been required to triumph
+over the obstacles which nature and man united in opposing to the early
+pioneers of African research! How many splendid lives have been immolated
+upon the altar of the African Moloch!
+
+Notwithstanding the remarkable progress in medical science and hygiene,
+and the potentialities of the modern rifle as a weapon of defence
+against the attack of man and beast, the difficulties of the African
+traveller at the present day are sufficiently great. Deadly maladies
+beset him on every side, and the chance of coming to a sudden and violent
+end is ever present. But these difficulties are as dust in the balance
+compared with the sufferings and privations which the first explorers
+of unknown Africa had to endure. Think of Park, and picture to yourself
+the position of a lonely European wandering about inland Western Africa
+in a thick blue fustian coat, with gilt buttons, keeping his precious
+notes in the crown of a top-hat, and kicked, buffeted, spat upon, treated
+with contumely and scorn, subjected to every possible insult, over and
+again a slave, exposed for hours at a time in a burning sun without
+water, often on the verge of starvation, racked by disease, and in so
+miserable a plight upon many occasions that death would have been a
+welcome relief—yet triumphing over everything and finally returning,
+notes and all, to his own land. Park’s experiences naturally occur to
+one in relation to the subject which it is proposed to treat in this
+chapter, because Park was the real discoverer of the Niger, which had
+been known in a vague manner to the ancients, and also to the Arabs (who,
+however, wrongly ascribed to it a westerly course, and identified it
+with the Nile),[26] and laid the foundation of that remarkable series of
+explorations which ultimately ended in Lander’s supreme success.
+
+In 1805 Park set out once more on his second and fatal journey, with the
+firm conviction that he would be able to prove to the world the accuracy
+of his own theory, viz. that the Niger and the Congo were one and the
+same. The peripatetics of that eventful voyage are known to every student
+of Africa. After incredible hardships, Park managed to descend the Niger
+as far as Bussa. There, in sight almost of the goal of his ambitions
+he perished, victim of a cruel fate, which drove his boat upon those
+treacherous rocks, since celebrated for having brought two Christian
+nations to the brink of war. There are aspects of Park’s character which
+leave something to be desired, but his defects are lost sight of in the
+magnificence of his courage, his indomitable will, and the never-failing
+optimism with which he pursued his task, undeterred by disappointment and
+unshaken by adversity. As an example of human perseverance and fortitude
+carried to its highest limits, Park probably holds an unique position
+among African explorers.
+
+Park’s tragic end increased the desire of Englishmen to solve the mystery
+of the Niger’s course, and in 1816 the British Government organised a
+dual expedition on a large scale for this purpose. One section, under
+Captain Tuckey, ascended the Congo, and the other, under Major Peddie,
+endeavoured to reach the Niger by a more southerly route than that
+adopted by Park, the idea being that both sections would ultimately meet
+somewhere in Central Africa. How fantastic was the scheme does not need
+to be pointed out, but it must be remembered that in those days the
+consensus of learned opinion favoured Park’s theory of identification
+concerning the Niger and the Congo. The expedition was an utter failure.
+The Niger section excited the resentment of the natives, and had to
+return after losing its chief. Captain Tuckey ascended the Congo as far
+as the first cataracts, which had baffled the Portuguese for 200 years,
+and then leaving the River, pushed North, along what used to be the old
+caravan route, to the Upper River, now covered by the Matadi-Stanleyville
+railway, constructed by Colonel Thys. He managed to strike the Upper
+River in the neighbourhood of the modern Leopoldville, but the trying
+landmarch had played havoc with his followers. Sickness broke out, and
+finally the expedition had to return with a loss of 75 per cent. of
+its European members. Several lesser attempts followed. They all ended
+disastrously, and it seemed as though the Dark Continent refused to
+yield up its secrets. But Englishmen were not to be beaten. The Western
+route was indeed given up as impracticable for a time, but what could
+not be accomplished from the West might be achieved from the North.
+True, the Desert had to be faced and traversed. But where the Phœnician
+and the Roman had dared and done, the Englishman might surely follow.
+The Desert had not balked the Sectaries of Mohammed, and long caravans,
+conducted by Tripolitan merchants, yearly made their way across those
+dreary solitudes. Why should not a party of Englishmen attach themselves
+to one of these caravans, and, protected by the influence of the British
+Government, armed with the authority of the Pasha of Tripoli, succeed
+in reaching the fertile countries of the South, whence rich supplies of
+ostrich feathers, skins, ivory, gold dust, and slaves found their way to
+the ports of the Northern littoral?
+
+[Illustration: SKETCH OF THE NORTHERN PART OF AFRICA]
+
+For many years the African Association had been collecting materials
+with a view to a possible penetration by the Northern route. Once the
+idea found favour with the authorities, Mr. Lucas was despatched by the
+Association to Tripoli. He did very little in the way of exploration, but
+brought back many interesting facts confirming Leo Africanus’ description
+in respect to the existence of flourishing kingdoms far away to the
+South, where arts and crafts had attained a high degree of development.
+Ritchie and Lyon followed Lucas. Lyon managed to reach the southernmost
+limits of Fezzan, on the borders of the Desert.[27] The Desert itself
+remained uncrossed, however, and the mystery of the Niger still unsolved.
+Then it was that the British Government determined to make a great effort
+to solve the problem, and fitted out an expedition, which did not,
+it is true, fulfil all that was expected of it, but which succeeded,
+nevertheless, in throwing a vivid light upon unknown Central Africa, and
+in disclosing to an astonished world the remarkable civilisation which,
+under Arab, Berber, and Fulani influence, had arisen in the heart of that
+black “Sudan” the “land of infidels,” and in popular conception,
+
+    “Of the cannibals that each other eat,
+    The anthropophagi, and men whose heads
+    Do grow beneath their shoulders.”
+
+And so the subjects of this sketch enter upon the scene—three men,
+Clapperton, Denham and Oudney, none of them perhaps conspicuous for
+ability, or qualified to make the most of their discoveries, yet animated
+all three with the ardent love of adventure for which their race has
+ever been famous, and whose united exertions enabled Western Europe to
+estimate the political and social conditions prevailing in the richest,
+most populated, most fertile, and undoubtedly most interesting portion
+of the Dark Continent. It is peculiarly fitting that the region which
+these Englishmen were the first Europeans to visit, and which we now
+designate by the name of Northern Nigeria, should have been ultimately
+incorporated with the British West African Empire by the foresight of
+another Englishman, Sir George Taubman Goldie, and the diplomatic ability
+of the gallant Joseph Thomson. A word now as to the three companions. Of
+Denham and Oudney, we know little beyond what can be gathered from their
+own writings; Oudney was a medical man, and Denham held the rank of Major
+in the army. Oudney was the real leader of the expedition, with which
+he had been entrusted by Earl Bathurst, then Secretary of State for the
+Colonies; but his untimely death had the result of depreciating the part
+which he personally played during its first two years’ work. Clapperton
+has written of him that he was “A man of unassuming deportment, pleasing
+manners, steadfast perseverance and undaunted enterprise; while his mind
+was fraught at once with knowledge, virtue and religion.” Major Denham’s
+action in joining a raiding party into Mandara (Eastern Bornu) has
+somewhat tarnished his reputation, in my humble opinion very unjustly,
+although it is quite true that his action in this respect was the
+cause of serious embarrassment to Clapperton later on. In criticising
+Denham’s conduct on this occasion, we must bear in mind in the first
+place that the Empire of Bornu, at that period, owing to various
+dynastic revolutions, and to the pressure of its powerful enemies on the
+East—Baghirmi and Wadai—was in a state of more or less constant warfare
+both within and without, and that warlike expeditions were constantly
+taking place, faction fighting against faction and tribe against tribe,
+warfare being in fact a more or less permanent institution in the social
+life of the country. And in the second place, we must also recollect that
+the members of the expedition had been instructed to examine and report
+upon all the various phases of life in the countries which they might
+traverse. Now it was impossible for Denham to obtain a thorough knowledge
+of the habits of the people without personally investigating the manner
+in which they waged war upon their neighbours. Apart, therefore, from the
+natural predilections of his soldierly instincts, which would lead him
+to find particular interest in matters of this kind, it may be assumed
+that Denham considered it his duty to act as he did. Years afterwards,
+Barth found himself in much the same predicament. As it happened, the
+adventure nearly cost Denham his life. The raided proved too strong for
+the raiders, and, assisted by the Fulani cavalry, completely defeated the
+latter. Denham’s escape was a marvellous one. He lost everything, and was
+wounded in three places.
+
+An account of Clapperton’s life is contributed by Lieut.-Colonel
+Clapperton in the preface to Clapperton and Lander’s journal of the
+second expedition to Sokoto, published by Murray in 1829. Hugh Clapperton
+was born in Dumfriesshire in 1788. At the age of thirteen he went to sea
+as an apprentice, and subsequently entered the Royal Navy. He served in
+the _Renommée_ and _Venerable_, and visited the East Indies. He then
+went to the Canadian Lakes, and participated in the American War of
+Independence. In 1816 he got his commission. A year later the British
+vessels on the Canadian Lakes were paid off and laid up, and Clapperton
+returned to England on half-pay. In 1820 he met Dr. Oudney in Edinburgh,
+and struck up a friendship which resulted in his accompanying the
+latter to Africa. Of intellectual attainments he had none, but he was
+large-hearted, generous, and tolerant; courageous in the extreme, gifted
+with an iron constitution, and of great physical strength. So much for
+the personal characteristics of the trio. We may now examine the nature
+of their work. The narrative of the expedition in which all three took
+part is chiefly contributed by Denham. While Denham was compiling their
+joint notes, Clapperton started for Africa again, and reached Sokoto
+from Badagry on the West Coast. The story of Clapperton’s second journey
+was written by himself, and afterwards published by his faithful servant
+Richard Lander, who was destined ultimately to follow the Niger down
+to the sea, thus finally solving the great problem in the attempted
+elucidation of which Park, Tucker, Clapperton and many others perished.
+
+The primary, and in many respects the main, obstacle which had to be
+overcome by Oudney and his companions, was the crossing of that portion
+of the Sahara which lies between Murzuk and Bornu, and which, to use
+Denham’s words, “Is made up of dark frowning hills of naked rock, in
+interminable plains, strewed in some places with fragments of stone and
+pebbles, in others of one vast level surface of sand, and in others,
+again, the same material rising into immense mounds, altering their form
+and position according to the strength and direction of the winds.”
+Caravan routes across the desert had existed for many centuries, and
+the commerce of the Central Sudan, with the parts of North Africa, was
+still an important one. The route which the travellers hoped to take, in
+company with a party of merchants, was the shortest and safest one, that
+which starting from Tripoli passes through Murzuk and Bilma to Kuka, then
+the capital of Bornu, situated on the shores of Lake Chad. The expedition
+arrived at Tripoli in November 1821, but did not reach Murzuk, capital
+of Fezzan, until the 8th April 1822. Here the Englishmen met with such
+a discouraging reception from the Sultan that on the 12th May, finding
+no chance of making any progress whatever, Major Denham started back to
+Tripoli to interview the Pasha, by whom the British Government had been
+promised every possible assistance. The Pasha proving as lethargic as his
+prototype at Murzuk, Denham left Tripoli in a white heat of indignation
+to report his conduct to the British Government. This did not suit the
+Pasha at all, and he sent three despatches after the irate Englishman
+begging him to return, as he had arranged for an escort to accompany the
+expedition to Bornu. The despatches reached Denham while the boat he had
+taken passage in was quarantined outside Marseilles, and he forthwith
+set sail once more for the Barbary shore. On the 29th November 1822, or
+a year after landing at Tripoli, the expedition left Murzuk, and set
+out upon its way to Bornu under the guidance of Bu-Kalum, a merchant
+of repute, much enamoured of pomp and show, and not over energetic in
+his movements. Within a few weeks’ march from Murzuk the members of the
+expedition were able to appreciate all the horrors of the trans-Desert
+slave trade in the sight of “more than 100 skeletons, scattered over the
+line of route, some of them with the skin attached to the bones.”
+
+On the 13th January they reached Bilma, famous for its salt pans, and
+on February 4th the discomforts they had endured in the desert received
+ample compensation by a view of “the great Lake Chad, glowing with the
+golden rays of the sun in its strength.” The natural emotion of the
+travellers is thus expressed by Denham, whose descriptions in the general
+way certainly do not incline to the picturesque:
+
+    “It conveyed to my mind,” he writes, “a sensation so gratifying
+    and inspiring that it would be difficult for language to convey
+    an idea of its force and pleasure.... My heart bounded within
+    me at the prospect, for I believe this lake to be the key to
+    the great object of our search, and I could not refrain from
+    silently imploring heaven’s continued protection, which had
+    enabled us to proceed so far in health and strength, even to
+    the accomplishment of our task.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+THE DISCOVERY OF NORTHERN NIGERIA—(_cont._)
+
+
+On the borders of the Lake the travellers observed the cotton shrub
+growing well and innumerable flocks of waterfowl disporting themselves.
+So tame were the latter that when approached they “merely changed their
+position a little to the right or left.” Following the Western shore of
+the Chad, the travellers pushed on to Kuka. Within a few days’ march
+of that once-flourishing city they began to realise how erroneous were
+the popular ideas of the “Sudan.” Instead of “ragged negroes armed with
+spears,” who, with the assistance of a few Arabs, managed to terrorise
+the country, the travellers were astonished to see a dense cloud of
+cavalry riding towards them, the guard of honour sent by the Sheik of
+Bornu to bid them welcome. With loud cries of “Blessing, blessing!
+Welcome! welcome!” the black warriors, clad “in coats of mail, composed
+of iron chain,” bore down upon them in orderly array, waving swords and
+spears. Surrounded by this imposing mass of horsemen they entered Kuka,
+and were received in audience by the Sheik. After a short residence in
+Kuka the companions separated, Denham going off with Bu-Kalum on the raid
+which turned out so disastrously for all concerned in it.
+
+The energetic Major subsequently visited a large portion of the Eastern
+parts of Bornu, located and ascended the Shari as far as Logon, then the
+capital of an important kingdom, and explored a considerable portion
+of the Eastern shores of the Lake. The information he collected in the
+course of his peregrinations and the maps of the district which he
+compiled were of very great value. The Southern and Eastern shores of
+the Lake were entirely unknown, the Lake itself practically unlocated,
+and the existence of the Shari unsuspected. It has always appeared to
+me that Denham never received the credit which was due to him for his
+exploring work. In view of his unscientific training, he was unable to
+turn his discoveries to the best advantage, but all things considered,
+his investigations proved in the main surprisingly accurate. His
+ignorance of African history, too, was very much against him. He was
+distinctly an unlettered man, neither possessed of a ready pen nor
+imbued with much imagination. The natural result of these shortcomings
+is apparent in every page of his Journal. We find him recording the
+most trivial incidents, and almost neglecting the social, political and
+ethnological problems with which he came daily in contact. The same lack
+of study and intelligent research—of education, really—is visible, but
+perhaps to a lesser extent, in Clapperton’s writings.
+
+It was in a sense a new world which the explorers had entered, a
+world of absorbing interest, where Eastern magnificence and barbaric
+display mingled with the naked barbarism of Africa; where semi-Arabised
+potentates went a-warring with mail-clad knights, and powerful Barons
+brought their contingent of retainers to assist their liege lord
+in his campaigns of plunder and conquest. The travellers had left
+nineteenth-century England, had plunged into the Desert, and had emerged
+therefrom amid a feudalism which recalled in many ways that of their own
+land in the Middle Ages. What an opportunity was theirs in this region,
+which for centuries, by reason of its fertility, had proved a magnet
+to attract the migration of races from the North, West, and East! Some
+twenty years later a man with a truly scientific mind went over the same
+ground, and then, and only then, did people realise all that Denham and
+Clapperton had left untold. But, although it was reserved for the genial
+and cultured German who succeeded Denham to show how profound is the gulf
+between a character such as Barth’s, studious and observant, replete
+with historical lore and scientific attainment, and men like Denham and
+Clapperton, notable only for their courage, dogged perseverance, and
+love of adventure, yet the prestige of the former, which increases rather
+than diminishes as our knowledge of these regions in question becomes
+more extensive, can never rob the Englishmen of the right of priority of
+discovery. They were the first white men to reach the Chad, to discover
+the Shari, to explore Bornu, Sokoto, and part of Kanem, and to describe,
+however indifferently, the wonderful social fabric, the picturesque
+civilisation, teeming with energy and industrialism, which existed, and
+exists, in the upper portion of the Niger Basin.
+
+While Denham bent his steps eastwards, Clapperton and Oudney left Kuka
+in a westerly direction with the intention of entering the Empire
+of Sokoto, founded by Othman Fodio (the Fulani reformer during the
+first years of the nineteenth century) out of the heterogeneous and
+mutually antagonistic Hausa States. Of this Empire and the remarkable
+race which created it, the travellers had heard a great deal while in
+Bornu. The two States were for the time being at peace, and the Sheik
+Mohammed-el-Kanemy, the virtual, and subsequently the absolute ruler
+of Bornu, made no opposition to the Englishmen’s visit. Shortly after
+leaving Katagum, at the small village of Murmur, Dr. Oudney, who had
+been ailing for many months, died, much to Clapperton’s distress. The
+sad event did not, however, deter his companion from pushing onwards,
+noting as he went the extraordinary beauty and fertility of the country,
+the numerous plantations of cotton, tobacco and indigo, the rows upon
+rows of date-palms, the splendid cattle, the luxurious foliage, and the
+industry of the inhabitants, tending their flocks and herds, toiling in
+the fields, carrying fruit and butter to the markets, weaving and dyeing
+their handsome cotton cloths. On January 19, 1824, Clapperton reached
+Kano, the great Emporium of the Central Sudan, his first feeling being
+one of disappointment, which was not diminished by the circumstance that,
+although he had donned his naval uniform, no one took the slightest
+heed of him, “but all intent on their own business, allowed me to pass
+by without remark.” This little incident, trivial in itself, throws an
+interesting sidelight upon the character of the gallant sailor, who was
+imbued with a proper sense of the dignity befitting his position and
+never failed to uphold it, as witness the following conversation which
+took place between him and the Governor of Kano. There is, by the way, a
+passage in this short dialogue which may be commended to the attention of
+certain missionary enthusiasts at the present time:
+
+    “‘How do you do, Abdullah (Clapperton’s native name)? Will you
+    come and see me at Hadyja on your return?’ I answered, ‘God
+    willing,’ with due Moslem solemnity. ‘You are a Christian,
+    Abdullah?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And what have you come to see?’ ‘The
+    country.’ ‘What do you think of it?’ ‘It is a fine country,
+    but very sickly.’ At this he smiled, and again asked, ‘Would
+    you Christians allow us to come and see your country?’ I said,
+    ‘Certainly.’ ‘Would you force us to become Christians?’ ‘By no
+    means; we never meddle with a man’s religion.’ ‘What,’ said he,
+    ‘and do you ever pray?’ ‘Sometimes; our religion commands us to
+    pray always; but we pray in secret, and not in public, except
+    on Sundays.’ One of his people abruptly asked what a Christian
+    was? ‘Why a Kaffir,’[28] rejoined the Governor. ‘Where is your
+    Jew servant?’ again asked the Governor; ‘you ought to let me
+    see him.’ ‘Excuse me, he is averse to it, and I never allow my
+    servants to be molested for their religious opinions.’ ‘Well,
+    Abdullah, thou art a man of understanding, and you must come
+    and see me at Hadyja.’”
+
+Clapperton came very satisfactorily out of that interview, but he did not
+fare quite so well in a later colloquy with Sultan Bello, the ruler of
+the Sokoto Empire, who asked him one day whether he was a Nestorian or a
+Socinian. The puzzled Englishman, who probably had never heard of either
+sect, excused himself by replying that he was a Protestant. The fact of
+having such a question put to him thousands of miles in the interior of
+the Dark Continent, supposed to be the abode of primitive savagery, was
+sufficient evidence of the intelligence of the inhabitants, of which
+he received abundant proof every fresh day he prolonged his stay in
+the country. Under the able guidance of Bello, Othman’s successor and
+“a noble-looking man,” as Clapperton calls him (with the aristocratic
+and finely cut features peculiar to the Fulani), the statesmanlike
+qualities of the ruling race and the wonderful commercial and industrial
+activity of the Hausa population, reached their full development,
+and law and order reigned throughout that portion of the new States
+which had accepted the Fulani dominion. The country had been divided
+into Provinces, to each of which Governors were appointed. Trade was
+encouraged, industries protected, and manufactures promoted. Prosperity
+was everywhere apparent, and, to quote the words used by Clapperton in
+the course of one of his interviews with Bello:
+
+    “The people of England could all read and write, and were
+    acquainted with most other regions of the earth; but of this
+    country alone they hitherto knew scarcely anything, and
+    erroneously regarded the inhabitants as naked savages, devoid
+    of religion, and not far removed from the condition of wild
+    beasts; whereas, I found them, from my personal observation, to
+    be civilised, humane, and pious.”
+
+Clapperton very much desired to continue his westward journey, and, if
+possible, strike the Niger, follow it to its mouth, and thus attain the
+supreme object of the mission; for the information which the traveller
+had obtained in Sokoto made it a practical certainty that the Niger
+discharged itself somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. But Bello objected,
+alleging the disturbed condition of the westward country, which had not
+yet been subjected. Much to his disappointment, therefore, the Englishman
+was compelled to forego his plans. He, however, parted on the best of
+terms with his enlightened host, who gave him a letter to the King of
+England, and begged him to return at the earliest possible opportunity.
+The letter is worth reproducing here:
+
+                    “BELLO TO KING GEORGE IV.
+
+    “In the name of God, the merciful and the clement. May God
+    bless our favourite prophet Mahommed and those who follow
+    his sound doctrine. To the head of the Christian nation, the
+    honoured and the beloved among the English people, George
+    the Fourth, King of Great Britain. Praise be to God who
+    inspires, and peace be unto those who follow the right path.
+    Your Majesty’s servant, Rayes Abdullah, came to us, and we
+    found him a very intelligent and wise man; representing in
+    every respect your greatness, wisdom, dignity, clemency, and
+    penetration. When the time of his departure came he requested
+    us to form a friendly relation and correspond with you, and to
+    prohibit the exportation of slaves by our merchants to Ataghar,
+    Dahomi, and Ashanti. We agree with him upon this, on account
+    of the good which will result from it both to you and to us;
+    and that a vessel of yours is to come to the harbour of Racka,
+    with two guns and the quantities of powder, shot, &c., which
+    they require; as also a number of muskets. We will then send
+    our officer to arrange to settle everything with your consul,
+    and fix a certain period for the arrival of your merchant
+    ships, and when they come they may traffic and deal with our
+    merchants. Then, after their return, the consul may reside in
+    that harbour, viz., Racka, as protector, in company with our
+    agent there. May God be pleased. Dated, 1st of Rhamadan, 1239
+    of Hejra. April 18, 1824.”
+
+Furnished with this letter, which he might well regard as a signal proof
+of success, and which augured a promising development of relations in
+the future, Clapperton travelled back to Kuka, where Denham joined him
+in due course, after his return from the Chad. The homeward journey was
+accomplished without mishap, and on January 25, 1825, the survivors of
+the mission reached Tripoli, after four adventurous years, replete with
+interest to their country and to the world.
+
+As already stated, Clapperton, when he parted company with Sultan Bello,
+did so with the full intention of returning at the earliest opportunity.
+Bello had shown himself most eager to establish durable relations with
+Great Britain, and had suggested that a British vessel should go to
+“Racka,” there to deliver the warlike stores which were to cement the
+understanding between his Christian Majesty King George IV. and the
+Fulani Ruler. Clapperton found the British Government eager to profit
+by the opportunity of concluding an alliance with so influential a
+potentate, and lost no time in giving Clapperton (who was raised to the
+rank of commander) authority to organise another expedition. Clapperton
+himself was all enthusiasm. On the 27th August 1825 he left England in
+H.M.S. _Brazen_, in company with his trusted servant, Richard Lander,
+and attended by three companions, Mr. Dickson, Captain Pearce, and Dr.
+Morrison. Dickson, for some unexplained reason, landed at Whydah with
+the intention of reaching Sokoto alone, and was never heard of again.
+Disappointed at not meeting any of Bello’s messengers at Lagos, which
+it appears had been arranged, Clapperton started his inland march from
+Badagry, after trying the Benin route and being dissuaded from adopting
+it by an English merchant established in that river. Shortly afterwards
+both Captain Pearce and Dr. Morrison contracted fever and died.
+Clapperton and Lander pushed safely onwards through Yoruba and Borgu, and
+arrived without further calamity at Bussa. The river was crossed below
+the rapids, and the expedition duly reached Kano by way of Zeg-Zeg. At
+Bussa, Clapperton gathered valuable information with regard to Park’s
+untimely end, fully confirming the previous information which had reached
+England.
+
+Everything seemed to promise well for the ultimate success of the
+mission. Unfortunately, however, there were a number of causes at work
+destined to wreck the sanguine hopes of its leader. As Clapperton neared
+his destination, a doubt of the reception awaiting him at Sokoto appears
+to have weighed heavily upon his mind. In the first place, Bello’s
+messengers had not put in appearance at Lagos; then the seaport of
+“Racka,” mentioned in Bello’s map, did not exist as such, which latter
+circumstance caused Clapperton to entertain serious misgivings as to
+his former host’s good faith. The absence of the messengers can easily
+be explained in view of the disturbed state of the country between
+Yoruba and the Niger, for the Fulani were then extending their conquests
+southwards, and the entire region was in a state of effervescence; but
+the misunderstanding about “Racka” is certainly strange. It is difficult
+to believe that Bello purposely intended to mislead. Bello had spoken
+of the “harbour” of Racka, but as is pointed out in the introduction to
+Clapperton’s journal, the Arabic word Bahr, used in the manuscript, does
+not necessarily signify sea, but any collection of water, whether lake
+or river.[29] On Bello’s map the Niger is designated as the “sea.” It
+is probable, therefore, that Bello was perfectly honest in describing
+“Racka” as a “harbour,” and that the _bahr_ of the manuscript should
+more correctly have been translated by “river” instead of “sea.” Racka,
+however, turned out to be an inland town, and the fact strengthened
+Clapperton’s suspicions. How the confusion arose it is impossible, on the
+documentary evidence available, to determine, but it seems obvious that
+Racka must have been meant for Rabba, an important town on the banks of
+the Niger, some distance below Bussa, and at one time the capital of the
+kingdom of Nupe.
+
+To this error of interpretation and geography was really due Clapperton’s
+subsequent misfortunes, because, had the suspicion that Bello was
+playing him false been absent from his mind, the intrepid Englishman
+would hardly have adopted the unwise attitude which he subsequently did
+in his negotiations with the Fulani monarch. That attitude proved his
+undoing, and the direct cause of his death. His mental condition did not
+enable him to grasp the fact that the entire state of affairs had changed
+since his first visit. Sokoto was then at peace with Bornu. But in the
+interval war had broken out again. Now, in addition to the presents that
+Clapperton had brought to Bello, his baggage also contained a number of
+presents, including war-stores, for the Sheik-el-Kanemy, ruler of Bornu,
+who had become Bello’s deadly enemy. It was manifestly impossible for
+Bello to allow these presents to pass through the country at such a time,
+and he wrote to Clapperton to that effect. To this Clapperton rejoined
+that he had been instructed by his Government to go to Bornu, that he
+had a letter from Earl Bathurst to the Sheik-el-Kanemy, and that he was
+in duty bound to carry out his mandate. This insistence aroused Bello’s
+mistrust, which seems to have been intensified by reports, doubtless
+spread through the instrumentality of Arab merchants dreading commercial
+competition, that Clapperton was a spy sent on behalf of the English
+Government to obtain information with the idea of facilitating a future
+invasion of the country by the British. Clapperton repeatedly, and with
+growing exasperation, pressed his wishes upon the Sultan, and Bello, with
+increasing distrust, as repeatedly declined to entertain them. The strain
+and the mortification were too great, even for Clapperton’s splendid
+constitution, and when Bello, yielding to his own suspicions, and to
+the advice of his counsellors, demanded the production of the presents
+intended for the Sheik, Clapperton fell seriously ill. After hovering
+between life and death for many days, he finally expired in the arms of
+his devoted servant, Lander.
+
+Thus terminated a career of unbounding usefulness. To England and to
+science Clapperton rendered great services, and had his intellectual
+capacity equalled his courage and determination, those services would
+have been even greater than they were. Of him we may truly say that he
+was a fine type of the English gentleman of the old school, without
+much erudition, but simple, God-fearing, honest, manly, a credit to his
+country and to his race.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE HAUSAS AND THEIR EMPORIUM.
+
+    “The province of Kano is the garden of Central Africa.”—Dr.
+    BARTH.
+
+
+It has been said of the Hausas that they are “superior both
+intellectually and physically to all the natives of Equatorial Africa.”
+The statement strikes one as being exaggerated. The intellectual average
+of the Hausa is undoubtedly lower than that of the Fulani, who, thanks to
+their genius for combination, administrative capacity, religious fervour,
+fighting superiority, and moral influence, completely defeated and
+subdued their former masters, although the numerical odds were greatly in
+favour of the latter. Again, the physique of the Hausas, though usually
+good, is certainly inferior to that of several of the Senegalese races,
+the Krus, the Kaffir stock, and probably also to one or two of the Bantu
+offshoots now inhabiting the basin of the Upper Congo. Much has been made
+of the fact that 500 Hausas trained by British officers beat off several
+thousand Fulani at Bida. But what chance have Fulani horsemen against
+Maxim guns and repeating-rifles? The Baggara Arab, universally reputed
+the bravest of the brave, fared no better against Macdonald’s trained
+Sudanese.
+
+These remarks are by no means put forward to depreciate the Hausa race,
+which is undoubtedly a very fine one, but by way of protest against the
+somewhat hysterical estimates concerning this people which find favour
+among those who profess to look upon them as excellent material for
+proselytising purposes, and are ever representing them to us as cruelly
+oppressed, groaning under the tyrannical sway of the wicked Fulani. The
+fact is, that a great deal of sentimental nonsense has been said and
+written, principally by the missionary element, about the Hausas, who
+are generally content with their lot, and having accepted Islam do not
+suffer from the predatory incursions of the conquering race. Fulani and
+Hausas grow up side by side: unions are frequent among them, and the
+well-to-do Hausa enjoys a somewhat similar position in relation to the
+ruling class as represented by the Fulani, as did the merchant classes in
+the old days in our own country in relation to the nobility and governing
+classes.
+
+It seems fairly well established that at least a portion of the Hausa[30]
+race inhabited the beautiful and mountainous region of Air or Asben, at
+the time (about 700 A.D.) when the Berbers—the modern Tuareg—driven south
+by Arab invaders, crossed the desert into Air and made themselves masters
+of that region.[31] These Asben Hausas belonged to the family or clan of
+Gober. They were the Goberawa, who claim to be the oldest and noblest
+branch of the Hausa race. This claim is very generally admitted by Arabic
+historians, and is expressly mentioned in the curious Fulani history
+of the Sudan communicated to Clapperton by Sultan Bello, son of Othman
+Fodio, in 1828.[32] Bello says of the people of Gober that they are “free
+born, because their origin was from the Copts of Egypt who had emigrated
+into the interior of the Gharb or Western countries.” This statement
+is particularly interesting as regards the possible Semitic or Eastern
+origin of the Gober family of the Hausas. Dr. Barth, whose authority in
+all matters relating to the ethnology of Western Central Africa still
+remains uncontested, although fifty years have now elapsed since his
+wonderful series of travels was accomplished, attributed to the Goberawa
+an original relationship with North Africa. The theory is borne out by
+the traditions of the Hausas themselves, who trace back their descent
+to a Diggera mother, the Diggera or Deggara being a Berber tribe which,
+at some remote period, was predominant in the city of Daura, one of the
+oldest centres of Hausa influence. To this day some of the Hausa Mallams
+speak vaguely of a former relationship with the East, and Canon Robinson
+during his stay in Kano was informed by “the most learned man in that
+city” that the Hausas migrated in early times from the Far East, beyond
+Mecca.[33] It is much to be deplored in this connection that the national
+records of the Hausas should have been destroyed by the Fulani at the
+taking of Katsena. Nevertheless, we may reasonably hope, now that the
+relations of Northern Nigeria with the outside world are bound to become
+more frequent, some further light may be shortly forthcoming which will
+help to elucidate a problem fraught with great attraction to all students
+of West Africa.
+
+After their expulsion from Air by the inflowing tide of Berber
+immigration, the Hausas gradually spread west and south, and in course
+of time formed themselves into seven states, viz. Gober, Daura, Biram,
+Kano, Rano, Katsena and Zeg-Zeg.[34] In Hausa mythology each of these
+States represented one of the seven legitimate children, offspring of
+the Diggera mother already alluded to, to each of whom was respectively
+given a task to perform. Thus Gober was the warrior _serki-n-yaki_
+(_serki_, Prince: _n_, of: _yaki_, fighting); Kano and Rano the dyers
+_saraki-n-baba_ (from the abundance of indigo _marinas_ or dyeing
+pits which represent one of the most considerable national industries
+of the Hausas); Katsena and Daura the traders _saraki-n-Kaswa_, and
+Zeg-Zeg the purveyor of slaves _serki-n-bay_ which, by the way, affords
+incidental proof, if any were needed, that in the matter of slavery the
+Hausas can hardly claim superior moral characteristics over their Fulani
+conquerors. Disputes between these various States were frequent, and
+although peopled by the same race, they were constantly in open warfare
+against one another. So great, indeed, was their mutual antagonism, that
+when the Fulani uprising took place in Gober, a considerable number of
+Hausas, principally from the province of Zanfara, rallied round Othman’s
+standard, fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Fulani against their own
+compatriots.
+
+[Illustration: A PURE-BRED KANO MAN (HAUSA)]
+
+Prior to their more or less forced conversion by the Fulani early in
+the nineteenth century, the Hausas were Pagans. True, the Hausa King
+of Katsena embraced Islam about the seventeenth century, Katsena at
+that period being the most flourishing city of Hausa—the “Florence of
+the Hausas,” as Richardson[35] calls it—in regular communication with
+Arabs from the East, and where the Hausa language attained its greatest
+richness and purity of form. But the great mass of the Hausa people were
+unaffected by the event. The precise nature of their rites before the
+conquest remains obscure. It appears possible however that, at one time,
+the Hausas, Songhays, and other tribes of the Niger Basin were snake
+worshippers. The Arabic historians Ahmed-Baba, Edrizi and El-Bekri state
+that in the time of the first Songhay king—placed at 679 A.D. by Dr.
+Barth, at 776 A.D. by others—the natives rendered homage to serpents.
+Colonel Frey,[36] in his interesting and ingenious study, suggests that
+this worship may have extended to the _manatus_ or _manatee_, that
+curious and somewhat uncanny creature being an inhabitant of the Niger
+River.
+
+Be that as it may, with the dawn of the nineteenth century a higher
+ideal and a purer faith rose up in Hausaland, and gained ground with
+marvellous rapidity. No doubt the result was not obtained without
+bloodshed, without cruelty, without what Joseph Thompson called “the
+terrible clamour and dread accompaniments of war.” Nevertheless, it was
+accomplished, and none but the wholly fanatical will deny that the Hausas
+have greatly benefited thereby. To an unbiased mind it must appeal as
+little short of marvellous that, in a period comparatively so short,
+a whole race should not only have been converted to Islam, but have
+remained devoted to its precepts when a lapse into Paganism would have
+been easy and, in a sense, natural. Apart from the added dignity which
+the acceptance of Islam imparts to individuals in their intercourse with
+their fellows in a pagan country, the explanation is probably to be found
+in the fact that, after the Fulani had unquestionably established their
+political domination over the Hausas, they none the less persistently
+continued their religious propaganda by peaceful means, and that,
+although a sense of security seems to have temporarily dulled their
+political instincts, it has had, on the contrary, a vivifying effect upon
+their religious ideals. It is, in any case, notorious that Islam, through
+the medium of Fulani preachers, is steadily sweeping down the River
+Niger, penetrating into pagan villages, amid the swamps and forests. The
+pagan Igarras whom the Niger Company long thought would constitute a
+solid bulwark and a sort of buffer-state against the invading tide, are
+now being fast won over to Islam, and Fulani _fikis_ are even met with
+behind Akassa, a few miles from the seaboard itself.
+
+It is no easy matter to correctly estimate the Hausa population in
+Nigeria, but of true Hausas there must probably be five or six millions,
+besides the numerous half-breeds of mixed Hausa and Fulani, Hausa and
+Kanuri, Hausa and Songhay, or Hausa and Tuareg blood, the latter of whom
+are chiefly to be met with in the northerly districts of the Sokoto
+Empire, and are of less muscular build than the true Hausas. The Hausas
+are incontestably the traders of Africa. Their commercial aptitude is
+renowned from the borders of the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Guinea;
+from the Gulf of Guinea to the Shari; from the Shari to the Red Sea.
+They are great travellers and have even been met with on the Sangha,
+the Ubanghi, and the Congo. Every North African port has its colony of
+Hausas. The same may be said of the West African Coast ports. There is
+not an important trading centre in the Niger bend but shelters a family
+or two of Hausas. Every year numerous Hausa caravans leave Nigeria for
+the countries lying at the back of the Gold Coast, the Ivory Coast,
+and Liberia, to gather the far-famed Kola or _guro_ nut, the fruit of
+_Sterculia acuminata_, which they convey with infinite care—delicately
+wrapped in leaves—and sell at an enormous profit in Kano, Gando, Zaria,
+&c., from whence the nuts are again transported to Bornu, Wadai, and even
+as far as Khartoum.
+
+[Illustration: A HAUSA FROM YOLA]
+
+If the trading instincts of the Hausas are remarkably developed, their
+industrial enterprise is still more so. It may with safety be declared
+that the product of their looms and dye-pits constitutes the most
+extensive article in the internal commerce of the Dark Continent. Kano
+is the head and centre of this intrinsically native industry, which
+is unparalleled in Africa, and Kano is, and in all human probability
+will continue to be, Manchester’s great rival for the African interior
+markets. Kano has been termed the Manchester and Birmingham of the
+Sudan, and having due regard to local circumstances and conditions, the
+comparison is strictly just.
+
+The number of Europeans who have visited Kano may still be counted upon
+the fingers of both hands. Arab merchants from North and East Africa
+have, however, been regular frequenters of the city since the conquest
+of Hausa by Othman Fodio, and for some considerable time past Kano
+has sheltered an Arab Colony with a recognised “Consul” who enjoys
+considerable influence. Its resident population has been variously
+estimated at thirty thousand to sixty thousand and its floating
+population at sixty thousand to two millions,[37] including the most
+varied elements, Hausas, Fulani, Kanuri, Baghirmis, Wadaiens, Arabs,
+Tuaregs, and Jews; merchants from Egypt, Tunis, Tripoli and Fezzan,
+from the Niger Bend, Adamawa and the Eastern Sudan. The city itself is
+of enormous extent, containing within its encompassing wall, which is
+reputed to be no less than fifteen miles in circumference, large tracts
+of land under cultivation. This immense wall played an important part
+in the periodic wars with Bornu at the beginning and middle of the past
+century. If the citizens of Kano did not think themselves sufficiently
+strong to meet their aggressors in the open, they simply shut the
+gates of the city and lined the walls, and the Bornuese hosts, deeming
+discretion the better part of valour, never attempted an assault. The
+situation of Kano is fairly elevated and otherwise good, but is unhealthy
+owing to the presence of large pools of stagnant water into which refuse
+of all kinds is indiscriminately pitched. The city is divided into
+different quarters, the Fulani quarter, Arab quarter, Hausa quarter, and
+so forth. The market is held daily and the most bewildering diversity of
+articles are always on sale: native cloths, silk embroidered _tobes_,
+leather and brass ware, ivory, weapons, rough agricultural implements,
+silver and brass ornaments and trinkets, antimony, ostrich feathers,
+live stock—cattle, horses and sheep—and foodstuffs innumerable. Long
+files of asses pass through from the distant Chad laden with natron for
+Nupe, and arrive from the Niger Bend weighed down with kolas. Camels
+are permanently in evidence, whether carrying on their sturdy backs
+salt-cakes from Bilma or European merchandise from Tripoli. Brilliantly
+attired Ghadamseen and Arab traders caracole on gaily caparisoned steeds,
+and the fierce-eyed, black-lithamed Tuareg of the desert (many of whom,
+by the way, are extensive property owners in Northern Nigeria) scowls
+darkly from the back of his swift-footed _mehari_. In this great city
+throbs and vibrates an industrial vitality unequalled in Africa.[38]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+THE HAUSAS AND THEIR EMPORIUM—(_cont._)
+
+    “Travellers who have been in the country tell us that Kano,
+    which is the Manchester of Nigeria, has an attendance annually
+    at its market of over one million persons.”—_Extract from a
+    speech by_ Mr. CHAMBERLAIN.
+
+
+The reputation of Kano as a manufacturing city is of comparatively
+recent growth, and although the Hausas have manufactured cotton for a
+considerable time (how long is uncertain, but we do know that their
+leather-ware[39] was widely sought after as far back as the beginning
+of the sixteenth century), the importance of Kano as a trading and
+manufacturing emporium only dates from the Fulani conquest and the
+destruction of Katsena by Bello. The Hausa cottons of Kano are in demand
+throughout the whole of the Islamic world of North, West, and central
+Africa. Lieutenant-Colonel Monteil, one of the few Europeans who have
+visited Kano, gives it as his opinion that the inhabitants of two-thirds
+of the Sudan, and nearly all the inhabitants of the Central and Eastern
+Sahara, clothe themselves in Kano cottons; while Dr. Barth estimated the
+annual export of cotton from Kano to Timbuctoo alone to amount in value
+to some £5000. The principal cotton articles manufactured by the Hausas
+at Kano are the _Tobe_ or shirt for men; the _Turkedi_ or women’s dress;
+the _Zenne_ or plaid; and the black veil or litham invariably worn by
+the Tuareg and very often by the Fulani, Kanuri, and Arab. The _tobes_
+are dyed various colours, while the _turkedi_ are always of that deep,
+dark blue obtained by repeated washings in indigo-pits for which the
+province of Kano is famous. Of the plaids a large selection is produced,
+varying in colour and in texture, some being composed of a mixture of
+silk and cotton, others of cotton only, others again of pure silk. Dr.
+Barth, speaking of this cotton industry of Kano, and remarking that the
+Province which produces it is also able to supply the corn necessary for
+the sustenance of its population, and possesses besides splendid pasture
+land, says: “In fact, if we consider that this industry is not carried
+on here as in Europe, in immense establishments, degrading man to the
+meanest conditions of life, but that it gives employment and support to
+families without compelling them to sacrifice their domestic habits,
+we must presume that Kano ought to be one of the happiest countries in
+the world; and so it is, so long as its Governor, too often lazy and
+indolent, is able to defend its inhabitants from the cupidity of their
+neighbours, which, of course, is constantly stimulated by the very wealth
+of their country.” What the lazy Fulani Governor of Barth’s days could
+not do, British power can, and indeed has; and having done so, is also
+able to ensure that by judicious management the national, social life of
+this interesting country shall continue in that state of happiness which
+struck the great German traveller.
+
+In addition to its cloths, Kano produces excellent leather work,
+principally sandals, sword-scabbards, riding-boots, shoes, despatch-bags,
+water-bottles and saddles, and annually exports large quantities of
+tanned hides. The people of Kano also produce iron weapons, rough
+agricultural implements and sword-hilts for German blades, which are, or
+used to be, imported from the north. The following estimate of the total
+trade of Kano, carefully compiled from Dr. Barth’s calculations, will
+give some idea of its extent and value at the time (1851) of the German
+explorer’s stay in the city. The sterling is arrived at by reckoning one
+million _kurdi_ or cowries—the chief currency in Kano—at £100.
+
+                           EXPORTS.
+
+    Cloths                                         £30,000
+    Slaves                                          20,000
+    Sandals                                          1,000
+    Miscellaneous leather-work                         500
+                                                   -------
+        Total                                      £51,500
+                                                   =======
+
+                            IMPORTS.
+
+    Kola nuts (from West Coast hinterlands)        £10,000
+    Ivory (from Adamawa)                            10,000
+    Salt (from the interior)                         8,000
+    Coarse silk (_viâ_ Tripoli)                      7,000
+    Arab dresses (from Tunis and Tripoli)            5,000
+    Beads (Italy, _viâ_ Tripoli)                     5,000
+    Sword-blades (from Germany, _viâ_ Tripoli)       5,000
+    Manchester goods (_viâ_ Tripoli)                 4,000
+    Muslins (England, _viâ_ Tripoli)                 4,000
+    Rose oil (_viâ_ Tripoli)                         5,000
+    Copper (from Wadai and Bahr-el-Ghazal)           2,000
+    Woollen cloths (_viâ_ Tripoli)                   1,500
+    Spices and cloves (_viâ_ Tripoli)                1,500
+    Sugar (from France, _viâ_ Tripoli)               1,200
+    Tin                                              1,000
+    Egyptian dresses                                 1,000
+    Needles (from Germany, _viâ_ Tripoli)              800
+    Common paper, ditto                                500
+    Razors (from Syria)                                300
+                                                   -------
+        Total                                      £71,800
+                                                   =======
+
+To which might be added a transit trade in natron, passing through Kano
+from Bornu on its way to Nupe, yielding about £1000 “passage-money.” The
+remarkable total of £123,300 is thus arrived at.
+
+Of late years the trade of Kano, both in respect to imports and exports,
+has undergone some change, and is bound to become still more modified
+as time goes on. For instance, the buying and selling of slaves is a
+thing of the past, or soon will be. The imports of ivory from Adamawa
+are nothing like what they were in Barth’s time. The internal salt
+trade has largely been extinguished, the native article being unable to
+compete with European salt. But with this exception—salt—the increased
+importation of European goods into the Niger and Binue since 1880, that
+is to say, since the spread of British commercial enterprise in the
+Upper River and its tributary, does not appear to have affected the
+caravan trade of Kano with the Tripolitan ports, _viâ_ the oases of
+Bilma, Fezzan, and Murzuk. In 1897, for instance, the British Consul for
+Tripoli estimated the goods sent to Sokoto (for Sokoto read the State
+of Sokoto, of which the city of Kano is the commercial and industrial
+centre and the terminus of the Tripoli caravans, the trade of the city
+of Sokoto being insignificant) by caravan across the desert at £46,000.
+These figures compared with Barth’s tables of Tripoli imported goods are
+actually more considerable than the total value as estimated by Barth
+half a century ago. This is a very important fact, and by bearing it well
+in mind we shall avoid falling into an error which might have unfortunate
+consequences. Then, again, a comparison of the articles imported in 1851
+and 1897 is instructive as affording proof of the conservatism of the
+African and the old-established nature of this trade.
+
+                 DR. BARTH’S ENUMERATION, 1851.
+
+    Coarse silk, Arab dresses, sword-blades, Manchester goods,
+    muslins, rose oil, woollen cloths, sugar, spices and cloves,
+    needles, paper.
+
+                   FOREIGN OFFICE REPORT, 1897.
+
+    Cotton and woollen cloths, silk waste, silk yarn, box rings,
+    beads, amber, paper, sugar, drugs, tea.
+
+We may go even farther back than this. According to the exceedingly
+interesting and minute accounts of “Shereef Imhammed” and “Ben Ali, a
+Moorish trader,” given in the first published proceedings of the African
+Association in 1791, the trade between Tripoli and the Kingdom of
+“Cashna,” _i.e._ Katsena (Katsena being then in its prime), consisted of
+the following articles:
+
+                 IMPORTS TO KATSENA FROM TRIPOLI.
+
+    Red woollen caps, check linens, light coarse woollen cloths,
+    baiza, cowries, barakans or alhaiks, small Turkey carpets, silk
+    (wrought and unwrought), tissues and brocades, sabre-blades,
+    Dutch knives, scissors, coral beads, small looking-glasses.
+
+                 EXPORTS FROM KATSENA TO TRIPOLI.
+
+    Cotton cloths, slaves, goatskins “of the red and yellow dyes,”
+    ox and buffalo hides, gold dust, civet.
+
+The “slaves” item is another proof that the Hausa Kings of those days
+were extensive slave dealers. It is curious to notice that in the map
+attached to this old work, a reproduction of which faces page 38, Kano
+does not even appear, which shows that at that period it had little or no
+importance as an industrial centre.
+
+[Illustration: HAUSA LOOM AND SPOOL]
+
+The articles imported in 1897 were, therefore, substantially the same as
+in 1851 and even in 1791. Then as now, English cotton and woollen goods
+figured prominently amongst them, and it is evident that up to 1897 large
+profits were to be earned by Europeans (indirectly) and Arabs (directly)
+in the caravan business between North Africa and Nigeria. Seven years
+after the opening in regular form of the Western fluvial route, Northern
+Nigeria is seen to have been importing from Tripoli more goods than in
+1851.
+
+It is not due then to commercial development from the south, but to
+another reason, that the caravan traffic with Tripoli has fallen off
+since 1897. That reason is to be found in the internal political
+convulsions of which the Chad basin has been the scene for the last
+eight years, and to the external political confusion brought about by
+the action of European Powers, or rather of one European Power—France.
+When Rabah conquered Bornu in 1893-94, the Ghadamseen merchants suffered
+heavy losses through the sacking of Kuka, and trade was entirely stopped
+for a time. Rabah saw his mistake, and endeavoured to remedy it by
+liberal promises of future support and protection. He kept his word,
+and trade revived. Then came the advance of the French down the Shari,
+followed by a renewed period of anarchy in Bornu, as Rabah hurriedly
+flung himself across the river into Baghirmi to arrest the march of the
+invaders. Under Fad-el-Allah, Bornu became a cockpit of internecine
+strife. With the consolidation of French influence in a portion of the
+Chad region the merchants of the north took heart of grace once more, but
+the recent pillage of sundry rich caravans by the Kanem Arabs, various
+confederations of Tuareg and other adherents of the Sheik-Senussi, has
+demonstrated that at present the French are unable to ensure the safety
+of caravans, however desirous they may be to do so. These repeated
+blows have played havoc with the Nigerian-Tripoli caravan trade, and
+those merchants who are still bold enough to face the risks favour the
+Wadai route. In 1900 the caravan trade with Wadai was still important,
+amounting in the aggregate, according to the French Consul at Tripoli, to
+£210,000, imports and exports included. But it is quite certain that 1901
+and 1902 will show a notable decrease of those figures.[40]
+
+Are we to conclude, therefore, that Kano’s internal trade with the
+north and east has gone never to return, and that the caravan traffic
+is a thing of the past? That is the view which appears to be generally
+adopted.[41] I confess that I do not share it, and it would certainly
+be an immense misfortune for Kano and Northern Nigeria generally if such
+were, indeed, the case. The main sources of Kano’s wealth and prosperity
+do not depend upon the influx of trade from the south, but upon the
+industry of its inhabitants in catering for the requirements not of
+Europe but of Africa. It is a great _dépôt_ of Negroland for Negroland,
+and if Kano could no longer find purchasers for her cotton and her
+leather work, her prosperity must needs decrease and her wealth decline.
+Now it is obviously in our interest that this should not happen. It
+should be the object of our policy to maintain, strengthen and assist the
+commercial and industrial position of Kano, the centre of Hausa activity,
+the magnet which attracts a flow of internal commerce from all points of
+the compass. How can that best be done?
+
+In the first place, it is necessary to understand the main caravan system
+of North-West Central Africa. The accompanying map (facing p. 84) shows
+the principal routes, and a broad survey of the subject induces the
+belief that it is the interest of both England and France to encourage
+the revival of the caravan traffic between Kano (or, in other words,
+Nigeria) and Kano’s interior markets, or, at any rate, to do nothing to
+still further curtail it. The wider the stream of internal trade both
+in and out of Nigeria the greater the prosperity of the country, and it
+would be as equally pedantic for us to object if the French, who are in
+more or less theoretical possession of the majority of Kano’s markets,
+succeed in eventually diverting _in toto_ the caravan traffic from the
+Tripoli route towards Timbuctoo and In Salah, as it would be for the
+French to interfere with a possible re-opening of the long-abandoned
+eastern route (not marked in the map) towards the Nile. But there should
+be an understanding between the two Powers on the subject of this
+internal trade, which is centuries old, and which certainly cannot be
+displaced in a day; in fact, never can entirely be displaced, except by
+oppressive and selfish interference, either on the part of the French or
+ourselves. Any action tending to compel a diversion of trade in such
+or such a direction would prove in the long run to be anything but
+advantageous to the Power which attempted it. For instance, if France
+were to start putting prohibitive taxes on exports and imports to and
+from Kano over the frontier in order to forcibly confine the circulation
+of trade to certain channels, it would lead to serious trouble with the
+natives, which would cost more to cope with than any prospective profit
+to be derived from such action. Similarly, if the authorities of Northern
+Nigeria were to actively discourage Kano’s trade with the territories
+under French protection, in order to develop Kano’s trade with the south,
+it would only lead to a decrease in the productive capacity of Kano, and
+consequently lessen the prosperity of Northern Nigeria as a whole.
+
+Economic changes are bound to occur, especially when the British and
+French railway systems proposing to tap the Niger valley are more
+advanced, but there is plenty of scope for both to earn an honourable
+livelihood, and the central fact to be borne in mind is that Kano’s
+trade is, and must be, as previously stated, more of an internal than an
+external one. Before Kano can purchase such cottons, woollens and other
+articles as it absorbs, from the south, that is to say, from European
+merchants, it must be in a position to give, in return, articles of
+African produce that will pay the European merchant to buy. To suppose
+that Kano will be able to do so until the iron horse has penetrated well
+over the Kano side of the Niger, or until a carriage-road the model of
+the one the French are building from Conakry to Futa-Jallon connects
+a navigable point on the Niger with Kano, is to cherish an illusion.
+Transport charges would kill any chance of profit in a transaction which
+differs in every particular from the nature of Kano’s internal trade. The
+one would be a direct transaction, to stand or fall on its merits; the
+other can best be described as a multiplicity of transactions with the
+purchasing commodity represented by native cloth, a useless article so
+far as export to Europe is concerned. In fact, it is no easy matter to
+determine how Kano will be able to feed a railway from the coast without
+the creation of some great industry suitable for European export,
+corresponding with the oil-palm industry of the coastwise regions. One
+thing at least is certain, that if through extravagance in construction
+and working, or other causes, the section of an eventual railway from the
+coast to Kano, which passes through the oil-palm bearing regions cannot
+be made to pay, the economical outlook for the railway when it leaves the
+oil-palm zone is anything but cheerful. Of course, where the main purpose
+is strategic, considerations other than commercial come into play, and
+the matter assumes a different aspect.
+
+To resume, it would seem really desirable that a mutual arrangement
+between England and France should be arrived at as regards freedom
+of circulation for the internal traffic of the Chad region. I urged
+that course in the _Pall Mall Gazette_ when the negotiations for the
+Convention of 1898 were pending. Recent events suggest that the proposal
+might still be adopted with advantage to both parties concerned, and as
+a measure both just and wise in the relation it bears to the legitimate
+interests of the natives.
+
+It remains to be said in this connection that the principal articles
+imported into the Upper Niger by the Niger Company, which up to the
+present has enjoyed the monopoly of the Upper Niger trade, are salt,
+brass, copper and iron rods, white damask cloths, white brocaded cloths,
+indigo-dyed cloths (in imitation of, but inferior to, the cloth produced
+from native looms and dyed in Kano), cowries, rice, yarn and gunpowder.
+The salt which is imported chiefly from England has a large sale, being
+greatly superior to native manufactured salt from Bilma and the shores
+of Lake Chad. The copper, brass and iron rods are chiefly used for
+conversion into arrow-heads. As for the cloths, they do not equal the
+products of the Kano looms, and unless of the finest white damask, are
+rejected by the Mohammedans. They find, however, a ready sale among
+the Pagans. These cloths are, as a rule, exchanged against ivory, gum,
+bees-wax or rubber, bought by Hausa traders, who in turn take them to
+Kano and there exchange them for native-made cloth.
+
+I have entered rather fully into the trading and industrial statistics
+of Kano because, apart from the interest naturally attaching to the
+commercial life of one of the most flourishing cities of Africa, the
+centre of a great industrial and agricultural district, a knowledge
+of these particulars enables one, I think, the better to realise what
+are the distinctive characteristics of the Hausa race—Kano being
+pre-eminently Hausa. The Hausa is primarily and essentially the business
+man of Africa. He is not and never will become a governing personality.
+His aims are commercial, and he neither seeks nor desires any other
+state. Of political ambition he has none, and although strongly attached
+to the Mohammedan faith, and good-humouredly contemptuous of his pagan
+customers, he is quite content that they should remain pagans to the
+end of the chapter, willingly resigning the attractions of proselytism
+into the hands of the Fulani. Withal he is a cheerful, happy-go-lucky
+sort of person, generally kind to his slaves, and content to gang his
+own gait in his own way. That is the natural state of the Hausa. If we
+take him away from his business habits and fashion him into a soldier,
+we perforce place him in the midst of artificial conditions of life,
+where his individuality become lost. He is then merely interesting in the
+sense that our other African levies are interesting, that is, from an
+exclusively military point of view.
+
+The Hausa can be drilled into a good soldier, and under decent treatment
+will show much patient endurance and bravery. Like all Negroes, if
+adequate supervision be lacking, he will take advantage of the prestige
+attaching to his uniform to tyrannise over the aborigines among whom he
+is quartered.
+
+In his military capacity the Hausa has rendered good service in the Benin
+and Ashanti campaigns; in the course of innumerable skirmishes on the
+lower Niger, throughout the operations so admirably carried out by Sir
+George Goldie against Nupe and Ilorin, and so on. It should, however, be
+remembered that on those occasions where the Hausa soldier has fought
+under the British flag, he has gone into battle with the consciousness
+of possessing weapons which gave him an incontestable superiority over
+his antagonist. He has never been called upon to face a native force
+officered by Europeans, and armed with quick-firing rifles similar to
+his own. His capacity to rise to the occasion if necessity demanded it
+need not be queried. That is a matter upon which military men personally
+acquainted with the Hausa’s qualities and defects as a fighting unit are
+alone competent to give an opinion.[42] But until the Hausa has been put
+to the test, it may be well not to found too high an estimate of his
+military abilities, bearing in mind that, unlike the French West African
+recruits, he does not come of a fighting stock.
+
+[Illustration: HAUSAS DRILLING]
+
+As already stated, it is in his natural sphere of commerce and industry
+that the Hausa shines. In that respect he stands without a rival on
+the continent in which he lives. His manufacturing skill is not only
+remarkable for Africa: it puts Europe to the blush. For closeness,
+durability and firmness of texture, the products of his looms and
+dye-pits eclipse anything that Manchester can produce. In a land of
+reputed indolence, his activity is as conspicuous as his enterprise. He
+makes an ideal commercial traveller, peddling his wares over enormous
+distances, and seldom failing to secure a considerable profit on his
+transactions.
+
+The Hausa has so identified himself with the commercial requirements
+of a vast region that his language has, throughout it, been adopted as
+the necessary vehicle of inter-communication for all that appertains to
+trade and commerce. The Hausa language is _per se_ specially well fitted
+for extensive propagation among African races. Reclus[43] has said of
+it that by its fine sonorousness, the richness of its vocabulary, the
+simplicity of its grammatical structure, and the graceful equilibrium of
+its phrases, Hausa deserves to rank among the foremost languages of the
+Dark Continent; and Sir Harry Johnston includes it with English, French,
+Italian, Portuguese, Arabic and Swahili among the great languages of New
+Africa.[44]
+
+The first vocabulary of Hausa was compiled by Mr. James Richardson, who,
+in company with Dr. Barth and Dr. Overweg, crossed the desert to Lake
+Chad in 1850-51.[45] Upon his return from Africa, Dr. Barth himself
+published a work upon the Hausa, Fulfulde and Kanuri[46] languages.
+Messrs. Schön[47] and Krause subsequently devoted much study to the
+subject, and the former issued a remarkable book on the Hausa language
+in 1876, of which there appeared a revised edition in 1885. Later on,
+Mr. John A. Robinson, M.A., a scholar of Christ College, Cambridge, made
+further researches into Hausa during his stay at Lokoja. After his death
+the Hausa Association was formed (1891) with the object of continuing
+his labours, and in 1894 the Reverend Charles Henry Robinson, M.A.—now
+Canon Robinson of Ripon—was despatched by the Association to Kano.
+Canon Robinson and his companions Dr. Tonkin and Mr. Bonner spent three
+months in Kano, and in due course the former published an account of his
+experiences[48] which excited much attention, coming as it did so soon
+after Lieutenant-Colonel Monteil’s remarkable journey from St. Louis
+to Tripoli through Kano had revived the world’s interest in the famous
+Hausa city. Since then the Hausa Association has published four works
+on the Hausa[49] language. In 1897 the Cambridge University appointed a
+University Lecturer in Hausa, and the authorities of Christ’s College
+established a Hausa scholarship open to graduates of the University or
+others who have passed an examination in at least one Semitic language.
+The initiative thus displayed by the Hausa Association[50] and by Canon
+Robinson is worthy of all praise, and it is greatly to be hoped that
+further efforts may be forthcoming which will extend so useful a field of
+inquiry to the other great languages of Northern Nigeria, Fulfulde and
+Kanuri.
+
+The Hausa language appears to belong to the Hamitic group, although
+it contains numerous Semitic idioms, and also a large number of words
+borrowed from the Arabic.
+
+Some controversy exists as to whether Hausa can be properly considered a
+written language or not. Canon Robinson stoutly maintains that it is, and
+even goes so far as to assert that there is no race north of the Equator,
+nor indeed in all Africa outside Egypt and Abyssinia, which has reduced
+its language to writing, or made any attempt at the production of a
+literature.[51] That is, as Americans say, a tall order, and I beg leave
+to doubt the accuracy of the statement. Sufficient interest attaches to
+the point to merit a cursory examination.
+
+In the introductory remarks to his “Magana Hausa” already referred to,
+Mr. Schön speaks of himself as the writer of a “previously unwritten
+language”—meaning, of course, Hausa. Commenting upon that passage in
+the preface to the “Hausa-English Dictionary,” Canon Robinson infers
+that, when Schön wrote the words quoted above, he was probably unaware
+that the Hausa possessed any kind of literature at all. That seems to
+me a gratuitous assumption, for Barth, who came before Schön, and whose
+works Schön would naturally have consulted, more than once declares
+categorically that the Hausa language is _not_ a written language.
+Yet Barth knew perfectly well that the Hausa had possessed historical
+manuscripts, since he lamented their destruction by the Fulani at the
+capture of Katsena, which was then, as Kano is to-day, the seat of
+culture of the Hausa race. It may therefore be asserted with every
+probability of exactness that Schön spoke _en pleine connaissance
+de cause_ when he referred to himself as the writer of a previously
+unwritten language. Now, can the existence of a certain number of
+manuscripts in the Hausa language, and written in Arabic characters, be
+considered sufficient proof that Hausa itself is a written language?
+If so, then Fulfulde is a written language, because Bello committed
+to writing in the language of his race, and in Arabic characters,
+a history of the Sudan; and Kanuri is a written language, because
+Koelle[52] published in 1854 a Kanuri grammar founded upon a collection
+of manuscript literature in the tongue of the Kanuri and in Arabic
+characters. In that case it follows that, contrary to what Canon Robinson
+affirms, the Hausas are not the only African people north of the Equator,
+outside Egypt and Abyssinia, who have reduced their language to writing
+or aimed at producing a literature. If the first claim is tenable, if,
+that is to say, Hausa is a written language, then the second claim put
+forward is not tenable. I do not propose to continue this appreciation
+into more technical channels, which would probably be wearisome to the
+reader, and will content myself with quoting from a letter received by
+me some little time ago from a British Officer then in charge of the
+Military Intelligence Department of Northern Nigeria, whose knowledge
+of Hausa has been officially declared to be “unique.” Being unable to
+reconcile Canon Robinson’s statements that it was a written language,
+with the facts as they presented themselves to me, I finally turned to my
+correspondent, whose competency I was well aware no one would venture to
+dispute. This is what he says:
+
+    “Robinson’s Hausa Grammar was universally pronounced a failure
+    by all officers of the West African Frontier Force, and they
+    could make no progress by using it. I have already told you
+    that the natives say they could not understand him. Moreover,
+    one hardly talks the same class of Hausa to any two Hausas
+    consecutively; but after a couple of minutes’ conversation
+    with a native one knows his dialect, and what words to use,
+    and how to pronounce those words, the pronunciation varying
+    considerably.[53] The Hausa writing, very little of which
+    exists, is simply Hausa written phonetically in Arabic
+    characters, there being no recognised way of spelling one
+    word, which fact alone proves how little the written language
+    is used. Nowadays Hausa is scarcely ever written, except
+    isolated words, such as ‘Sariki’ and ‘bature.’ The Hausa
+    writing is called ‘Ajumi,’ and when such words are used in
+    an Arabic letter, it is usual to prefix the word ‘Ajumi,’ in
+    order to warn the reader that the following words are Hausa,
+    not Arabic. The Arabic used is primitive, but correct. As the
+    Hausa vowel sounds cannot always be correctly represented by
+    the Arabic vowel marks, there is only the context to guide
+    one in many Hausa written words, and the task of spelling out
+    every word phonetically is a laborious one, especially when
+    the proper sound cannot in all cases be represented. I have
+    seen some of the most learned Mallams in Nigeria experience
+    great difficulty in reading Canon Robinson’s specimens of Hausa
+    literature. Canon Robinson attaches much too much importance to
+    the Hausa writing. The few specimens that exist are interesting
+    as curiosities, but the language is useless as a means of
+    communication.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+THE NATIONAL INDUSTRY OF SOUTHERN NIGERIA
+
+
+The palm-oil tree is the staple product of the whole of the coastwise
+regions of West Africa from Sierra Leone[54] right down to the Lower
+Congo. The Niger Delta may be considered as the central region of its
+production. Since regular administration was set up in the rivers,[55]
+the output of the oil and kernels of the palm-oil tree has been as
+follows:
+
+                         OIL.
+
+    Year.       Quantity.                  Value.
+
+    1892-93   10,079,039 gallons         £482,803
+    1893-94   12,207,658    ”             637,625
+    1894-95   Not ascertainable           505,637
+    1895-96   10,672,106 gallons          514,303
+    1896-97   9,350,559     ”             465,583
+    1897-98   8,476,955     ”             410,134
+    1898-99   8,113,820     ”             397,870
+    1900[56]  Not stated in C. O. report  491,131
+
+The great majority of the oil is sent to England, but France takes a
+considerable quantity (£70,880 out of the total of £491,131 in 1900), and
+Germany also purchases a fair amount (£28,094 in 1900).
+
+                       KERNELS.
+
+    Year.       Quantity.                  Value.
+
+    1892-93   34,710 tons                £301,483
+    1893-94   39,224  ”                   334,144
+    1894-95   Not ascertainable           295,313
+    1895-96   36,640 tons                 296,397
+    1896-97   38,043  ”                   290,125
+    1897-98   39,529  ”                   295,545
+    1898-99   40,528  ”                   305,791
+    1900[57]  Not given in C. O. report   430,016
+
+The output of kernels seems to be steadily on the increase. Germany is
+far and away the largest purchaser of Nigeria’s kernels. In 1900 she
+took more than two-thirds—to the value of £346,997—of the total for that
+year.[58] Thus in eight years the fruit of the palm-oil tree in Nigeria
+is seen by these figures to have yielded no less than £6,453,900. The
+production has certainly been greater, as the Niger Company’s exports of
+oil and kernels are only included for 1900, the quantities and values for
+the preceding years not being publicly accessible.
+
+[Illustration: MAKING PALM-OIL]
+
+The chief centres of palm-oil production in the Niger proper as distinct
+from the Delta, or, in other words, in the territories formerly under the
+administrative sway of, and still almost entirely tapped in a commercial
+sense by, the Niger Company are Ogute Lake, Atani, and Onitsha. The Ogute
+Lake produces about 4500 casks of oil annually; it is connected by the
+Orashe River, for small craft drawing four feet in the dry season and
+eight feet in the rainy season, with Degama, but is only open from the
+Niger River during the rainy season (for craft drawing seven feet) or say
+from August to the end of December. It is about seventy hours distant
+from Burutu. Atani yields about 6000 casks per annum. It is open from the
+sea _viâ_ Burutu or Akassa all the year round. Distance from Burutu about
+two and a half days. Onitsha will probably exceed before long the other
+two districts mentioned as a productive centre, the population being very
+dense; distance from Burutu, three days. For kernels, Assay is the chief
+centre, producing about 6000 tons annually. It is open all the year round
+from Burutu for craft drawing about five to five and a half feet, and
+between July and October the rains permit of navigation for craft drawing
+up to twelve feet; passage from Burutu, twenty-four hours. Illushi, Idah,
+Lokoja, Egga, Jebba, and Shongo are other important centres.
+
+The commerce derived from the oil-palm tree, apart from its paramount
+importance in a commercial sense, has many and varied features of
+interest. It was, for example, so far as the oil is concerned, the
+trade which first took the place of the slave traffic. The beverage
+extracted from it is mentioned in some of the oldest references to the
+Dark Continent—thus we know that Cambyses “delighted” in its flavour,
+and Herodotus tells us that amongst the gifts with which he despatched
+the mission of the Ichthyophagi to Ethiopia was “a cask of palm-wine.”
+Collecting the palm-tree’s fruit may also be said to be the national
+industry of the West African Negro almost all along the coast—certainly
+in Southern Nigeria.[59] It is an industry which permanently employs
+hundreds of thousands of Negroes, men, women, and children, and gives
+work to many thousands of white men, from the merchant to the steamship
+owner, from the manufacturer to the chemist. Often in watching the long
+files of carts conveying the bulky barrels in which palm-oil is shipped
+home from the west coast, passing along the Liverpool streets, or the
+rows upon rows of these casks and heaps of palm-kernel bags piled up
+on the dock’s side, have I marvelled at the ignorance of those persons
+who inform us that the native of West Africa will not _work_. Not work,
+with this testimony to his labours! Not work, when hundreds of English
+workmen are busy unloading, rolling and carting these proofs of the
+Negro’s industry every month in the year, every week in the month, every
+day in the week almost! Not work, when it is borne in mind that this
+brilliant yellow stuff with the penetrating smell, shipped in hundreds of
+thousands of gallons from West Africa, is brought down to the coast bit
+by bit, in small receptacles, often from considerable distances inland,
+on the heads of these idle and lazy people; that the kernels in those
+greasy, dirty-looking bags have each been extracted with infinite trouble
+from an extremely hard shell, that 400 of them are required to make a
+single pound of kernels, and that the market value in Southern Nigeria
+of those 400 kernels, to the native, is the maximum sum of one penny! A
+stone-breaker’s job in this country is not looked upon as a sinecure, but
+I beg leave to doubt whether the stone-breaker would be content with one
+penny per every 400 stones he breaks.
+
+[Illustration: DUKE-TOWN, OLD CALABAR, SOUTHERN NIGERIA]
+
+There is not another tree in the whole world which produces money with so
+little expense as this particular crop. In Nigeria the oil is prepared
+usually in small quantities, in the small villages scattered over the
+country. After being prepared, it is in many instances carried by women
+and children to some central native market, situate as a rule on the
+edge of a waterway. There it is bought by the middlemen so called, who
+are really the carriers of the country, and put by them into the casks
+previously supplied by the European merchants. The casks are packed
+away in canoes, and the middlemen paddle down through the creeks for
+distances varying with the length and character of the waterways, to the
+merchant’s factory at the mouth. The merchant then pays for the oil,
+gives the middleman an empty cask in exchange for the full one, and
+ships the latter by the first steamer that comes along, the middlemen
+coopering it up and making it as sound as possible before starting off
+on their homeward journey. Palm-oil is used in the manufacture of soap
+and candles.[60] It is also employed in South Wales and the States in
+the preparation of tin plates, the plates when white hot being dipped in
+palm-oil, which gives them their smooth and glassy surface. The demand
+for palm oil increases annually, and for many years to come is likely to
+keep up with the supply.
+
+The transaction which takes place between the merchant and the middleman
+native is the simplest feature of the trade. Before that stage has
+been reached there are ramifications innumerable. A middleman chief,
+for instance, will send ten or twelve canoes up the creeks with goods
+which he has purchased on trust[61]—a large proportion of the trade is
+still carried out on the trust system, credit being given as between the
+merchant and the middleman, the middleman and the producer, and again
+the producer with other producers further afield, the nearest producer
+becoming thus a middleman or carrier for his more distant countrymen—each
+of the canoes being in charge of one of his “boys,” with enough men to
+convey the craft to a certain market. There that particular canoe remains
+until the goods it has got on board are sold and the canoe is full of
+oil. The same thing occurs in the case of every market in the district,
+and so on all over the country, the canoes sometimes remaining several
+weeks away.
+
+Apart from the porterage, purchase, putting into casks, conveying by
+water, final sale and shipment, which employs such numbers of natives in
+their respective _rôles_, there is the collection and preparation to be
+taken into account before a complete idea can be formed of the varied
+stages the palm-oil industry goes through until the product is landed
+on our shores. There is, first of all, the process of climbing the tree
+to get the fruit, which, of course, is at the top. After removing the
+fruit the natives are able, when the nut is properly ripe, to shake it
+out of the spiky casing in which it grows. The nut is something like a
+plum-stone, only bigger, and contains the oil to the thickness of about
+one-eighth of an inch. Inside is the kernel, itself enclosed in a very
+hard shell. To extract the oil the outer skin or shell has to be split
+or peeled off. The nuts are usually flung into an old canoe, the natives
+trampling upon and crushing the outer skin, and then put into boiling
+water, which brings the oil to the surface. But there are a good many
+ways of preparing the oil, and its different characteristics were at one
+time supposed to be due to different ways of preparation on various parts
+of the coast. That does not appear to be the opinion now, for the theory
+is hardly sufficient to account for the extra quantity of glycerine such
+as is met with in Bonny and Old Calabar oil, and the larger proportion of
+stearine[62] which exists in the hard kinds of Brass and New Calabar. We
+have now come to an end of the history of the collection of palm-oil, and
+the second use to which the oil-palm lends itself arrives upon the scene.
+
+[Illustration: FILLING PALM-OIL BARRELS, SOUTHERN NIGERIA]
+
+With the breakage of the nut and the extraction of the oil, there
+is left the kernel in its covering. The kernel trade did not become
+general[63] until a few years ago, the kernel being usually either left
+to decay or to reproduce, and for a considerable time it was pointed
+out that hundreds of thousands of pounds were annually lost in this
+way. But within a comparatively recent time the natives have been
+induced to break the hard shell in which the kernel is enclosed, and the
+latter are shipped home in yearly increasing quantities from Nigeria
+by the merchants, who dispose of them to the African Oil Mills[64] or
+some other seed-crushing establishment in Liverpool, or send them to
+Hamburg: Germany, as already stated, being the largest buyer. The kernel
+yields an oil which in its concrete form is white in contrast with the
+yellowy-red or deep red or ochre colouring of the oil in the nut itself,
+and is the principal ingredient in Sunlight and other soaps of a similar
+character. In its chemical properties it is almost identical with the oil
+pressed from the inside of the cocoa-nut—_i.e._ copra—which is known as
+“cocoa-nut oil.” It is exclusively used in the manufacture of soap.
+
+Owing to the very great labour entailed in cracking the shells, a task
+generally performed by putting the nut on a stone and breaking it with a
+stone or stick, and the immense amount of time wasted by so primitive a
+method, it cannot but be a matter for astonishment that some mechanical
+contrivance has not been devised and put to general usage whereby the
+process might be accelerated and facilitated. It is certainly not due to
+any fear of exhausting the supply by too rapid production, for, so far
+as any conclusions can be based upon the quantity of oil brought down to
+the factories, Nigeria is still a long way off producing anything like
+the full quantity of kernels available. The fact is that several attempts
+have been made in this direction, but with one exception[65] they have
+failed, and the failure has discouraged further efforts. Cracking
+machines of various kinds have been imported, but through neglect, the
+deadly effect of the West African climate upon machinery of any kind—more
+especially perhaps in so very humid a part as the Niger Delta—and other
+causes, they have speedily become “old iron.”
+
+[Illustration: A PALM-KERNEL MARKET IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA]
+
+Although it may seem presumptuous for an outsider to make such a
+suggestion, I cannot but think that something more might be done, in
+a systematic and concentrated way, to bring about so great a reform
+as the cracking of the kernel-shells by machinery could not fail to
+be; quadrupling as it would the total production, and releasing a
+large amount of labour, which could be turned into other channels. In
+view of the very meagre remuneration which the native is willing to
+accept per pound’s weight of kernels cracked by hand, it is difficult
+to understand how any real trouble, that decent wages and tactful
+management were capable of overcoming, could be apprehended in the
+utilisation of sufficient labour to keep the requisite steam-power at
+work, more especially as, it is known, the shells would provide a fairly
+efficient fuel ready to hand. Moreover, would machinery elaborate enough
+to necessitate steam-power be absolutely essential? Could nothing be
+invented in the way of importing automatic hand-cracking machines, the
+cracking taking place under white supervision at the factories, and the
+middlemen carriers bringing in the undecorticated nut, instead of, as at
+present, the kernel itself?[66]
+
+There seems to be much need in this great oil-palm industry, as in other
+native industries in West Africa, of co-operation among the official
+and commercial classes, which make up the white population—missionaries
+excepted—for the adoption of some thorough and comprehensive plan of
+teaching the natives more scientific methods of production. It is no use
+saying the thing cannot be done. It can be done, and has been done. The
+most notable example is provided in the history of ground-nut cultivation
+in Senegal, which has by no means reached perfection,[67] or anything
+like it, and yet is now realising a million sterling per annum. That
+striking result was attained by patient, continuous and unflagging
+perseverance on the part of the Bordeaux merchants, coupled with the
+friendly support and assistance of the Government, without coercion of
+any kind. It took some time, of course, but the results have thoroughly
+justified the policy pursued, and Senegal to-day[68] is the foremost
+vegetable-oil producing country in the world. We hear a great deal about
+technical education in West Africa, carpentering, brick-making, and so
+forth, all very admirable in their way, but the time and money spent
+in these directions could be more profitably engaged by perfecting the
+_existing native industries_ of West Africa, and by creating new ones,
+which would do more than anything else to increase the prosperity of
+the country, and at the same time be based upon sound science, for
+the natural instincts and aptitude of the Negro are pre-eminently
+agricultural. Far more lasting good could be achieved thus.
+
+Officials and merchants working side by side for a common aim, and
+science—that is what West Africa needs. What a reflection it is upon our
+Administration in West Africa, that the commercial position of Sierra
+Leone, for instance, should be declining, year by year, largely owing to
+a passion for keeping up a form of taxation which is repugnant to the
+natives, and does not even pay the cost of collection, when thousands of
+pounds annually are wasted in the Sherbro district alone by the natives
+merely collecting the kernels, leaving the oil to rot off—all for want
+of encouragement, and the teaching of scientific methods of production,
+while acres upon acres of rubber-producing land in Lagos have been
+impaired by a similar absence of preliminary common sense. Perhaps the
+most curious feature of the whole business is that which consists in
+turning round and blaming the native for wilful destruction which—in the
+latter case mentioned—he was never taught how to avoid. If the oil-palm
+industry were taken in hand in practical fashion, there is no possible
+doubt that an enormous development would ensue. But while the want of
+sympathy and combination, one might almost say the latent opposition,
+between the official and merchant class continues, I cannot see that
+matters will be different to what they are. The remedy lies very largely
+with the Authorities.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE ADMINISTRATION OF NORTHERN NIGERIA
+
+
+The Empire has few more experienced servants in the Tropical African
+field than Sir Frederick Lugard. Like every other man who has become
+prominent, he possesses critics, and no doubt, like every one else, has
+made mistakes, but, speaking generally, he is very highly thought of.
+Whether General Lugard, with his military instincts and training, is the
+right man in the right place, is a matter upon which opinion may differ.
+Among military men who have served England in Equatorial Africa, no one
+more distinguished could have been chosen. The only reflection which
+his appointment gave rise to was an impersonal one. Nobody doubted his
+capacity, but it was suggested that the delicate problems of internal
+politics existing in Northern Nigeria required civilian rather than
+military habits of mind to cope with.
+
+Those problems are infinitely complex. Seldom did a situation call for
+greater display of tact, sympathy and wise discernment. Seldom was there
+a more abundant supply of combustible material ready to take fire upon
+the initiation of a policy which should lack these qualities. Never a
+field more promising of desirable results to reward a just and humane
+stewardship, whose highest aim should be the contentment and prosperity
+of the people committed to its charge, and whose guiding spirit should
+be patience, and, as Sir Andrew Clarke puts it, “use of the power of
+imagination.”
+
+Northern Nigeria, it need hardly be observed, differentiates absolutely
+from the southern province, in the nature of its soil, configuration,
+altitude, vegetation: in its ethnologic material, in religion, culture,
+social condition, political organisation. We have passed out of the pagan
+belt, and are in contact with a more advanced type of civilisation; we
+have left the forest and merged into the plain, into open park-like
+country, sparsely timbered as a rule when compared with the southern
+regions; pasture land, agricultural land covered with fields of waving
+millet and _masara_, peopled by splendid herds of cattle, where horses
+and long-nosed sheep are reared. Animism or fetishism no longer
+predominates; a revealed religion has replaced it. Semitic infusion is
+now everywhere apparent. It is a new world we have entered—a strange
+jumbling of two continents, an amalgam of cross-migratory currents
+severally attracted by the fertility of the soil; an industrialism
+at once remarkable, deeply interesting and of great promise. A rough
+feudalism, a loose central authority, a barbaric splendour in the midst
+of primitive surroundings, a system of rule superior to anything we have
+yet encountered, and of which the strongest binding cord is religious
+faith; large cities, extensive cultivations, tanneries, dye-pits,
+looms. A number of States, owning allegiance—more religious and racial
+than political—to a supreme chief, and appointing their own district
+governors, treasurers, war ministers, judges; controlling their own
+armies, managing their own exchequers. Society divided into two distinct
+classes—the aristocrats and the plebs—which correspond to divergencies of
+race, each class confined to its own quarter, rarely mingling in licit
+intercourse, perhaps more so than formerly, yet perpetuating a strain of
+pure stock which must have existed in Africa for at least two thousand
+years. Away from the towns, in favoured districts, herdsmen of Semitic
+blood; planters, agriculturists. In the towns, statesmen, warriors on
+the one side; on the other, manufacturers and traders. Riven through the
+country, highways of commerce, centuries old, branching to north, east
+and west, over which the tramp of feet and hoofs resounded when Rome held
+North Africa, and built her forts to the desert’s edge—aye, and beyond
+what man and nature have made the desert’s edge—oxen and mules carrying
+natron, and asses bearing kola, camels with salt, Eastern spices, and
+bales of cotton from far-off Benghazi, cotton brought from Manchester,
+silks from France, needles and writing-paper from Germany, beads and
+looking-glasses from Venice; richly caparisoned steeds with their
+gaily-clad riders, _meharas_ swift of foot, with the _lithamed_ Tuareg
+bestriding them; the Fulani shepherd driving along his flocks. Over there
+by the lake, herds of elephants roam untroubled, while the Shuwa, with
+his hair trimmed _à l’Egyptienne_, wanders restlessly, as though seeking
+to pierce the mystery of his origin.
+
+[Illustration: SKETCH MAP OF NORTHERN NIGERIA SHEWING DIVISION INTO
+PROVINCES]
+
+Into that country the white man has come in accordance with the ancient
+prophecy, descendants of the white man who first visited it. The same
+race, the dominating race, which ever aspires after empire, and which,
+on occasion, forgets that the sword untempered by the plough has proved
+disastrous to many Empires.
+
+As before stated, two years elapsed between the advent of the Crown
+Colony system in Northern Nigeria and the publication of the first report
+by Sir Frederick Lugard. With no official data available whereby the
+Commissioner’s policy or the Government’s intentions could be gauged, the
+public were only able to judge of the trend of both one and the other
+through the scanty information communicated by the news agencies, or
+by the vehicle of private letters from Europeans resident in Northern
+Nigeria. It cannot be said that such news as did filter through the
+thick veil in which Northern Nigeria lay wrapped prior to the belated
+publication of Sir Frederick Lugard’s report in February 1902 was of a
+reassuring nature. On the contrary, while necessary police-work in Bornu
+was so entirely neglected that the French found themselves compelled by
+a combination of local circumstances to practically run that country
+for us, to give sanctuary to its lawful ruler, to beat off and finally
+track to his lair the man who, following his father’s evil way, was
+creating a desert wherever he passed; events in Sokoto, which had been
+in constant treaty relations with Great Britain’s representatives since
+1884, seemed to justify the worst fears, and to corroborate the late
+Mary Kingsley’s prediction that “three months of Crown Colony form of
+government in the Niger Territories will bring war, far greater and
+more destructive than any war we have yet had in West Africa, and will
+end in the formation of a debt far greater than any debt we now have in
+West Africa, because of the greater extent of territory and the greater
+power of the native States, now living peacefully enough under England,
+but not England as misrepresented by the Crown Colony system.” The news
+received was exclusively of a military nature. It recorded the exploits
+of numerous expeditions against native rulers, the “smashing” of this
+Chief and the other, foreshadowed a large increase in the Frontier Force,
+and a further extension of the area of punitive undertakings. Every
+steamer for Burutu had its complement of officers on board for Nigeria,
+and the military element appeared to reign supreme. At the same time the
+propagandist efforts of Bishop Tugwell at Kano, which should never have
+been allowed, resulted in what was predicted of them when started, viz.
+failure, utter and complete. Disappointment had its inevitable sequel
+in the shape of a strengthening of the repressive theory for Nigeria by
+the apostles of peace. Bishop Tugwell’s chief assistant, the Rev. J.
+A. E. Richardson, on his return hastened to get himself interviewed by
+Reuter, described “the Emir of Sokoto and the King of Kano as the chief
+opponents of civilisation in this part of the world,” and expressed
+his hope that the former would be speedily “dealt with.” In the same
+interview, this youthful and enthusiastic reformer was fain to admit the
+existence in the territories of the aforesaid “opponents of civilisation”
+of “fields upon fields of cultivated land,” houses “splendidly made,”
+“broad thoroughfares,” “big, beautiful gardens,” &c. The existing
+“civilisation,” although not of the Exeter Hall pattern, had at least
+something to recommend it! The theme was taken up at home by another
+bishop, who delivered a sermon which was simply an appeal to brute force
+in Northern Nigeria, and provoked a good deal of comment. Observers
+noted an almost exact parallel between Northern Nigeria and East Africa,
+where the havoc wrought by the unchecked forces of militarism and
+religious bigotry is of public notoriety.
+
+When Sir Frederick Lugard’s report appeared its pages were eagerly
+scanned, and it was with intense relief that a clear, definite line of
+action was traced therein, and that an apparently determined intention
+was noted to make a stand against certain undesirable features of policy
+which had already become conspicuous. In fact, so outspoken were some of
+Sir Frederick Lugard’s remarks that it was permissible and legitimate
+to suppose that many of the things which had occurred did not meet with
+his approval. Another reflection suggested itself from a perusal of the
+report, viz. that the Commissioner was being hampered in the pursuance of
+his task by the absence of the right type of political assistants. Events
+subsequent to the report have tended to confirm rather than weaken that
+impression, which, however, is, after all, but an impression, and cannot
+at present be asserted as a fact.[69]
+
+The chief points to be gathered from the report, as bearing upon
+the Commissioner’s policy, were (1) maintenance of Fulani rule, (2)
+necessity of taking in hand the affairs of Bornu, (3) advisability of
+accepting with great caution mere accusations of slave-raiding, (4) harm
+perpetrated by crude information, (5) recognition that more good can be
+effected “by getting into touch with the people” than by “a series of
+punitive expeditions and bloodshed,” (6) no compulsory religious training.
+
+A programme such as this cannot fail to command universal approval, and
+if Sir Frederick Lugard is determined to unflinchingly carry it out he
+can count upon the thorough-going support of every single person in this
+country who takes a lively interest in British West Africa. Nay more, he
+can rely with confidence upon receiving the most strenuous backing should
+it at any time become apparent that, in his attempt to get his own way,
+he is not being sufficiently seconded by the Home Authorities, or that
+the policy of Downing Street in specific directions makes the attainment
+of that programme difficult if not impossible. Having said so much, it
+is to be hoped that any criticism directed to the affairs of Northern
+Nigeria may not be misunderstood in the quarter where one would greatly
+desire it to be looked upon in the light of a friendly attempt to assist,
+and not as criticism is so often regarded on West African matters, as
+being due to a carping desire to find fault on the part of those who,
+while fully entitled to speak their minds, are distant from the scene of
+action, and have none of the worry and trouble involved in actual contact
+with, or direct responsibility for, the questions upon which they write.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE FINANCES OF NIGERIA
+
+
+On June 30, 1899, a Treasury Minute informed the Royal Niger Company of
+the intention of her Majesty’s Government to revoke their charter. At the
+end of 1899 Sir Frederick Lugard proceeded to Africa to take over the
+Niger Company’s territories in the name of Great Britain. On January 1,
+1900, Crown Colony Administration was established in the Niger Company’s
+territories, following its similar establishment in the Delta, which had
+taken place some years previously.[70] In February 1902 the Government
+condescended for the first time—in the face of public pressure—to
+publish a report by Sir Frederick Lugard, _dated London, May 1, 1901_.
+The report, which is very interesting, but in many respects incomplete,
+notably as regards finance, only brings us down to March 31, 1901, so
+that, although we are now well on in the third year of Crown Colony
+Administration in Northern Nigeria, this single report is the measure of
+the confidence which the Government sees fit to repose in the British
+people, concerning the direct responsibilities they have acquired over
+some twenty-five million natives of Africa.
+
+There are several reasons why the public should not rest content with
+such meagre information. The first reason is financial. The expenditure
+of the two Protectorates—Northern and Southern Nigeria—is assuming very
+large proportions, a heavy load of debt weighs over them, and not only
+is there not the slightest sign of an effort to wipe off that debt, but
+almost every month that passes sees an extension of liabilities. The
+present condition of our national finances does not justify a continued
+attitude of indifference towards the expenditure of public funds on an
+increasing scale in Nigeria. On the other hand, our main object in West
+Africa being what it is, viz. commercial in nature, there is extreme
+unwisdom, from the ordinary business point of view, in neglecting to
+ascertain how the largest and most important of our estates in West
+Africa is being managed, and if the outlay is giving now, or is likely
+to give in an appreciably near future, those returns which the public is
+justified in expecting.
+
+What, then, are the facts as to the financial situation of Northern and
+Southern Nigeria? In the first place, there is the debt of £865,000
+incurred by the Government in buying out the Niger Company. This debt is,
+while it exists, a bar to progress, and at a Conference held in London
+on September 20, 1900, we find Sir Ralph Moor, Commissioner for Southern
+Nigeria, admitting the fact. When a speaker at that Conference urged that
+more should be spent on technical education in the Protectorate, and
+that the necessary amount might be paid out of the surplus revenue, Sir
+Ralph Moor quickly retorted that they had no surplus revenue, but were
+“in the unenviable position of owing her Majesty’s Treasury £800,000.” So
+much for the debt, and the obstacle to desirable improvements which its
+existence entails.[71]
+
+The debt notwithstanding, the administrative expenditure of Southern
+Nigeria steadily increases. In the year 1899-1900[72] it reached the
+figure of £176,128,[73] being an increase of £29,383 over the preceding
+year, and exceeded the revenue by £12,000. No figures are yet available
+of the expenditure of Northern Nigeria since the substitution of the
+Crown for the Niger Company in the _rôle_ of Administrator, but a
+reference to the estimates of March 31, 1902, shows that Northern Nigeria
+received a grant-in-aid of £88,800 in 1900-01, and another of £280,000 in
+1901-02, which includes the provision of £200,000 for the West African
+Frontier Force voted in 1900-01. We are, therefore, confronted with
+a minimum expenditure for Northern Nigeria in two years of £368,800.
+At this rate it is difficult to see how Nigeria is ever to become
+self-supporting. Such an enormous expenditure could only be warranted by
+an extraordinary development in trade, or by the creation of means of
+communication for that development, to be looked upon in the light of
+expenditure on capital account. It is all very well to call it “Imperial
+expenditure.” Of course it is “Imperial” expenditure, and so is every
+penny spent in the furtherance of British trade abroad “Imperial.” What
+we have to try and form an opinion upon is whether the administrative
+expenses of Nigeria are in any way proportionate to the interests which
+the Administration is supposed to be promoting there. If it is, well and
+good; if it is not, reform is required.
+
+The relation of the expenditure to the trade of Nigeria is comparatively
+easy to establish. The total trade (excluding specie) of the Niger Coast
+Protectorate in 1898-99 amounted to £1,477,398, and the total trade of
+Nigeria—that is, the Niger Coast Protectorate plus the territories of the
+Niger Company—in 1900 (excluding specie) was £2,113,878. If we deduct,
+therefore, the one set of figures from the other we can arrive at a close
+approximation of the trade done in the former Niger Company’s territories
+included since 1900 in the Protectorate of Nigeria. The trade of the
+Niger Company’s territories in 1901 was, therefore, roughly £650,000, of
+which it is quite safe to assume that Northern Nigeria did not produce
+more than one-third, if it produced that, the bulk of the trade being
+confined to the Niger Company’s territories in the Lower River. The
+trade of Northern Nigeria would thus be represented by some £216,660
+out of the total of £650,000. Assuming, for the sake of argument, that
+it rose in 1901 to £250,000, the total for the two years 1900 and 1901
+would be £466,660. Now Northern Nigeria, as already stated, received
+for the same period £368,800 from the Imperial Exchequer. Pursuing the
+same method of illustration for the export trade as for total trade,
+the export trade of the Niger Company’s territories works out at some
+£360,000, of which, say, one-third from Northern Nigeria, or £120,000.
+Putting it down at £140,000 in 1901 gives a total of Northern Nigeria’s
+export trade, or, in other words, Northern Nigeria’s producing capacity
+for the two years mentioned of £260,000, so that Northern Nigeria is in
+the disastrous financial situation of spending more than it produces. The
+one-third basis of calculation is a large and generous one, and Northern
+Nigeria’s share of responsibility in the debt is not included in the
+reckoning. The position then, so far as Northern Nigeria is concerned,
+is unmistakably clear. Northern Nigeria is at present a financial burden
+to the Empire. Eight years’ experience of Crown Colony Administration in
+the Niger Delta, where the machinery set up is not nearly so elaborate
+as in Northern Nigeria and where the natural exploitable riches are far
+greater, is hardly calculated to cause feelings of confidence as to what
+eight years of a similar system will lead to in Northern Nigeria. In the
+three years ending December 1899 the Niger Delta (excluding therefrom the
+Niger Company’s territories) produced a trade which averaged in value
+£1,800,000, of which over £1,000,000[74] represented exports. Under
+the Crown Colony system, with its expensive machinery necessitating
+taxation to keep up, its military expenditure, and the absence of all
+commercial co-operation in the Administration, the value of exports has
+only once (1893-94) managed to rise above £1,000,000, while with that one
+exception the highest and lowest figures have been £844,333 and £750,223
+respectively, and the total volume of trade for any given three years
+has never reached the average figure of £1,800,000. The totals of the
+three years prior to 1900 were respectively £1,441,383, £1,389,922, and
+£1,507,288. Making every allowance for the fall in the market price of
+certain products during recent years, which, by the way, has been to
+some extent counterbalanced by the increased export of new articles, the
+conclusion to be derived from these figures is that the Crown Colony
+system in Southern Nigeria has not yielded results which the country has
+the right to expect, and the moral is that, whatever may be the position
+of affairs in other British possessions in West Africa, Englishmen should
+really pull themselves together and seriously consider whether the
+brilliant future which Nigeria should have in store for it is to run the
+risk of being compromised just for want of a little courage in facing the
+facts as they are.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+MOHAMMEDANS, SLAVE-RAIDING, AND DOMESTIC SERVITUDE
+
+
+It has been truly remarked that more permanent good can be accomplished
+“by tact and gold with Mohammedan chiefs in West Africa than by the
+Maxim and the rifle.” That is a policy which has had much to do with our
+great and striking success in India. Its application to Afghanistan has
+within recent years been amply justified by results. Why should it not be
+followed in Northern Nigeria? Which is cheaper, an output of £5000 per
+annum in subsidies, or the expenditure of much larger sums in military
+operations? What is more likely to conduce to the prosperity of a vast
+densely populated tropical estate where the white man cannot settle, to
+gain your own ends peaceably, albeit not so speedily as might be desired,
+or to use force and face the dislocation of the existing social system
+which violent measures entail? Few people, if they will but calmly
+consider the matter, can fail to endorse the quotation given above. In
+Northern Nigeria the question is not merely one of expediency; it affects
+the honour of England.
+
+When MacGregor Laird started on his pioneering expedition up the Niger
+which laid the foundations of British trade in the Upper River, his
+instructions from the Government ran as follows: “It is most desirable to
+impress upon the chiefs that you are there as traders, not as colonists,
+not as acquirers of land, but simply as traders and for the protection of
+trade.” When Lord John Russell despatched Captain Trotter and Commander
+William Allen up the Niger in 1840, he recognised the advisability of
+subsidising the native chiefs: “he himself (the chief) shall have for
+his own share, and without any payment on his part, a sum not exceeding
+one-twentieth part value of every article of British merchandise brought
+by British ships and sold in his dominions.” When Mr. Joseph Thomson
+concluded in 1884, on behalf of the National African Company, a treaty of
+amity and friendship with Umoru, Emir of Sokoto, “King of the Mussulmans
+of the Sudan,” he undertook on behalf of the Company to pay the Emir 3000
+bags of cowries (roughly £1500) per annum. When that treaty was confirmed
+with the Emir on behalf of the Royal Niger Company (the designation of
+the National African Company when it received its charter) in 1890,
+and again with the Emir’s successor in 1894, the payment of the annual
+subsidy was confirmed. It was distinctly stipulated in those treaties
+that the Royal Niger Company “received” its power from the Queen of Great
+Britain and that “they (the Company) are her Majesty’s representatives
+to me.” In the eyes of the Emir, therefore, the Company was just as much
+“Great Britain” as a consular representative, or a High Commissioner.
+In exchange for this annual subsidy, the Emir of Sokoto transferred “to
+the above people (the Company) _or other with whom they may arrange_,
+my entire rights to the country on both sides of the River Benue and
+rivers flowing into it throughout my dominions for such distance from its
+and their banks as they may desire.” The Emir also bound himself not to
+“recognise any other white nation, because the Company are my help.” In a
+letter dated April 27, 1894, the Prime Minister of Sokoto repudiated any
+intention of treating “with any other from the white man’s country except
+with the Royal Niger Company, Limited.” Separate subsidies were also
+paid by “her Majesty’s representatives (the Niger Company)” to Gandu,
+as well as to the rulers of Nupe, Adamawa, and other important vassals
+of the Emir of Sokoto. That, at any rate, was a well-defined political
+relationship. By it the Royal Niger Company were able to secure this vast
+and populous country to Great Britain, and by it peace was, with the
+exception of Nupe[75] and Ilorin, preserved. Whatever may be said of
+the merits and demerits of the Royal Niger Company as an administrative
+body, it must be readily granted that a coherent policy was here applied,
+and that its results were, from the Imperial standpoint, exceedingly
+satisfactory. The nature of the bargain was precise. The Emir of Sokoto
+and his vassals conferred extensive rights upon England’s representatives
+and agreed to treat with no other country but England on the basis of a
+subsidy of £1500 per annum in the case of Sokoto, and sums varying in
+importance in the case of Sokoto’s vassals. The bargain was—according
+to the terms of the treaty—binding upon the Niger Company and its
+successors. The Emir of Sokoto kept to his share of it, and at a time
+when France endeavoured, through Colonel Monteil, to upset the Company’s
+treaty, the Emir loyally observed his obligations.[76] The Company no
+less loyally observed theirs. It is humiliating to have to confess it,
+but the British Government has been less loyal than the Company, and less
+loyal than the African chief whose loyalty enabled England at a critical
+moment to uphold the claims of her representatives to political influence
+over Sokoto. The Crown, it seems, has declined to fulfil the obligations
+imposed on England by these treaties, while reaping to the full the
+advantages which the existence of the treaties confers. The first public
+intimation that the Imperial Government had broken faith with the Emir of
+Sokoto was made by the Rev. J. A. E. Richardson, already alluded to. His
+statement ran as follows: “The yearly payment in form of gifts which was
+made to the Emir of Sokoto by the Niger Company has not been continued
+by the Imperial Government, and quite recently the Emir flatly refused to
+allow the erection of a British telegraph line.” No official announcement
+has been made on the subject, nor has any member of Parliament taken the
+trouble to inquire. But there is not, I think, any doubt whatever that
+the Imperial Government has, in point of fact, done this thing. I have
+made careful inquiries in quarters likely to be well informed, and it
+seems that it was considered _infra dig._ for a Government to politically
+subsidise a West African chief. That is an extraordinary doctrine. Since
+when has it been considered _infra dig._ for Englishmen to keep their
+word with native potentates? Since when has it been thought a criterion
+of Imperial rule to show native rulers that England’s promise is not
+worth the paper upon which it is written? Is that what has been called
+the “new Imperialism”? Is it astonishing that the Emir of Sokoto should,
+in the face of such a repudiation of treaty obligations, “flatly refuse”
+to allow the erection of a telegraph-line or anything else? Is it not a
+terrible handicap upon the professed intentions of the most well-meaning
+administrator, to be confronted at the outset with so powerful a cause of
+native suspicion and hostility?
+
+Let us observe, for a moment, how the successive stages of British action
+on the Niger must appear to the native rulers of the country. We start
+off by saying that we have come to the country as merchants and nothing
+more, not as acquirers of land, but simply as traders. In 1870 the Emir
+of Nupe, Maroba, is found co-operating with Bishop Crowther—an earnest
+and godly man—to facilitate the operations of merchants at Lokoja. In
+1884 Mr. Joseph Thomson is able, without any show of pomp or power,
+to induce the Emir of Sokoto, supreme ruler of the whole country, to
+sign a treaty of enormous importance, which practically amounts to a
+Protectorate, in exchange for a yearly subsidy. Sixteen years later a
+British Government ceases the subsidy, and follows up that performance by
+initiating a policy of active interference in the Emir’s dominions. As
+this costs money, the next step will very probably be that the Emir and
+his subjects will be expected to contribute towards the up-keep of the
+Administration, and England, having agreed through her representatives to
+subsidise the Emir in return for advantages conferred, will end by making
+the Emir pay for permission to remain in his own country. “It seems
+really incredible,” remarked the _Morning Post_ the other day, commenting
+upon the fighting with the Emir of Kontagora,[77] “that a great Empire
+administering savage countries should have no other weapon save an
+appeal to arms.” It has other weapons, and the most potent of them is
+the one upon which the Indian Empire has been reared. That weapon may be
+described thus, “Keep to your plighted word.”
+
+The cause of the repeated military expeditions of which Northern
+Nigeria is the scene, is said to be slave-raiding. “Slave-raiding” is
+an evil which no one can possibly defend. It leads to great misery, to
+depopulation and devastation. Its agency is violence. To suppress it is
+the duty of every European Government. On those points there can be no
+difference of opinion. The difference comes in when the means adopted
+to do away with “slave-raiding” are examined. At present but one remedy
+has been devised and put into practice in Nigeria. It consists in
+opposing violence by violence. It has the merit of simplicity, but at
+best it is but a crude way of procedure, and its efficacy as a reforming
+agent is open to doubt. “The very foundation,” says Carl Schurz, “of
+all civilization consists in the dispensation of justice by peaceable
+methods, instead of the rule of brute force,” and he adds a sentence
+well worth thinking over: “Although a course of warlike adventure may
+have begun with the desire to liberate and civilise certain foreign
+populations, it will be likely to develop itself, unless soon checked,
+into a downright and reckless policy of conquest with all the criminal
+aggression and savagery such a policy implies.” It is impossible not to
+feel the force and the truth of this sentence when the history of British
+East Africa is studied. These “nigger hunts,” to use the term, not of
+a “deluded philanthropist” or “impracticable sentimentalist,” two of
+the many choice epithets with which people who do not believe in the
+practical advantages of “nigger hunts” are consistently assailed, but of
+a specially gifted officer, have worked incalculable mischief, and have
+put back the hands of the clock for many years. “Some of the wars and the
+punitive expeditions of the past few years,” remarks Professor Gregory
+in his admirable and impartial work,[78] “have been no doubt inevitable
+and just. They have been the ‘Cruel wars of peace.’ But some of the
+military expeditions in East Africa have been simply criminal in their
+folly and thoughtlessness.” Yet the Home Authorities defended all these
+expeditions, and covered the perpetrators of blunders with its sheltering
+wing, to the detriment not only of the general interests of the Empire,
+but of the efficiency of the public service, by discouraging officials
+who had a different conception of the duties of their position, but who
+saw, by experience, that to get up a row with the natives, to fight some
+brilliant action and get their “heroism” talked about, was the surest way
+to obtain promotion. That, I am afraid, is in West Africa also a motive
+power to advancement.
+
+In his report Sir Frederick Lugard shows that he is alive to the abuses
+which a too constant “appeal to arms” may give rise to, and how the
+designation of “slave-raiding” can be converted into a mere excuse to
+justify acts of injustice and oppression. “Though force,” he says, “must
+be occasionally applied to bands of recalcitrant robbers, I am convinced
+that a few such lessons will suffice, and that the district officer,
+with tact and patience, aided by sufficient civil police, can achieve
+the pacification of the country effectively, and that parsimony in the
+appointment of these officers, and of their native staff of police, &c.,
+would be a policy of false economy, resulting in unnecessary bloodshed.”
+And again, “It is my conviction that throughout Africa—East and West—much
+injustice and oppression have been unwittingly done by our forces acting
+on crude information, and accusations of slave-raiding, &c., brought by
+enemies of the accused to procure their destruction.”
+
+What is the genesis of this slave-raiding we hear so much about? In the
+first place, it must be obvious to all who have studied the history
+of inland Western Africa with any degree of attention, that a great
+deal of what is called “slave-raiding” is not “slave-raiding” at all,
+but military operations undertaken by the rulers of Mohammedan States
+for the suppression of risings against their authority, rendered
+weak by ineffective organisation, and by the absence of adequate
+means of communication. Sir Frederick Lugard has thrown useful light
+upon other circumstances which may lead to wrongful accusations of
+slave-raiding.[79] But, taking the first case, how often may not an
+expedition entered upon by a Mohammedan Emir against his pagan subjects
+in West Africa be as justifiable, if reckoned by the same standard, as
+the chastisement of a tribe by the representatives of a European Power
+for resisting a tax enforced by that Power, and considered by the tribe
+excessive and unjust? The only fair and rational interpretation of
+slave-raiding, properly so-called, is the incursion of an armed band,
+without previous provocation of any kind, into a peaceful district,
+followed by the capture of a number of prisoners of war who are
+subsequently sold into slavery by the victors. That is a condition of
+affairs by no means peculiar to West Africa. It prevailed in Europe
+and in Great Britain at a period when civilisation was infinitely more
+advanced than it is at present in West Africa.
+
+The motive forces to which slave-raiding is due in Nigeria are: (1)
+economic necessities, or, in other words, the revenue needs of native
+rulers, requiring many prisoners of war who, as has been well said, serve
+the double purpose of cheque-book and beast of burden; (2) the incidental
+effect of conquest; (3) the direct incitement given to intertribal wars
+by white men on the West Coast of Africa for a period extending over
+several centuries, a system which, by the way, prevailed not farther back
+than slightly over fifty years ago on the Niger; witness Richardson’s
+and Barth’s representations to the Government of the day. Those three
+causes are common to, or have been common to, West Africa as a whole. To
+them must be added, in the case of Northern Nigeria and other countries
+in West Africa converted to Islam by the sword, religious zeal. Let us
+take those causes severally one by one and examine them.
+
+[Illustration: A MOHAMMEDAN CHIEF AND HIS STANDARD-BEARER]
+
+With regard to the first, it must be patent to all who can look at the
+matter with unprejudiced eyes that, until native rulers in Northern
+Nigeria are able to count upon a source of revenue replacing that which
+they lose by the disappearance of raiding operations for slaves, and
+until a portable currency can be introduced into the country to take
+the place of the human currency—that is, slaves—the economic _raison
+d’être_ of raids will remain; and that is why, apart from any other
+considerations, a subsidy to the native rulers on the part of the
+European “over-lord” cannot but prove itself an instrument for good,
+pending the slower but certain modifications which the creation of
+roads, railways, the development of trade which should ensue from their
+creation, and the introduction of an easily portable currency—such as
+silver coinage—cannot fail to bring with them. When in course of time
+such development takes place, matters should be so arranged that the
+rulers of the country benefit by the growth of trade in their respective
+districts, or, in other words, that a portion of the revenue derived
+by the Administration from trade in a given district should accrue to
+the ruler of that district, and be expended in the improvement of that
+district.
+
+In all communities where the ethical standard of the people has not
+been influenced by the Christian ideal, the enslavement of prisoners of
+war has existed from time immemorial. The moral standard of the Fulani
+Chieftains of to-day is not lower than that of Imperial Rome, and for
+many, many centuries after the tragedy of Golgotha, men enslaved one
+another in England and in Europe as the natural sequel to warfare.
+
+As for the heavy load of responsibility which England shares—and to a
+very large extent—with other Powers towards the native of West Africa in
+her actual _rôle_ of inculcator of the higher principles of morality, it
+cannot too often be called to mind. It is not so very long ago—a mere
+nothing in the history of nations—that Englishmen hounded on these native
+chiefs against one another, supplied them with arms and ammunition,
+excited their fiercest passions, pandered to their worst vices, and all
+for what? To secure, under circumstances of cruelty more aggravated
+because more protracted, those very slaves which Englishmen to-day are
+but too ready to liberate, by killing the descendants of the chiefs who
+formerly supplied them with the objects of their desire!
+
+Religious fanaticism has ever been attended with outrages upon humanity,
+sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly. In considering the case of
+the Fulani conquerors of Nigeria, we must, if we are just, recollect
+how relative good and evil are in matters of this kind, how dependent
+upon those hundred and one things which make up hereditary instincts and
+environment. Have the Fulani committed more atrocities than Christian
+Europe (although far behind Christian Europe of those days) perpetrated
+upon the Jews? Can we turn over the pages of Gibbon and condemn to the
+death penalty these wanderers in Darkest Africa, when we read of the
+deeds of Christians amid “civilised” surroundings, where art and crafts,
+the ease and luxuries of life, culture and refinement had reached,
+comparatively, so high a stage—a stage which West Africa had never known?
+Are the episodes of Saint Bartholomew and the persecutions of “bloody”
+Mary not vividly within our recollection? Do not the lessons of history
+suggest that “civilisation” would best fulfil its mandate, and rise to
+the level of its claims, by drawing upon an abundant store of patience
+in dealing with the evil of “slave-raiding” in Nigeria and elsewhere in
+West Africa? And if there be a fair prospect, as there undoubtedly is,
+of removing the causes, economical and otherwise, which produce slave
+raids, by peaceful methods, to employ the ways of peace rather than the
+sword, although the process be a slower one, we can have made but very
+few real strides in the last two thousand years if statesmanship be not
+equal to the task. This is sentimentalism, you will say. Well, it is
+easy to call names, but the following passage indicates, at least, that
+a British Government was not ashamed once upon a time to preach much the
+same doctrine:
+
+    “While you describe the power and wealth of your country, you
+    will, in all your interviews with the African chiefs and with
+    other African natives on the subject of the suppression of the
+    slave trade, abstain carefully from any threat or intimidation
+    that hostilities upon their territory will be the result of
+    their refusal to treat.... You will allow for any hardness of
+    feeling you may witness in them on the subject of the slave
+    trade, a hardness naturally engendered by the exercise of that
+    traffic, and in some cases increased by intercourse with the
+    lowest and basest of Europeans. You will endeavour to convince
+    them by courtesy, by kindness, by patience, and forbearance of
+    your most persevering desire to be on good terms with them.”[80]
+
+At what period, and under what circumstances, has this persevering desire
+to establish friendly terms, as a basis upon which to work to do away
+with the internal slave-trade of Nigeria by the exercise of courtesy,
+kindness, patience, and forbearance been consistently applied, or been
+given a fair chance? We should be hard put to it to supply even one
+instance, in a given district.[81]
+
+So much for the moral aspect of the question. There is another aspect to
+which the most unsentimental of mortals will not deny the attributes of
+severest practicability. I refer to the effect of these wars, nominally
+undertaken for the suppression of slave-raiding and the upsetting
+of priestly theocracies in West Africa, upon the well-being of the
+inhabitants and upon the prosperity of the Colonies themselves. Those who
+may be inclined to look into the matter may peruse with advantage that
+very able volume, “Ashanti and Jaman,” by Dr. Richard Austin Freeman, one
+time Assistant Colonial Surgeon and Anglo-German Boundary Commissioner of
+the Gold Coast.[82] Sir Frederick Lugard in his report writes: “Already,
+with the removal of the fear of the Fulani, each petty village is
+claiming its ancient lands, or raiding those of its weaker neighbour, and
+interminable feuds are the result.” That passage entirely confirms Dr.
+Freeman’s opinion with regard to the forcible splitting up of the Ashanti
+confederation after the Wolseley expedition. The latter part of it is
+almost word for word that of a letter which lies before me at the present
+moment, and which I received from an Englishman in the Niger shortly
+after Sir George Goldie’s brilliant but inconclusive campaign against
+Nupe. “The whole country is confused”—wrote my correspondent—“the central
+authority having been suppressed; each man raids on his own.” In point
+of sober fact, almost every war waged in West Africa has a deteriorating
+effect, unless it be followed immediately by constructive action, which
+in the vast majority of cases is impossible owing to the vastness of the
+country. We read of a chief falling foul of the British Authorities and
+being deposed. If captured, he is marched off to the coast and deported;
+if he succeeds in escaping, the chances are he will rally some followers
+round him and prove a source of trouble for a considerable time. However
+that may be, he is at any rate replaced by some other individual who may
+or may not have, according to local custom, a right to the chieftainship.
+A resident with a small escort may or may not be left in the capital.
+Now, bearing in mind that in Nigeria a district over which a particular
+chief holds at least a nominal sway is sometimes as large as Wales or
+larger, no great amount of imagination is required to picture what but
+too often happens. Let us, for the sake of argument, consider Wales an
+inland kingdom, and imagine it under the feudal system, the King aided
+by his barons ruling the country, with many abuses no doubt, but still
+ruling it after a fashion and able to make his power felt. At a given
+moment the King quarrels with a neighbour. The neighbour enters the
+country, defeats the King’s armies, marches on the capital, captures
+it and the King together. The King is taken away a prisoner and the
+conqueror remains in the capital with a small force, ignorant of the
+language of the people, of their history, traditions, customs and laws.
+He will not be attacked because it is known that his soldiers possess
+weapons which kill easily at 300 yards, which mow down men in heaps, and
+which it is as futile to attempt to face as it is to stand against the
+roaring tornado hurtling through the forest. But for obvious reasons
+it is also known that he cannot effectively hold the country. Result
+number one: all semblance of authority within gun-shot of the capital has
+disappeared. Result number two: every ambitious baron develops schemes of
+aggrandisement, starts foraging in the property of his neighbours, who
+do ditto with religious unanimity; another party remains faithful to the
+deposed King and intrigues to get him back; another may take the part of
+the dummy appointed by the conqueror, presuming that step to have been
+adopted. Sequel: disorganisation, widening of area of disturbance, social
+chaos, impoverishment of the country.
+
+This is not, indeed, the exception but the rule in West Africa. The
+facts are on record. I have quoted two eminent authorities in specific
+instances and mentioned one other case. But the examples are numerous,
+and were it necessary one might amplify them considerably. Sometimes
+the effect is chiefly commercial, as in the case of Nana, ex-chief of
+Lower Benin.[83] Since his removal after the war in that district the
+volume of trade has fallen considerably, which has been a bad thing,
+of course, all round, from the point of view of both revenue and
+commerce. Speaking generally, the only logical outcome of a punitive
+expedition in West Africa is the replacing of what has been pulled down
+by something else which shall answer to the needs of the people in the
+same way, or a military occupation of every yard of the country. West
+Africa being what it is, the thing cannot be done, and the consequence
+of punitive expeditions in that part of the world, no matter what the
+motives, alleged or real, may have been, is ninety times out of every
+hundred reactionary, sterile, and morally destructive. Hence, whether it
+be a matter of slave-raiding or fetishism, or disputes about land, or
+difficulties about trade, punitive expeditions are things to be avoided,
+and the Administrator who avoids them is the type of man which West
+Africa needs most.
+
+A reference to the question of slave-raiding in Nigeria would be
+incomplete without mention being made of domestic slavery, or more
+properly termed domestic servitude. I remember assisting, not so
+long ago, at a lecture by a missionary on Northern Nigeria. With
+great impressiveness the lecturer announced that a large proportion,
+four-fifths I think he said, of Hausas in Nigeria are slaves. There was
+no doubt of the effect of the statement upon the audience, composed
+of benevolent, well-meaning people, who conjured up at once the
+most horrible visions. The mere enunciation of the fact, or alleged
+fact—because, from what I have been able to ascertain, the estimate
+is widely exaggerated—is calculated to horrify a public ignorant of
+the nature and characteristics of domestic slavery in West Africa, and
+there can be as little doubt that such is the deliberate and perfectly
+sincere intention of the individuals who make these bald statements, as
+that their after consequences upon the public mind are harmful. All are
+agreed that the intestine warfare which results in the capture of many
+prisoners and their conveyance over large distances always involves great
+hardships and sorrow, and very often fearful sufferings upon the victims.
+But the weight of evidence is decidedly against the supposition, still
+so widely entertained, that domestic slavery in West Africa is what the
+unscientific advocates of its hasty abolition, regardless of the obvious
+political objections to such a course, would have the public believe.
+
+[Illustration: MANDINGO MUSLIMS]
+
+Nay more, while it may be fully admitted that a condition of servitude
+is indicative of a state of society which we happily have grown out
+of, and which in itself is essentially opposed to the moral law, no
+impartial student will be prepared to deny that the condition of tens of
+thousands of toilers in this country is infinitely worse than anything
+which prevails under the West African native system, where poverty at
+least is normally non-existent. The latter, it is true, are technically
+free, but to them actual freedom would, if exercised, lead to starvation
+pure and simple. They are bound in chains more enduring than any forged
+by native blacksmiths in Nigeria. The “White Slaves of England” was an
+appropriate title to a series of terrible articles published a short time
+ago in a popular London magazine, the absolute accuracy of which has
+since been acknowledged. “The West African slave”—a celebrated French
+explorer and administrator has said—“is not so unhappy as many people
+who live round us and whom _we will not see_.” That is the simple truth.
+Between the domestic servitude of Nigeria—where any form of paid labour
+is unknown as a native institution—and plantation slavery under European
+supervision there is all the difference in the world. Compared with the
+latter, the former is relative bliss. Degradation was the keynote of
+the one. The other permits and frequently leads to equality between the
+owner and the servant. Under the European system the slave was a dog and
+worse than a dog; under the West African system the slave is part and
+parcel of the social life of the people, a member, and not unfrequently
+an honoured member, of the family.[84] With the second generation, the
+distinction between the owning and serving class in West Africa is less
+pronounced, and with the third generation, if it has not already been
+practically effaced, the distinction is simply theoretical. Slaves then
+own slaves of their own, while still theoretically remaining slaves
+themselves. Once a slave is incorporated in a household he usually
+remains a fixture, is decently treated, and, if his conduct is good,
+his material prosperity rapidly increases. It is the commonest thing in
+the world for a slave to rise high in his master’s favour, and even to
+hold lucrative and responsible positions. All the relations of domestic
+life in three-fourths of the Niger territories are based upon the system
+of domestic slavery, and there is no question which requires to be
+approached by the authorities with greater breadth of comprehension, with
+greater largeness of views, with a more sincere resolve to resolutely
+set aside all appeals, by whomsoever uttered, to bigotry, passion, or
+prejudice.
+
+The harm which hasty legislation tending to violently interfere with the
+entire social fabric of a people and with a custom centuries old entails
+cannot be exaggerated. It spells utter disorganisation, and has already
+worked incalculable mischief in the British West African possessions by
+destroying the authority and influence of the chiefs and breaking up the
+whole labour of the country. The lesson has been learned rather late in
+the day, and there is hope that it will bear fruit, but the influences on
+the side of error are very strong at home, and it never seems to occur to
+those amongst us whose profession in life is the inculcation of the moral
+virtues, that we have no greater right to destroy or abolish domestic
+slavery without compensation of some sort, if only that of substituting
+railway transport and portable currency in West Africa, than we had in
+the West Indies or in South Africa. Why should West Indian planters and
+Cape Colonists receive compensation for the loss of their slaves, and
+the African chief nothing—except bullets? The policy of the sword and
+the application of twentieth-century legislation to twelfth-century
+conditions, however good the intentions, are, in the main, Imperial
+mistakes, for which England may indirectly pay, but whom the present
+generation of natives and the generations which come afterwards do—and
+will—suffer in their persons. “It is understood”—cabled Reuter’s agent on
+the Binue on September 21, 1901, subsequent to the capture of Yola—“that
+Government will not interfere for the present with domestic slavery, the
+evil effects of such a policy being still felt in the provinces of Nupe
+and Ilorin. It upset the internal economy of the whole country, and the
+male slaves, instead of working on their master’s farms, became rogues
+and vagabonds, and the women something worse.” What a biting satire upon
+the notion that immemorial customs can be changed by a stroke of the pen
+without breeding disorder and social chaos! The question of domestic
+slavery in Nigeria may best be approached by once again recalling
+that great truth, “God’s design in the perfecting of man’s mind is
+evolutionary and not revolutionary.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+THE PRINCIPAL PRODUCTS OF NIGERIA
+
+
+The difficulty in estimating the producing capacity of the enormous
+territory of Nigeria is not in stating what _natural_ products of
+economic value grow there, but what do not. Nigeria is the tit-bit of
+West Africa, and practically every form of vegetable growth peculiar
+to West Africa, or shared by West Africa with other and less favoured
+tropical portions of the globe, is to be found within its extensive
+limits. A soil of surpassing richness; numerous waterways, a prolific,
+industrious population—all the elements are there to make of Nigeria
+under wise management a second if smaller India, but an India unvisited
+by drought, or those fearful scourges which are so terrible a drawback to
+the internal prosperity of India; perchance a happier, richer India.
+
+With the exception of the oil-palm industry, everything is in its
+earliest stages in Nigeria. Development is rudimentary. Deducting palm
+oil and kernels, the value of the whole of Nigeria’s exports in 1900—the
+only year available—amounted to the relatively small sum of £212,457.
+Rubber, ivory, timber, ground-nuts, fibres, coffee, cocoa, gum copal
+and shea butter are amongst the other products exported. The white
+sweet-smelling flowers of the rubber vine are one of the commonest sights
+in the forests of Nigeria. The tree, shrub and vine rubber are all met
+with. The value of rubber exported from Nigeria in 1900 was £137,289.
+It may increase to almost any figure if the authorities will but take
+warning by the sad experience of Lagos, enlist a brigade of trained
+rubber-workers to instruct the chiefs in the science of collecting,
+and prevent—which they can easily do—grossly adulterated rubber from
+leaving the country, and so preserve a high standard of quality, for,
+in the present sorry condition of the rubber market, low-class rubbers
+are almost unsaleable. Here, again, one is compelled to preach, if it
+be for the fiftieth time, co-operation between the officials and the
+merchants. In French Guinea, the evils of adulteration (for which, by
+the way, the merchants were, I am afraid, primarily responsible) have
+been successfully combated by a working partnership, so to speak. It is
+not necessary to impose restrictions upon the freedom of the native in
+collecting this product in his forests, but it is essential to maintain a
+_permanent_ staff of native rubber-collecting instructors. It would cost
+very little, and the experiment, if patiently and intelligently pursued,
+would give magnificent results.
+
+Next in importance to rubber comes ivory, which, however, must be
+regarded as a temporary commerce. Almost the whole of the ivory trade
+of Nigeria hails from the Binue region, and for many years Yola was the
+principal buying depôt of the Niger Company, as much as forty tons being
+sometimes purchased there in the course of the year. The consequences of
+the Anglo-German Agreement of 1893 and the Franco-German Convention of
+1894 are calculated to greatly diminish the trade. The ivory business
+is entirely in the hands of Hausa traders, who make, or used to make,
+most of their purchases in the famous markets of Banyo, N’Gaundere, and
+Tibati, carrying the teeth overland to the Binue and then conveying them
+across the river, to dispose of either at the Niger Company’s pontoon at
+Yola or factories at Ibi, Lake Bakundi, Lau, and Amageddi, or at Kano,
+where it was sold for cloth and found its way eventually to Europe,
+_viâ_ the desert route and Tripolitan ports. This is still done, but,
+for the reason stated, the volume of trade is almost certain to diminish
+as the years go on. When the ivory is sold to the Niger Company, English
+manufactured cloths are purchased in exchange, and this again is bartered
+by the Hausa traders against the superior article of native make in Kano.
+Sometimes salt, tobacco, copper-rods, and gunpowder are in request
+by the ivory traders, instead of cloth. It is always an open question
+with Hausa traders which pays them best, the single transaction if they
+sell direct at Kano, or the double transaction involved by sale to the
+Niger Company. The chief currency of these regions is now the cowry
+shell, and cowries have a native market price just like anything else;
+for example, a hundredweight of salt will equal 25 heads of cowries, or
+roughly 12_s_. 6_d_. When a tusk is brought to the factory it is weighed
+on a butchers’ steelyard. The tariff per pound is 10 heads of cowries.
+If the tusk weighs, say, 28 lb., it fetches 280 heads of cowries, about
+£7, or £560 per ton in barter goods, but the price actually paid for
+mixed ivory in the Binue has been under £500 per ton for many years past.
+The arrival of an ivory caravan is always the occasion for a great deal
+of excitement. Some of these caravans stretch over a mile in length.
+First comes the trader and his friends on horseback, followed by the
+trader’s wives and the various members of his household. Behind them
+come the slaves, weary and footsore (slaves of Hausas be it noted—not of
+Fulani), struggling under their valuable loads. The tusks are carried
+sometimes on the heads and sometimes upon the shoulders. Of course, these
+caravans can only travel in the dry season, for during the rains the long
+marches would be attended with enormous difficulty. There are plenty of
+tricks in the ivory trade, and our Hausa friend is very fond of putting
+heavy substances in the hollow of the tusks, knowing well that if he is
+undetected the increased weight will add to his profit. The Hausas call
+ivory “owry”[85] and elephants “giwa.” They very often bring the flesh of
+the animal, which fetches higher prices in the native markets than beef
+or mutton.
+
+Gums, of which there exist many different kinds in Nigeria, also
+constitute a source of future riches. There is gum arabic (_Acacia
+senegalensis_) which oozes from the bark—much like sap from a venerable
+cherry—and the “copals” found in solidified, translucent lumps, by
+digging at the roots of acacias, and which sometimes fetch as much
+as £80 per ton on the European markets. Very beautiful some of these
+specimens are, varying in colour from pale lemon to deep orange-yellow,
+and clear as the finest amber. These graceful gum-trees form in many
+places a notable feature of Binue scenery, and abound in many parts of
+Bornu, and it is not an unusual circumstance for a Bornuese cavalcade,
+including several individuals wearing the old-world surcoats of chain
+armour which has so excited the interest and curiosity of travellers in
+that country, to arrive at a trading-station on the Upper Binue with a
+load of gum arabic for sale. The natives of Hamarua (Muri), too, are
+noted gum-collectors. As in the case of almost all Nigerian products,
+the absence of competition among European purchasers (the Niger Company,
+it must always be remembered, has been the sole trader in these regions)
+has hitherto prevented the natives from bringing in very large quantities
+of gum, and where ivory is to be got, it is hard to induce Hausas to
+go in for laborious gum collecting and picking. There can be little
+doubt whatever that the gum trade is susceptible of being increased to
+thousands of tons per annum. The supplies must be almost inexhaustive.
+After many years of assiduous collection, the Kauri pine forests of New
+Zealand still furnish 8,000 to 10,000 tons per annum of fossil gum, more
+or less similar to the West African “copals.” It can be said without
+fear of exaggeration that there are hundreds of thousands of tons of
+this valuable product in West Africa waiting to be dug up. One fine
+day the fact will be better realised than it is at present, and we may
+then expect to see a remarkable development in the product. Among other
+valuable trees freely growing in Nigeria, but of which the economic
+aspects have not yet been thoroughly studied, two at least deserve
+special attention. They are the Kedenia (Kedenya) or Shea-butter tree
+(_Butyrospermum_ or _Bassia parkii_[86]—the _beurre de Karité_ of the
+French), sometimes, and erroneously, called the tallow-tree, and the
+papain or paw-paw (_Carica papaya_). Shea butter has of late appeared as
+a regular if small export from the Niger.[87] Large forests of it are to
+be found in the Lagos hinterland, and also in Dahomey, where the French
+hope to exploit it when their railway enters the zone of production.
+Shea butter fetches about £24 to £26 per ton in Europe. It contains
+certain medicinal properties of a purgative nature, I believe, and is
+said to form a component part of the well-known Elliman’s Embrocation.
+By the inhabitants of Nigeria the butter of the Kedenia is held in high
+esteem, and is put to a number of varied uses: medicinally, for cooking
+purposes, &c. The Fulani dose their horses internally with it, and
+also rub it on the sores which the cumbrous high-peaked saddles of the
+country frequently produce on the backs of their steeds. The Kanuri, or
+Bornuese, use it to light their lamps with, and other tribes believe
+it to be a sure cure for rheumatism. There seems to be a possibility
+of the shea-butter tree being put to a second use; recent experiments
+have shown that the latex furnished by this tree contains properties
+similar to gutta-percha.[88] The butter- or tallow-tree (_Pendatesma
+butyracæ_), which is often confounded with the shea-butter tree, is an
+entirely different tree, belonging to the genus _Guttifera_, whereas the
+shea butter is of the genus _Sapotacæ_. The French appear to have been
+the first to make any economic use of this tree, and for the first time
+last year, when a trial shipment of nuts was forwarded from Conakry to
+Marseilles by the leading French firm of merchants in the former place.
+The nuts when crushed were found to yield a valuable oil possessing
+ingredients which render it particularly applicable for the manufacture
+of candles. That wise and brilliant administrator, the late Dr. Ballay,
+Governor-General of French West Africa, left a legacy of priceless worth
+behind him in the shape of officials reared in his school and imbued with
+his sentiments, and M. Cousturier, the present very able Governor of
+French Guinea, has taken up this subject of the tallow-tree nut—“lamy”
+as it is called—most energetically, in co-operation with the council
+of merchants established in that Colony. My latest information on the
+subject is that further shipments of “lamy” nuts from French Guinea have
+taken place to Marseilles, Hamburg, and Bremen, and that the prospects of
+disposing of the nuts to seed-crushers at remunerative prices is assured.
+It remains to be seen whether the nut can be produced in adequate
+quantities in French Guinea. I have not been able to positively ascertain
+whether the tallow-tree occurs in Nigeria, but there is every probability
+that it does, and if so, it will be another vegetable product of value to
+be added to Nigeria’s long list.[89]
+
+Seldom is it that on village market-days in Nigeria the golden
+pear-shaped fruit of the _paw-paw_ does not appear for sale. The natives
+look upon paw-paw fruit in the double light of a delicacy and article
+of considerable utility. The juicy milk of the fruit, and the large,
+handsome leaves contain the singular property of making hard meat tender,
+a peculiarity which has given rise to many “travellers’ tales” on the
+coast. The toughest steak is rendered soft and agreeable to the palate
+by being rubbed with the juice of the paw-paw, or wrapped round in its
+leaves. The active principle of the dried juice of the paw-paw is
+somewhat akin in nature to pepsin, and is regularly used as a substitute
+for the latter in France and Germany. So far, the demand is small, but
+there seems every likelihood that it will increase. In connection with
+the future development of the paw-paw in Nigeria, it is interesting to
+note that a small factory for the preparation of pepsin from this fruit
+has been established within recent years in the Island of Montserrat.
+In addition to the trees already mentioned, the kola (_Sterculia
+acuminata_, sometimes termed the _Sterculia cola_), the gutta-percha,
+the giant baobab (_Adansonia digitata_) or monkey bread-fruit tree, and
+the bamboo palm (_Raphia vinifera_) must be briefly touched upon. The
+kola-nut is to the Fulani, the Hausa, the Kanuri, the Songhay, &c., what
+coffee is to the Arab and opium to the Chinese—a never-failing panacea.
+So indispensable is the kola to the daily existence of the native of
+Northern Nigeria, so enormous the demand, that the Hausa journeys
+thousands of miles to the districts of the Niger bend (the Gold Coast
+hinterland chiefly), and even to the Gambia hinterland and the valley of
+the Senegal, to barter his blue cottons for this much-sought-after fruit.
+European science will, no doubt, eventually succeed in so improving the
+quality of the Nigerian kola as to make these long journeys yearly less
+necessary. Kola plantations should then become a lucrative feature of
+Nigerian industry.
+
+Gutta-percha is as valuable an article of commerce, and as greatly
+in demand for European manufactures, as rubber itself. In Nigeria
+gutta-percha is collected immediately the rainy season is over, the sap
+at that time of year flowing more freely from the tree. In coagulating,
+the milk assumes a reddish tinge.
+
+The baobab has been aptly termed the monarch of the African vegetable
+kingdom. From the bark of the _kuka_, as the Hausas call it, excellent
+ropes and strings for musical instruments are fashioned, while the
+fruit, when crushed and dried, furnishes the natives with an excellent
+substitute for sponges.
+
+[Illustration: A BAOBAB
+
+THE GIANT OF WEST AFRICAN FLORA]
+
+Vast groves of the bamboo palm (_R. vinifera_) exist in many parts
+of Southern Nigeria, and although but little utilised at present,
+experiments have demonstrated that the fibre derived from the branches
+of this palm is capable of producing an excellent and durable bass[90]
+somewhat similar in quality to that which is obtained from the allied
+spices, the _Raffia ruffia_ of Madagascar, the demand for which on the
+European market is already extensive.
+
+Date palms, dum palms, and cocoa-nut palms, lemons, bananas, plantains,
+sweet potatoes, yams, sugar-cane, hemp, tobacco, benni seed,[91] pepper,
+cassada, castor seed, capaiva—Nigeria produces all these in more or less
+abundance, according to the locality, and also ground-nuts and large
+quantities of capsicums (red pepper). The valuable indigo plant is widely
+cultivated by Hausas and Fulani, and Kano owes much of its wealth to the
+dyeing industry carried on by the natives. The native-woven Kano cloth,
+dyed a deep indigo blue, is renowned all over Northern, Western and
+Central Africa. With European skill, the cultivation of indigo in Nigeria
+may possibly have a future before it, although the present outlook is not
+encouraging.
+
+The cotton shrub grows luxuriantly in Northern Nigeria, and the cloth
+manufactured from it by the natives can favourably compare, for
+durability and fineness of texture, with the best Manchester article.
+There may yet be a great cotton industry in Nigeria, but the subject of
+cotton cultivation in West Africa is sufficiently large to justify a
+special chapter.
+
+Ebony, mahogany and other valuable cabinet woods abound in the enormous
+untapped forests of Southern Nigeria, and if no peddling restrictions are
+placed upon the development of the timber industry, it should reach large
+proportions. Sapelli is beginning to have some importance as the foremost
+port of shipment for Southern Nigeria timber.
+
+Nigeria also produces cereals in plenty, such as maize or Indian corn,
+millet, rice, barley, guinea corn, gero, &c., and on the high plateaux
+coffee, tea, and perhaps vanilla could be grown.
+
+As far as minerals are concerned, silver,[92] tin, antimony and stone
+potash[93] are known to exist in several parts of Nigeria, but none
+of them, save the latter, have been worked. When the country has been
+better explored and surveyed, gold and copper may also be found (small
+quantities of gold dust are sometimes sold by the Kanuri to Fezzan and
+Ghadamseen merchants), but their presence in any extent is at present
+problematical.
+
+Tin is known to exist up the Binue, and an English Syndicate has been
+formed to explore and report upon the tin-bearing possibilities of
+certain districts. The Niger Company are about to start prospecting
+operations, and the Germans are also said to be studying the same subject
+at Garua.
+
+Such, briefly enumerated, are the chief natural products of Nigeria,
+the most fertile and prolific portion of the Central African Continent,
+towards which has gravitated a commercial movement from north, east and
+west for centuries past. Such eminent authorities, in their respective
+ways, as Barth, Nachtigal, Monteil, Thomson, &c., speak in terms of
+unbounded admiration of the fruitfulness and the beauty of these regions,
+and all the information brought by travellers and explorers of lesser
+importance only tends to confirm the assertion of the great geographer
+Reclus, that the countries of the Chad Basin are the richest in Africa.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+RUBBER-COLLECTING IN NIGERIA
+
+
+I have already briefly alluded to the vegetable products of Nigeria. The
+collection of rubber, however, presents many features of interest, and
+deserves more extended treatment.
+
+Of late years the West African rubber industry has grown enormously. In
+some cases the increase has been phenomenal. The Niger Coast Protectorate
+and the Gold Coast have within the space of six years more than doubled
+their rubber exports. The performance of Lagos has been still more
+remarkable, although unfortunately the wastefulness, or perhaps it would
+be fairer to say the lack of scientific knowledge on the part of the
+natives in tapping the trees and vines, has led to a notable falling off
+in production during the last three years. It seems evident that Western
+Africa may in time rival Brazil as the rubber-producing country of the
+world.
+
+The rubber found in West Africa is of various kinds. The place of honour,
+so far as our own Colonies are concerned, may be given to the rubber-tree
+properly so-called, _Kickxia Africana_ (the “Ere” or “Ireh” of the
+natives), and a beautiful tree it is, springing up clean and smooth to a
+height of sixty feet. Then come various species of _Ficus_, and last, but
+not least, the _Landolphias_, or rubber-vines.
+
+In Nigeria rubber is found, roughly speaking, from Abutshi, 120 miles up
+the river Niger, as far as Jebba on the Niger and Yola on the Binue. We
+will suppose that a rubber-collecting expedition has been decided upon by
+the inhabitants of some village fifteen or twenty miles from the river
+side (rubber in Nigeria is scarce on the actual river banks).
+
+Soon after dawn all the available men and women gather together—a
+light-hearted, jabbering crowd. Extraordinary animation reigns throughout
+the village. The ground is strewn with the implements necessary to the
+rubber-collector’s art, and with the victuals essential to the sustenance
+of his body while the work is being pursued. They include such varied
+articles as calabashes, “matchets,” knives, dried yam in bags, and fresh
+water in bottles which once contained that delectable, throat-peeling
+liquid known as Hamburg gin. Mingled with them, in apparently hopeless
+confusion, numerous spears and flint-lock guns lie scattered. There
+is generally something or other on the prowl in an African forest in
+the shape of leopards, or “humans,” or spirits—and it is just as well
+to be prepared for any emergency. Hence these warlike accompaniments,
+calculated to deceive the inexperienced into a belief that raiding and
+not rubber is in question.
+
+Through the village and beyond it, passing plantations of millet, yams,
+Indian corn and cassava, winds the caravan, until the fringe of the
+forest looms near. Then, abruptly parting with the bright sunlight and
+the waving fields, we plunge headlong into an atmosphere of gloomy,
+fantastic weirdness, and disappear amid the silent shadows of the giant
+trees. By this time the caravan is reduced to single-file formation. It
+has stretched out for a mile or more along the narrow curling path, which
+often takes the form of an almost complete circle, those who compose its
+extreme rear being within hailing distance of the leaders, while between
+the two extremities and the centre is a broad belt of impenetrable bush.
+And what a solemnity broods over all! Everything is hushed. The bare
+feet of the natives sink noiselessly on generations of fallen, rotting
+leaves. The air is damp, humid, and enervating. We glide along in the
+semi-religious light as though oppressed by some vast, undefined, awesome
+presence. It is a world of great black shadows and mysterious depths; and
+within it the soul shrinks and falters beneath a weight of indescribable,
+all-potent, unnerving melancholy. A hot breath, laden with sickly and
+overpowering perfume, rises in stifling gusts till the brain reels, and
+you long with a great yearning for air and light and waving fields.
+And then, suddenly, a glimpse of Paradise. Shattered by lightning, or
+perchance, riddled by the larvæ of some monstrous coleoptera, a forest
+giant has tumbled headlong, tearing by the impetus of his fall a great
+rent in the sombre dome above, through which, though chastened and
+subdued, the sun’s rays filter down upon the path beneath. There, in that
+temporary clearing, Nature seems to have lavished all her gifts. Festoons
+of glorious orchids stretch out their capricious blooms, asking to be
+plucked. The wild tamarind, with its exquisite, plum-coloured, plush-like
+fruit, invites the touch. Round flowers and fruit flutter countless
+brilliantly coloured butterflies, and the glimpse of a deep tropical
+blue, far, far overhead, completes the fairy sight. No palm-fringed oasis
+among shifting sands can be more blessed to the traveller than these
+gem-like clearings amid the sullen gloom of the tropical forests of
+Western Africa.
+
+But to return, with apologies for this digression, to our
+rubber-collectors. No sooner has the member of a caravan—every one acts,
+as a rule, independently of his fellow—pitched upon a spot which seems
+propitious, than down comes the load off his head. A little preliminary
+in the shape of refreshment is ever conducive to good labour, so recourse
+is had to the _ci-devant_ gin-bottle and the dried yams. These inner
+cravings having been satisfied, the rubber-collector makes with his
+“matchet” a number of transverse incisions in the bark of an adjacent
+rubber-tree, or vine,[94] as the case may be; hangs his calabashes (empty
+gourds) beneath the cruel rent, sees that the sap is running; looks
+round for more trees, makes more incisions, hangs up more calabashes;
+and then, feeling fully satisfied with his labours, casts himself down
+upon the ground and lies there awhile, heedless of the crawling legions
+of the insect fraternity. Every now and then he will lazily rise and
+make the round of the trees he has tapped, to assure himself that the
+sap is flowing freely into the calabashes. A really good workman will
+collect three or four pounds of rubber a day, so that, taking an average
+of, say, two pounds for each individual, a caravan numbering one hundred
+and fifty souls will gather a considerable quantity of the stuff in a
+comparatively short time. The sap is then boiled in an iron pot to make
+it coagulate, salt and lime being sometimes added to help the process of
+solidification. It is then rolled into balls. When the calabashes are
+full the homeward march begins.
+
+The home-coming of the caravan is marked by congratulations on the part
+of those who stayed behind, and every proud owner of a calabash or two
+of rubber recounts to the members of an admiring household the wild and
+terrible adventures (in the shape of spooks, leopards, and what not)
+which have befallen him in the forest.
+
+The last stage in the business, so far as the native is concerned, has
+then to be carried out. The rubber having been collected, it must be
+sold. So off goes the collector to the nearest trading station with the
+spoil. Now, if the commercial ways of the Heathen Chinee are dark, the
+ways of the Heathen son of Ham are much the same on occasion. The rubber,
+he knows, is bought by weight. Primitive reasoning convinces him that if
+he rolls his rubber round a stone or bullet, not only will the ball weigh
+more, but he will be able to make more balls out of the rubber he has
+collected. The consequence is that the European trader, when he cuts the
+rubber ball in two (being used to these little pranks), frequently comes
+across a stone, bullet, or other heavy substance embedded in the centre,
+to the unbounded astonishment, needless to remark, of our friend the
+collector, who cannot for the life of him understand who placed it there,
+and asserts, with much emphasis and gesticulation, that only a ju-ju or
+spirit of the most depraved character could have played an honest man so
+low-down a trick.
+
+[Illustration: WASHING RUBBER]
+
+When the rubber has finally passed into the white trader’s hands, after
+the preliminary native preparation, it is still found to contain a
+large proportion of water (about 10[95] per cent.) and emits a most
+disagreeable odour. This water has to be ejected before the rubber is
+fit for the European market. The balls or cakes are therefore placed in
+a pressing machine, resembling an ordinary mangle, then cleaned of the
+impurities which may still remain, and finally cut into strips, soaked in
+sea-water to prevent “sweating,” and shipped in wooden casks.[96]
+
+The rubber trade of Nigeria is only in its infancy, and the advent of
+competitive private enterprise into the Niger territories should have the
+effect of stimulating the industry to a notable extent.
+
+The unfortunate destruction of the rubber trees and vines in the Lagos
+forests has been instrumental in producing a _furor_ of restrictive
+legislation on the part of the authorities. There is grave doubt as to
+whether this method of approaching the subject is not mistaken and likely
+to defeat its own ends. It is incongruous, to say the least of it, to
+first of all encourage the native to exploit a new product, to give him
+no scientific instruction or training in the process, and then, when
+the inevitable happens, to express great indignation at his villainous
+capacity for mischief, and frame legislation calculated to interfere
+with his free use of his own property! It is not the general custom of
+the native to destroy a product out of which he makes money. In the case
+of the oil-palm, in the usage of which they have been long accustomed,
+the native chiefs themselves legislate against over-tapping, witness the
+“porroh” of the Mendis. It is a matter of instruction. It is notorious
+that the crisis in the Lagos rubber industry is entirely attributable
+to the gross foolishness displayed by the authorities in the first
+instance in not taking the necessary means to teach the natives the art
+of rational production. What is wanted is the creation of small centres
+of instruction in every district, where the natives could come for
+information, where various products could be shown, tested and commented
+upon. The official in charge would have no powers whatever conferred
+upon him in a political sense, but would be connected, of course, with
+the Government. His duty would be that of instructor, supervisor, guide,
+and assistant. He would certainly be welcomed by the chiefs, so long as
+they were assured that his _rôle_ was entirely divorced from political
+designs. The experience would cost very little, and the benefits accruing
+therefrom, both as regards the perfecting of existing native industries
+and the stimulation of new ones, would be considerable, and would do away
+with the necessity, or alleged necessity, of subsequent legislation of an
+irritating character. A little more of that sort of thing and a little
+less blood-letting and “murder of native institutions,” as Miss Kingsley
+used to put it, in order to improve them, would be very desirable.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE FULANI IN NIGERIA
+
+    “Remember that Paradise is found under the shadow of swords.
+    These wretches are come to fight for an impious cause. We have
+    called them into the right way, and to reward us they threaten
+    us with arms. Meet this attack with courage and be certain
+    of victory for the Prophet has said, ‘Even if a mountain is
+    guilty against another mountain, it is swallowed up in the
+    earth.’”—The speech of OTHMAN, the Fulani conqueror of Hausa,
+    to his soldiers on the outbreak of war.
+
+
+“The King of Gober took many of their cows. The Phulas said nothing. He
+returned again to seize their cows. The Phulas said, ‘Is it right on us
+to take vengeance?’ But the King of Gober took some of their cows and
+returned them to them, saying, ‘Let there be peace between us; you leave
+this place and return to some place near me.’ They replied they would not
+go. In the morning he commenced fighting with them, with one thousand
+horse soldiers to seize the Phulas; but they drove him back with great
+force. From that time he did not make open war with them again; but he
+brought poison, put it into the water, and all who did drink of it died.
+After this the Phulas made war with him, and when they had conquered
+his people, they caught many of them and made them slaves; in this way
+it was that the Phulas got possession of Gober. In the same way it was
+that they sent their people to all parts of Hausa and fought with the
+Pagans.”[97] Thus does a native version explain the origin of the great
+Fulani uprising in the Hausa States in the early part of last century
+which started a great wave of Muslim conquest, sweeping southwards from
+the Chad Basin almost to the ocean. “We will dip the Koran in the sea,”
+swore the conquering host of white-clad horsemen, and but for the
+concentration of the agricultural Yorubas, which checked their advance
+and led to their overthrow, by a night surprise, outside the walls of
+Osogbo,[98] they would have fulfilled their vow.
+
+The story of the Fulani revolution—misnamed by some “invasion”—in Hausa
+has been often told, sometimes correctly,[99] sometimes with obvious
+bias against the reformers, and _minus_ several important facts, such,
+for instance, as the co-operation which the revolutionists sought and
+found among the Hausas themselves. To describe it once again would be
+superfluous. Suffice it to say that “victims of persecution,” as their
+own records assert and as Barth confirms, and as we are at least as
+warranted in believing as those other accounts which make them out to
+be the oppressors rather than the oppressed; in much the same position
+of social and political inferiority to men whose intellectual superiors
+they are, as their compatriots find themselves to-day in Borgu, the
+pastoral Fulani of Northern Nigeria, remembering the performances of
+other of their brethren when similarly situated, and acting under the
+influence of their mallam Zaky, or Othman Dan Fodio, to give him his
+European appellation, flung aside the crook, took to the sword, and with
+the name of “Allah” on their lips completely subjugated in a few short
+years the mutually antagonistic Hausa States, made themselves masters of
+the principal cities, converted the natives to Islam, and so ably and
+justly administered the country,[100] that, in Clapperton’s words, “The
+whole country, when not in state of war, was so well regulated that it
+was a common saying that a woman might travel with a cask of gold upon
+her head, from one end of the Fellatah[101] dominions to the other.”[102]
+From cattle rearers and herdsmen the Fulani temporarily became warriors,
+administrators and statesmen, a minority retaining these attributes to
+this day, while the bulk of the people continue their usual avocations.
+Their capacity for combination enabled them to overcome the Hausa States,
+perpetually engaged in intestine quarrels; their statesmanship induced
+them to foster and encourage the caravan trade with the Tripolitan ports;
+their administrative genius was observable in a hundred ways, not the
+least in obtaining their revenue by the maintenance of existing forms of
+taxation.[103] Their intense religious zeal has been so communicative
+that the Hausas have never even fractionally relapsed into Paganism.[104]
+When we contemplate the achievements of the Fulani in Nigeria we are lost
+in wonder, and there is no difficulty in endorsing what Sir Frederick
+Lugard has said of them—and what many French administrators and officers
+have said before him—“they are born rulers and incomparably above the
+negroid tribes in ability.” What potent allies these men can be to the
+wise administration which makes use of their services in Western Africa,
+which gains their confidence and enlists their sympathies!
+
+[Illustration: FULANI SWORD]
+
+The wholesale manner in which the Fulani have succeeded in stamping
+their individuality upon the races with whom they have come in contact
+is astonishing. Everywhere in their wonderful _trek_ from east to west,
+and from west to south, from the valley of the Senegal to the valley of
+the Binue, new and more virile generations have sprung up beneath their
+fertile tread, destined in the course of time to found for themselves
+separate kingdoms, almost to become separate nationalities. Thus in
+Futa Jallon, that mountainous region abounding in the fine cattle the
+Fulani themselves introduced in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries,
+and which before the French occupation supplied the Freetown markets
+with fresh meat, we find the Fulani powerfully affecting the ethnic
+elements of the country by their unions with the indigenous Jalonkes and
+Mandingoes. In Senegambia, a well-nigh distinct race has arisen in the
+Tukulors, Fulani crossed with Joloff and Mandingo. Hausas and Kanuri of
+Bornu, Tuareg of the southern confederations, and Susus from the Northern
+Rivers[105] have all received an infusion of Fulani blood. And yet the
+pure Fulani element has preserved itself, and while absorbing countless
+tribes and becoming itself greatly modified in certain districts,
+has succeeded in perpetuating the parent strain which has never been
+absorbed.[106] At the present time may be found, scattered throughout the
+Western Sudan, in the Futa Jallon highlands, and in the regions abutting
+upon Lake Chad—in Adamawa notably—the same type of nomadic herdsmen,
+refined, hospitable and courteous in demeanour, simple and patriarchal in
+his habits, with clear-cut features and copper-coloured or olive-tinged
+complexion, who tended his hump-backed cattle and roman-nosed sheep a
+thousand years ago in the oasis of Tuat and the plains round Timbuctoo.
+And by his side, his wives, rejoicing in a greater degree of liberty and
+authority in the household than any of their African sisters, with the
+charm of another land upon them, soft-eyed, spice-loving daughters of the
+East, from whence they came in those dim and distant days shrouded in
+impenetrable mist.
+
+[Illustration: PURE-BRED FULANI GIRL, ADAMAWA]
+
+The history of the Fulani is not confined to Nigeria. Their rise to power
+in the old Hausa States, and the foundation of the Sokoto Empire is, as
+we have seen, quite a modern event, and it is only partially accurate
+to say that their dominating influence in inland Western Africa dated
+from the Jihad of Othman. The latter’s successes certainly inspired the
+Fulani (but perhaps more especially the cross races of Fulani blood)
+west of the Niger to warlike deeds. The Fulani revolution in Hausa was
+followed by the Fulani uprising in Segu against the pagan Bambarras
+and Soninkes. Timbuctoo fell into their power in 1826. Mohammed Lebo
+started a crusade in Massina, directed as much against the pagans as
+against his co-religionists and compatriots, for their lack of zeal and
+the impurities which had crept into their religious observances. After
+Mohammed Lebo, the great Tukulor chief, El-Haji-Omar, a man of remarkable
+ability, belonging to the fanatical sect of the Tijaniyah, gathered
+an immense host around him, by means of which he waged war on all and
+sundry, showing particular animosity towards the parent stock from which
+he sprang. But his religious zeal was untempered by political purpose,
+his constructive powers appear to have been small, he fought entirely for
+his own hand, and his collision with and subsequent defeats by the French
+resulted in the revolt of those who had suffered from his excesses. It
+is a curious fact that he should have finally been driven to desperation
+and suicide, and his power extinguished, by the Fulani themselves,
+notwithstanding the ties of blood which bound them to the Tukulors, from
+among whom Omar naturally obtained most of his recruits. Nevertheless,
+El-Haji-Omar is still a name to conjure with in the Western Sudan, and
+other adventurers of his type have from time to time given the French
+a deal of trouble. But the Fulani had been masters in a considerable
+portion of Western Africa long before Othman raised his standard in
+Gober of Hausa. In the next chapter endeavour will be made to search
+the earliest records throwing light upon the presence of the Fulani in
+Western Africa. This will help us to approach the problem of the origin
+of a race which constitutes the ruling factor in the foremost, in point
+of size and importance, of the British Protectorates in West Africa.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE FULANI IN WEST AFRICAN HISTORY
+
+    “In every kingdom and country on each side of the river there
+    are some people of a tawny colour called Pholeys.... They live
+    in hoards or clans, build towns, and are not subject to any
+    kings of the country, though they live in their territories:
+    for if they are ill-treated in one nation they break up their
+    towns and remove to another. They have chiefs of their own, who
+    rule with so much moderation that every act of government seems
+    rather an act of the people than of one man.... They plant near
+    their houses tobacco, and all round their towns they open for
+    cotton, which they fence in together; beyond that are their
+    corn-fields, of which they raise four kinds.... They are the
+    greatest planters in the country, though they are strangers in
+    it. They are very industrious and frugal, and raise more corn
+    and cotton than they consume, which they sell at a reasonable
+    price, and are very hospitable and kind to all; so that to have
+    a Pholey town in the neighbourhood is by the natives reckoned a
+    blessing.... As they have plenty of food, they never suffer any
+    of their own nation to want; but support the old, the blind,
+    and lame equally with the others; and, as far as their ability
+    goes, assist the wants of the Mandingoes, great numbers of whom
+    they have maintained in famines.”—FRANCIS MOORE on the Fulani
+    of the Gambia (1734).
+
+    “A race in which self-reliance and colonising instincts are
+    prominently developed. Education and mental training are
+    carefully attended to. In every town and village are men who
+    devote themselves to the instruction of youth. Nearly every man
+    and woman can at least read Arabic. Under the enlightened rule
+    of Alimami Ibrahim Suri, life is held in reverence, property
+    is sacred, robbery committed in the highway is punishable with
+    death.... There is a woman in Timbo who knows the whole of the
+    Moallaket by heart, an accomplishment in Semitic lore which
+    many an Oriental scholar in Europe might envy.”—DR. BLYDEN on
+    the Fulani in Futa-Jallon.
+
+    “They occupy a high place in the scale of intelligence.”—BAIKIE
+    on the Fulani of Northern Nigeria.
+
+
+The earliest mention we have of an Empire existing in West Africa is
+contained in the _Tarik_,[107] a history of the Western Sudan, written
+in the seventeenth century by one Abderrahman ben Abdallah ben Imran
+ben Amir Es-Sa’di, and apparently ascribed by Barth in error to the
+celebrated _savant_ of Timbuctoo, Ahmed Baba. That Empire was the Empire
+of Ghanata, so called from its capital Ghana, which has been identified
+with Walata or Biru. The spread of the Empire was enormous and extended
+to the Atlantic, embracing the valleys of the Senegal and the Gambia.
+Ghana was situate in the central province of the Empire, by name Baghena,
+the modern Bakunu according to Commandant Binger. The _Tarik_ states
+that twenty-two kings had reigned in Ghanata prior to the Hejira. Barth
+approximated the foundation of Ghanata to 300 A.D. It was attacked and
+defeated in the eighth century[108] by a Berber tribe (Zanaga, Senhaja?),
+the invaders subsequently succumbing, at what period is obscure, to
+the Mandingoes—or Mandingo-Fulani, _i.e._ Tukulors—who from its ruins
+constructed another Empire which grew to even larger proportions, that
+of Melli, Melle,[109] or Mali, as it is variously spelt. Who were the
+original founders of the Ghanata or Walata Empire?
+
+[Illustration: FULANI CHIEF—FUTA JALLON]
+
+Dr. Robert Brown, in his most admirable edition of Pory’s translation of
+Leo,[110] says: “Walata is the Arab and Tuareg name, while Biru is the
+one applied to it by the Negro Azer, a section of the Aswanek, who are
+the original inhabitants of the place.” At the time the above was written
+no complete copy[111] of the _Tarik_ was obtainable, and Dr. Brown was
+unable consequently to consult the work, and to observe how closely
+it corroborates Barth’s famous chronological history of the Songhay.
+Had he done so the passage in question would, no doubt, have undergone
+modification, for the _Tarik_ distinctly tells us that the name of the
+original founder of the Ghanata (Walata) dynasty was Quaia-Magha,[112]
+and Magha, as M. O. Houdas points out, is a Fufulde word meaning “great.”
+Thus it is legitimate to assume, in view of the absence of rebutting
+evidence, that the original founders of probably the oldest Empire in
+West Africa, of the first Empire at any rate of which record is left
+to us, were of Fulani blood. In any case, it would appear to point
+conclusively to the existence of the Fulani language, and therefore to
+the presence of the Fulani in the Senegal region of West Africa from the
+very earliest times.
+
+It may be argued that a single word is a slender basis upon which to
+construct a theory. But when it is borne in mind (1) that the ensuing
+historical record of the very same region, 1500 years later, viz.
+the arrival at the court of the Bornuese king Biri of two religious
+chiefs _of the Fulani of Melle_, proves the presence of the Fulani in
+the country which the _Tarik_ asserts was ruled over by a king with a
+Fulfulde[113] affix to his name; (2) that every successive account,
+both Arabic and European, referring to the same region corroborates the
+circumstance, it will be conceded that the assumption goes far beyond
+mere plausibility. There is every reason to believe that the Fulani
+were numerous in the Empire of Melle[114] (if, indeed, the rulers of
+that Empire were not of mixed Fulani blood, which seems probable[115]),
+sometimes in the ascendant, sometimes the under-dogs, according as their
+political fortunes rose and fell.[116] In the middle of the fifteenth
+century they were certainly the ruling race in Baghena (the central
+province, as already stated, of the Ghanata Empire, which seems to have
+preserved its name subsequent to the Mellian conquest), having succeeded
+apparently in getting the upper hand. We know this from the Songhay
+records, which tell us that at that period Askia, the powerful Songhay
+king, “conquered Baghena and slew the Fulani chieftain Damba-Dumbi.”[117]
+Thirty years before that event the chief of Baghena was also a Fulani,
+as is testified by the records of Askia’s predecessor. About 1450
+Ca-de-Mosto speaks of “el rey dos Fullos” on the banks of the Senegal.
+Later on, John II. of Portugal sends an embassy to Tamala, “powerful
+king of the Fulas.” De Barros, the Portuguese historian, refers to a
+great war, “incendia de guerra,” in the Senegal country (1534). Masses of
+Fulani, says de Barros, left the country of “Futa”—probably Futa-Toro—in
+a southerly direction. So numerous was the host, he continues, that
+“it dried up the rivers in its passage.” Marmol also refers to this
+southward movement. The Fulani, “who had raised so formidable an army
+in the southern parts of the province of ‘Fura’ (Futa) which borders
+on Mandingo, which they were marching against, that they pretended it
+dried up rivers.”[118] No doubt that was the beginning of the Fulani
+migration into Bondu and Bambuk, to be followed at a subsequent period
+by a continuation of the movement into Futa-Jallon. The _Tarik_ gives us
+the story of the foundation of the Fulani State of Toro by Salta Tayenda,
+“the false prophet,” in 1511.[119] According to the _Tarik_, the Fulani
+were ruling as far eastward as Masina in the fifteenth century, and
+Barth’s chronological table of the Songhay mentions an expedition by a
+Songhay king against the Fulani of Gurma, still farther east.
+
+Coming to a later period, we have Jobson (1628) talking of the Fulani
+as oppressed by, and in subjection to, the Mandingoes in the Gambia
+region. In 1697 the Sieur de Brüe pays his first visit, on behalf of
+the French Senegal Company, to the court of the Fulani ruler on the
+Senegal River. Labat’s description of the event is most picturesque.
+They were the days when African monarchs were treated with respect by
+the European who desired to trade with their subjects. Even the cynical
+prelate to whom we are indebted for the relation of Brüe’s voyage, and
+who chuckles over the small villainies practised upon the Fulani by
+the Company, expresses astonishment with the Fulani institutions, the
+judiciary and administrative systems, the agricultural and commercial
+aptitude of the inhabitants. “As far as the eye could reach,” he says,
+quoting from Brüe’s papers, “not an inch of ground was left uncultivated
+or neglected.” Farther on he speaks of “vast plains covered with cattle.”
+“They”—the Fulani—he continues, “cultivate the soil with care and make
+abundant harvests of large and small millet, cotton, tobacco, peas and
+other vegetables, and they rear prodigious quantities of cattle.” In
+short, we find the same well-defined characteristics in the Fulani Empire
+in the Senegal of the seventeenth century as are observable in their
+Empires of more recent date. Herdsmen and agriculturists by nature, they
+produce, when circumstances have placed the government of the countries
+in which they have settled into their hands, a class of statesmen and
+administrators.
+
+[Illustration: HALF-CASTE FULANI GIRL—FUTA-JALLON]
+
+I have quoted a considerable number of authorities—the list might easily
+be extended—to show that the Fulani have lived in the Senegal and Gambia
+region from remote times, and that their identification by the _Tarik_,
+and by Barth, with the Ghanata Empire, estimated by the latter to date
+back to A.D. 300, is, therefore, inherently probable. From the region
+in which they have alternately been rulers and ruled, and where they
+reside to-day under French domination, the Fulani have gradually spread
+themselves south and east, throughout almost the entire region of inland
+Western Africa. The movement continues and is one of the most interesting
+ethnological factors in Western Africa. On the west, the forest belt has
+prevented the Fulani from reaching the ocean, although on two occasions
+they were very nearly doing so, from behind Lagos in the middle of last
+century, as mentioned in the previous chapter; from behind Sierra Leone
+about thirty years before their defeat at Osogbo, their cavalry (as in
+Yoruba) being ineffective against the opposition of the forest dwellers,
+Sulimas and others—the free Negroes of the Sierra Leone Protectorate,
+upon whom Downing Street in its wisdom imposed a property tax in 1898.
+Ashanti tradition mentions the advent of “red men” from the interior as a
+contributive cause of their migration southward.[120] To-day the Fulani
+have reached the borders of the great Congo forest, and according to some
+accounts are present in very large numbers on the Sangha River.[121] Will
+they seek to penetrate the forest or will they turn aside, oblique to the
+north,[122] once more and, as though impelled forward by an inscrutable
+decree of Providence, gravitate imperceptibly towards the spot where they
+crossed into the Dark Continent from Asia, and first set foot upon that
+African soil which for some four thousand years has been their home?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+ORIGIN OF THE FULANI
+
+    “The most interesting of all African tribes.... A distinct
+    race.”—DR. BARTH, “Travels in Central Africa” (5-volume
+    edition).
+
+
+Of all the mysteries which lie hidden, or but half unveiled, within the
+bosom of the still mysterious Continent of Africa, there is none that
+presents a more absorbing or more fascinating interest than the origin of
+the race which has infused its individuality throughout inland Western
+Africa, and whose fertilising influence is visible from the banks of the
+Senegal to the Chad.
+
+In the previous chapter it has, I venture to believe, been fairly
+established that the Fulani are indubitably associated with our earliest
+available records of Western Africa, and that, with the exception of
+Hanno’s narrative (touched upon presently), every important reference,
+spread over many centuries, to the portion of Western Africa between the
+tenth and twentieth parallels of North latitude, bears witness, directly
+or indirectly, to the presence of the Fulani within that region at a
+remote period.[123] Whence came this people, which differentiates so
+radically in colour, form, habits, customs and manners from the Negroes
+among whom they have settled, and which dominated in the valley of the
+Senegal as far back as the fourth century?
+
+Their own legends; their complexion and structure; their mental
+development and physical characteristics, all point emphatically to the
+East as the cradle of the Fulani race; a “distinct race,” as Dr. Barth
+truly says, and not the bastard product which some would make out.
+
+[Illustration: LOW-CASTE FULANI, WESTERN SUDAN]
+
+Before attempting to piece together the various threads which in the
+aggregate amount, in my humble opinion, to a virtual demonstration, it
+may be well to state that the Eastern theory numbers opponents who,
+from their position and attainments, compel our attention. There are
+those who entertain the belief that the Fulani belong to the Berber
+stock. There are others who think—and this I cannot but regard as wildly
+improbable—that the Fulani are of Nigritic extraction. M. Marcel Dubois,
+the brilliant author of “Timbuctoo the Mysterious,”[124] whose treatment
+of the Fulani is anything but impartial, categorically denies the Eastern
+theory. “It was from the West,” he says, “from the Senegalese Adrar
+(Aderer of British maps), from the land of sand extending north of the
+Senegal that they came.” “The Foulbes,” he continues, “had been driven
+towards the Sudan, very probably when the Moors, expelled from Spain,
+invaded Adrar.” M. Dubois finds corroboration of his views in a passage
+of the _Tarik_ (which, being written by an Arab, is necessarily biased
+against the Fulani) to the effect that the “Foulbes originated in the
+country of Tischitt.” I venture, very respectfully, to differ from M.
+Dubois. According to Leo, the Moors or Berbers conquered Ghanata in the
+eighth century, the ruling caste at that time, as both the _Tarik_ and
+also Barth’s records lead us to infer, being of Fulani blood, which in
+itself casts doubt upon M. Dubois’ assertion. But the more one endeavours
+to reconcile M. Dubois’ contention with existing records, the less sound
+does it appear. The Moorish power in Spain was not finally extinguished
+until towards the close of the fifteenth century. Nevertheless, it may be
+said that the Moorish cause was lost in Europe, and that their expulsion
+commenced with the defeat of Salado in 1340.[125] We can, therefore,
+for the sake of argument, take the middle of the fourteenth century as
+the period, approximately, when the Moors began to be “expelled from
+Spain.” This would be about the time when, in M. Dubois’ view, the Moors
+were driving the pastoral Fulani towards Aderer, “the land of sand.”
+Now, apart from the self-evident contradiction of a people whose wealth
+has ever been in their flocks and herds, originating in an arid district
+(sand not usually being associated with pastures), the Fulani were in
+point of fact already considerably farther south. Was not the market of
+Jenne (on which M. Dubois has himself thrown such a glamour of interest)
+attended as early as 1260 by Fulani?[126] Did not the King of Bornu
+receive a Fulani deputation from Melle between 1288 and 1306?[127] Is it
+conceivable that the Fulani, compelled to evacuate Aderer in the middle
+of the fourteenth century, would have ruled over vast tracts of territory
+as far south as Gurma, only one hundred years later? M. Dubois will have
+to bring forward a great deal of evidence—certainly something more than
+his own assertion, and an obscure passage in the _Tarik_—to upset the
+Eastern theory of Fulani origin.
+
+Of native traditions among the Fulani attributing an Eastern origin
+to their race we have no end, and although too much significance need
+not be attached to them, they must not on that account be overlooked.
+There is generally a foundation of truth in native legends of this
+kind. Anthropometrical studies, or rather craniological studies, are,
+however, extremely valuable. Although carried out to a small extent
+so far, they appreciably strengthen the Eastern theory. Dr. Verneau,
+whose reputation as an anthropologist is well known, has recently
+published[128] the results of an examination of five skulls of Fulani
+chiefs from Futa-Jallon. The first three belonged to individuals known,
+when alive, to the French authorities of that Colony. The other two were
+brought home by Dr. Maclaud, who has travelled extensively among the
+Fulani, and to whom I am indebted for several of the photographs here
+reproduced. None of the originals were Fulani of the pure type. The one
+approaching nearest to purity was Alfa-Alliu, who was condemned to death
+for an unprovoked attack upon a French convoy. Of this individual’s
+skull, Dr. Verneau reports: “Alfa-Alliu belongs by his cranial and
+facial characteristics to the sur-based (vaulted) pentagonal type which
+enters into the composition of the present population of Erythria and
+the ancient population of Egypt.” Of two other skulls out of the five
+examined, Dr. Verneau remarks: “Their owners, no doubt, had a certain
+amount of negro blood in their veins, which resulted in a thickening of
+the osseous frame and in a notable prognathous accentuation....[129]
+Nevertheless, these two chiefs were not negroes; the width of the
+forehead, the prominence of the bones of the nose, the proportions of the
+nose itself, and the form of the chin, preclude any connection.” Of the
+two remaining skulls, Dr. Verneau concludes thus: “I will not further
+insist upon the cephalic character of these two deeply crossed Fulani.
+I would merely observe that, notwithstanding the mixed breed, they
+present two cranial forms which we find wherever the influence of the
+Ethiopians has been felt.” It is necessary to add that by “Ethiopian,”
+Dr. Verneau—as he is careful to explain in the opening lines of his
+paper—designates the Abyssinian type, holding that the synonymy given to
+the terms “Negro” and “Ethiopian” is a popular confusion. Élisée Reclus,
+in his great geographical work, also states that the formation of the
+Fulani cranium has affinities with the Egyptian type. To this testimony
+may be added, that the most recent studies in Berber anthropometry
+tend to divorce the Berbers from the ancient Egyptian and the Eastern
+stock.[130]
+
+Dr. Blyden, who visited Timbo (the capital of Futa-Jallon, one of the
+most important Fulani centres in West Africa) in the seventies, and who,
+like Dr. Bayol and others, was immensely impressed with what he saw,
+remarks in a report to the Government of the time (to which I have been
+able, through the doctor’s kindness, to have access): “On entering a
+Fulah town the first thing which strikes a stranger is the Caucasian cast
+of features, especially among the older people; yet every now and then,
+in the children of parents having all the physical traits of the Semitic
+family, there recurs the inextinguishable Negro physiognomy.”[131] “It
+is evident,” the doctor goes on to say, “that while there is a large
+infusion of foreign blood among the people, there is still the influence
+of a powerful race-stock which has thoroughly assimilated the alien
+elements, and this may be judged from the strong pride of ancestry which
+they possess, their respect for the past and their care for posterity.”
+
+D’Eichtal sought to trace in the Hovas of Madagascar a relationship with
+the Fulani, which would, obviously, connect them with the Malays—the
+object of d’Eichtal’s treatise. The sole basis of the theory was a chance
+similarity in certain words; but were d’Eichtal right, we should have
+to admit a complete reversal of the cycle of Fulani migration, which is
+quite impossible. Fulfulde cannot as yet be definitely classed among
+the languages, but, so far as our knowledge extends, it has Semitic
+antecedents. When we endeavour to find some other links, connecting the
+Fulani with the East, several circumstances arrest our attention. The
+first is provided in a passage of Hanno’s “Periplus”; the second, in
+the invasion of Lower Egypt by the Hyksos; the third, in the Hebraic
+tendencies and peculiar familiarity with Hebrew legends observed among
+the Fulani; the fourth, in an attachment to their cattle so remarkable
+as to suggest a far-off bovine worship. These points may be severally
+examined.
+
+[Illustration: PURE-BRED FULANI GIRL—FUTA-JALLON]
+
+When, towards the close of the sixteenth century B.C., the rulers of
+Carthage conceived a scheme of over-sea colonisation which should
+redound to the glory of the Empire and free it at the same time from a
+portion at least of the undesirable elements of the population, they
+despatched an armada of sixty ships containing some thirty thousand
+souls, under the command of a worthy magistrate of the name of Hanno,
+with instructions to pass through the Pillars of Hercules (the Straits of
+Gibraltar) and to lay the basis of a colony somewhere beyond them. The
+fleet appears to have navigated the West Coast of Africa until it reached
+the Senegal, the Carthaginians proceeding for some little distance up
+that river, subsequently pushing southward to the Gambia and farther
+still to the “Southern Horn,” which it has been sought to identify with
+Sherbro Sound.[132] This meeting of Phœnician culture with aboriginal
+primitiveness on the West Coast was, as Sir Harry Johnston has strikingly
+put it, “The first sight that civilised man had of his wild brother since
+the two had parted company in Neolithic times.” And yet in one respect
+this general statement is open to doubt. It was not only Negroes with
+whom the Carthaginian navigator came in contact.
+
+On his return, Hanno wrote an account of his wanderings, in the Punic
+tongue, termed a Periplus or circumnavigation, which he dedicated to
+Moloch, the deity of the Carthaginians, in the Temple of Cronos. Through
+the enterprise of Greek scientists, the relation of Hanno’s voyage
+has been preserved to us. About three centuries after its completion,
+Ptolemæus Claudius, a Greek geographer and historian, published eight
+volumes of geographical research. The portion relating to Africa was
+mainly founded upon Carthaginian material and included a translation of
+Hanno’s “Periplus.” From Ptolemy’s description, we gather that in the
+neighbourhood of the Gambia (Stachir) the Carthaginians came across a
+people of a lighter hue than the Negroes. These people the author calls
+“Leucæthiopes.” Pliny also speaks of the “Leucæthiopes,” placing them,
+however, a couple of degrees farther north. Thus five hundred years B.C.,
+Carthaginian navigators reported in West Africa the existence of a people
+to whom the epithet of “black” did not apply, in the same region in which
+eight hundred years later—that being the first reference to West Africa
+which has come down to us—we hear of an Empire whose rulers were “white,”
+founded by a monarch with a Fulfulde affix to his name.
+
+Who could those light-complexioned “Africans” have been? Not, assuredly,
+Arabs; still less Bantus. With the Berber tribes the Carthaginians were
+in touch everywhere, in Mauritania, Numidia, Cyrenaica. From the Berbers,
+Carthage drew her mercenaries, who often enough proved more dangerous
+than useful. The colonists would have recognised the type had they met
+with it in West Africa, and if the “Leucæthiopes” had been Berbers they
+would have been differently described in the “Periplus.” Indeed, there
+is some ground for believing that the colonists numbered Berbers among
+their ranks. Moreover, the Berber occupation could not at that time have
+extended as far south, by at least fifteen degrees, as the Senegal-Gambia
+region. There is not, so far as I am aware, any record extant suggesting
+the presence of the Berbers in the valley of the Senegal until the eighth
+century A.D. To what race, then, could the “Leucæthiopes” have belonged?
+To what race but the Fulani, to whom the description given by Hanno could
+alone—bearing in mind the period of the expedition—by any possibility
+apply? That is link one.[133]
+
+[Illustration: FULANI HOUSE—FUTA-JALLON]
+
+The invasion of Lower Egypt by the Hyksos or Shepherd Kings from the
+East is one of the obscurest stages of Egyptian history. Professor
+Lepsius believed that the invasion of the Shepherds occurred during the
+thirteenth dynasty (which, according to the same authority, began in 2136
+B.C.), and ended about 1626 B.C. with the expulsion of the Shepherds.
+About 2000 B.C. then—a little earlier or a little later, according to
+other authorities—Egypt, being at that time under the Theban dynasty,
+was invaded by vast hordes of Asiatics, who brought with them enormous
+quantities of cattle and sheep.[134] It would seem as though some great
+internal convulsion, the cause of which can only be conjectured, had
+precipitated into the fertile valley of the Nile a number of nomadic
+pastoral tribes, by nature herdsmen, shepherds and agriculturists, but
+converted for the time being either through famine, scarcity of pastures,
+pressure of other tribes behind them, or spontaneous race-expansion,
+into a warlike and conquering people which swept onward in irresistible
+strength until they reached a land suitable for their herds—their only
+wealth. The distinctive character of their occupation is preserved in
+their name—Hyksos or Shepherd Kings. After a sanguinary struggle, the
+invaders succeeded in fairly establishing themselves in Lower Egypt, and
+gradually extended their influence over Upper Egypt, where, however, they
+were unable to gain complete mastery. Their supremacy lasted about five
+hundred years. They were finally overthrown and driven out of the country
+by the representatives of the old Theban dynasty under Misphragmuthosis
+and Thoutmosis, somewhere about 1636 B.C., if we adopt the estimate of
+the celebrated Egyptologist, Professor Lepsius. What became of them? The
+Egyptian scribe, Manetho, contends that they crossed back into Asia,
+but the statement is very doubtful, and his further assertion that they
+occupied Judea and founded Jerusalem is scouted by the learned.
+
+Is it not legitimate to suppose that a portion, at any rate, of
+so enterprising and courageous a people, which must have been
+extraordinarily numerous to have held sway over Egypt for so considerable
+a period, should have preferred to plunge into the unknown West, in
+search of fresh territories where their herds might find sustenance,
+rather than ignominiously return in the direction from whence they came?
+For five hundred years Africa had been their home. Africa offered them
+extensive pastures for their cattle. They must have largely mingled and
+intermarried with the Egyptians. Family and historical ties bound them
+to the African soil. They had become adopted children of that Continent,
+which in all ages has exerted a peculiar fascination over the various
+immigrant peoples that have entered it. History, I believe, contains not
+one single instance of a people which, having once settled in Africa,
+has left it again. The Shepherds had risen in Africa to a position of
+paramountcy. Out of the undisciplined host which spread itself like a
+torrent over the Nile Delta, a race of statesmen had evolved capable
+of ruling what was perhaps the mightiest Empire of the then civilised
+world. It is incredible to imagine that a whole people could have been
+driven in a fixed direction, as Manetho would have us believe. Tens of
+thousands must have been employed, as their compatriots the Hebrews were
+employed, by the victorious Thebans, in raising those mighty monuments of
+stone whose ruins to-day provoke the wonder of all men. Many more must
+have escaped westwards, and gained with their belongings the fertile
+plains of inland Cyrenaica, and, through the ages, pushed on and on,
+ever seeking pastures new, until in the course of a thousand years the
+Carthaginians found their descendants in the rich valleys of the Senegal
+and Gambia—with their national characteristics preserved, their “powerful
+race stock” unimpaired, their “strong pride of ancestry” remaining, their
+ways adapted to their new environment.
+
+Others again may have migrated south and have largely influenced
+the composite ethnic elements of Erythria, of which the nomadic
+cattle-rearing Wahuma of Uganda would appear to be an offshoot—the
+Asiatic origin of the latter being generally admitted. So much for link
+number two.
+
+The advent of the Hyksos in Lower Egypt was approximately contemporaneous
+with Hebrew emigration from Mesopotamia to Palestine. Three hundred years
+later, in 1700 B.C. according to Biblical records, when a grievous famine
+lay upon the land, the famous Israelitish _trek_ into Africa began, upon
+the direct invitation of Egypt’s ruler, in whose employ Joseph had risen
+to a position of great influence. The new-comers established themselves
+in the fertile province of Goshen,[135] east of the Nile, where the
+river branches as the prongs of a fork. Who was the reigning Pharaoh
+at the time? The gap in Egyptian history unfortunately prevents an
+answer. But that, unless the most competent Egyptologists are hopelessly
+wrong, he was one of the Shepherd Kings, cannot be doubted. And, apart
+from the similarity of dates, there are inherent reasons which still
+further fortify what may almost be said to be a certainty. The Hyksos
+were a conglomeration of Asiatic herdsmen whom circumstances had forced
+into the valley of the Nile. The _rôle_ of warriors and administrators
+which they assumed was probably an accident, the result of finding a
+powerful nation in occupation of the land they coveted, and whom they
+had to subdue before being able to occupy. That they succeeded is proof,
+not only of their courage but of their political genius and power of
+organisation—qualities for which the Fulani are to-day conspicuous,
+notwithstanding the demoralising tendency of contact with intellectually
+inferior races. It was their political genius which led the Hyksos to
+invite an influx of Israelites, Asiatics like themselves, of the same
+Semitic origin and the same Monotheistic leaning. The wisdom of the
+policy is apparent. The Hyksos knew well that their rule was unpopular,
+that the Princes of the overthrown Theban dynasty were continually
+intriguing against their domination in the southern provinces, and that
+their hold upon the country depended upon the number of their adherents
+in the north. They set themselves, therefore, to encourage Asiatic
+immigration. Inversely, it was but natural that, when the representatives
+of the old Theban dynasty once more came into their own, the Israelites
+should have been specially marked out for resentment.
+
+The administrative seat of the Hyksos was Memphis, the city sacred to
+the worship of the bull Apis. At first the Hyksos replaced the worship
+of Apis, incarnation of the divine Osiris, by their own divinity Set,
+but they were compelled by the pressure of public opinion to allow the
+revival of the national cult. After suffering a temporary eclipse,
+bull-worship continued as before. It is, indeed, open to question whether
+the Shepherds themselves, and their compatriots the Israelites, did not
+end by adopting, partially at least, the divinities of the conquered. Can
+we not trace, for instance, in the incident of the golden calf erected by
+Aaron in the wilderness, and the employment of golden calves by Jeroboam,
+in order to symbolise the deity, the strong hold which bull-worship had
+taken upon the imagination of those pastoral Semites, the Israelites,
+whom the Hyksos, pastoral Semites like themselves, had invited to reside
+with them in the land of Goshen? What more natural that, being herdsmen,
+and taught by long years of experience to look upon cattle-rearing as
+their natural avocation, the Semitic invaders of Egypt and their allies
+should have been predisposed, and insensibly drifted, towards the
+adoption of the religion which they found existing in the country they
+had conquered, and of which the chief symbolical deity was a bull?
+
+[Illustration: FULANI CATTLE-PEN]
+
+Now is it not a very singular fact that the Fulani should be the only
+people in Western Africa whose former religious beliefs have been
+associated, by those who have lived amongst them, with an ancient
+bull-worship, the former cult of Egypt? The unusual regard they have for
+their cattle, even after Islam has been established among the great bulk
+of them for upwards of nine centuries, is singled out for special notice
+on the part of numerous observers. Reclus deems the circumstance to be
+worthy of notice: “The scrupulous care,” he says, “which they devote
+to their cattle-pens has something in it of a religious nature.” Here
+and there, in the Western Sudan, tribes of Fulani are met with, whose
+members have remained pagan, and their paganism, in so far as it has been
+observed, consists in a superstitious reverence for their cattle, almost
+amounting to adoration. Among the Mohammedan Fulani the _bororo_[136]
+is still pre-eminently the national representative of the race, and the
+purest types are found among the _bororoji_, rather than amidst those
+of their countrymen who have become over-lords, administrators and
+land-owners on a large scale. “The Foola nation,” says Winterbottom, “is
+the only one in this part of the coast to whom the title of _armentarius
+afer_ can be justly applied.”[137] Many and various are the stories told
+by French officers serving in the Western Sudan of the curious affinity
+between the Fulani and their cattle, an affinity which is a perpetual
+subject of comment among their Negro neighbours.[138] Clapperton tells us
+how the cattle respond at long distances to the shrill cry of the Fulani
+herdsman, who, by the way, is said never to employ a dog.[139] One of the
+most remarkable French stories is that related by an officer operating in
+the Baol district of the Western Sudan. In the course of a day’s work the
+officer had commandeered some cattle from the natives; among the animals
+was a fine black bull obtained from a group of wandering Fulani herdsmen.
+When night fell, the cattle were duly penned and a _Spahis_[140] posted
+as sentry over them. Towards midnight the officer was roused from sleep
+by the _Spahis_ informing him with much solemnity that it would be
+necessary to slaughter the black bull at once. “Are you mad?” cried
+the astonished Frenchman. “Not at all, Lieutenant,” replied the soldier
+imperturbably; “it is the cattle that are mad, for the Fulani are calling
+the bull—listen.” Stepping out into the moonlight the officer listened.
+Presently from a neighbouring hill came the sound of a plaintive chant.
+At the same moment a violent disturbance took place among the cattle.
+The officer hurried towards the pen followed by the sentry, the chant
+meanwhile continuing in a cadence of inexpressible melancholy. The
+commotion in the pen increased, and before the Frenchman could reach it,
+one of the beasts was seen to clear the enclosure at a bound and crash
+through the bush, following the direction of the sound and bellowing
+loudly the while. It was the black bull. He had broken the halter which
+bound him and leapt a palisade five feet high! With the disappearance of
+the bull the chant abruptly ceased. Next morning the Fulani were nowhere
+to be found.[141]
+
+The Hebraic flavour—if one may put it so—which seems to permeate many of
+the Fulani customs, especially among the less contaminated elements of
+the race, has been recorded by careful observers. A friend, an officer
+in the employ of the Northern Nigeria administration, who was intimately
+acquainted with the Fulani, whose language he spoke, and who possessed
+considerable erudition, had prepared a number of notes for me on the
+subject, which, unfortunately, I never received, owing to his death while
+serving in Africa. One custom which had specially impressed him among
+the pure Fulani was the habit of setting aside the firstborn. He found
+that the Fulani woman of unmixed blood in the Binue region never suckled
+her firstborn, but consigned it to the care of friends, and completely
+disinterested herself from its future career, while bestowing upon the
+second child, and subsequent children, the usual motherly solicitude.
+He connected this singular custom with a distorted rendering of the
+punishment visited upon the Egyptians in the time of the Captivity.
+
+[Illustration: A HALF-CASTE FULANI GIRL AND A SUSU]
+
+The lecture delivered in 1886 by Captain de Guiraudon (who published a
+Fulfulde manual, and who resided for several years in the Fulani country
+in Senegambia) before the seventh Congress of Orientalists contains some
+interesting references to the subject under discussion. In the course
+of his relations with the Fulani, De Guiraudon was particularly struck
+with their peculiar knowledge of Jewish history. So familiarly did they
+speak of the chief Hebrew personalities of the Old Testament, and so well
+posted were they with the principal events related in it, that they could
+not, argued De Guiraudon, have acquired their knowledge merely through
+Arabic sources. They referred to those times as though dealing with their
+own national records. Moses and Abraham might have been individuals of
+the same race as themselves. “In their oral legends Moses plays a very
+important part, and although certain passages of the Scriptures are
+transformed or rather assimilated, they have so intense a Biblical and
+Hebraic tone as to exclude all Arabic influence.” De Guiraudon noted,
+however, that their Israelitish chronicles ceased after Solomon. “What
+they knew of the miracles of our Saviour was so distorted and erroneous
+as to prove that the New Testament had reached them from afar, in a vague
+and fragmentary condition.” De Guiraudon’s conclusions are best given in
+his own words. “It would seem as if the Puls (Fulani), if they themselves
+did not profess the Jewish faith, which I would rather be disposed to
+affirm than deny, were at least in permanent contact with the Jewish
+people in remote times, and that, influenced at one time or another by
+the Israelites, they received Old Testament legends directly from them.”
+
+Dr. Blyden also testifies in an indirect way to the close acquaintance
+of the Fulani with the history of ancient Hebraic personalities. “They
+hold the language of the Koran,” he remarks, “in the greatest veneration,
+affirming that it is the language which was spoken by Adam, Seth, Noah,
+Abraham, and Ishmael. The descendants of Ishmael, they contend, have
+never been in bondage to any man; and that during the bondage of Isaac’s
+descendants in Egypt the language lost its purity and copiousness.”
+
+It is significant that the son and successor of Othman Dan Fodio, sultan
+Bello of Hausa, second Fulani ruler over the Hausa States, in the history
+of the Sudan written in Arabic characters which he gave to Clapperton,
+describes the “Tow-rooths,” who may, I think, be identified with the
+Torodos (a sect of Fulani greatly looked up to), as “having originated
+from the Jews.”[142] Mungo Park, when writing of his experiences among
+the Mandingoes—who appear to have been converted to Islam by the Fulani,
+with whom they have been in close relationship, amiable and the reverse,
+for many centuries—observed a similar widespread knowledge of incidents
+in Old Testament history, such as the death of Abel, the lives of the
+Patriarchs, Joseph’s dream, and so on. Winterbottom is equally emphatic.
+“The customs of these people (the Fulani),” he says, “bear a striking
+resemblance to those of the Jews described in the Pentateuch, and after
+Mohammed, Moses is held by them in the highest estimation.” There is some
+uniformity, too, between the following descriptive passages. The first is
+from Kenrick (American edition), the second from Laing’s history of the
+Sulima people and their relations with the Fulani:
+
+    “The Jews were commanded, on the day of the Atonement, to
+    provide a goat to carry the sins of the people, and the
+    high-priest was to lay his hand on the head of the goat and
+    confess the national sins. So among the Egyptians whenever a
+    victim was offered, a prayer was repeated over its head, if any
+    calamity was about to befall either the sacrifices or the land
+    of Egypt, ‘it might be averted on this head.’”
+
+    “Musah Bah (a Fulani chief), shortly after his installation,
+    ordered a great feast to be held, and, inviting to it all the
+    head-men of Jallon Kadoo, explained to them the nature of the
+    Mohammedan faith and told them that the Foulahs had come to
+    settle in their country with a desire only to do them good and
+    to show them the true road to happiness. He then ordered a
+    large wafer of country bread and a bleeding sheep to be placed
+    before him, and invited all those who wished to be instructed
+    by the priests of Futa-Jallon to place their hands upon the
+    bread and touch the sheep, which all the head-men did.”
+
+The motives were different, but the Fulani ceremonial savours greatly of
+the Old Testament. So much for the remaining links.
+
+Enough has been said, I think, to show that there is a vast field open
+to systematic inquiry and investigation, which may possibly lead to
+discoveries of a most interesting and important kind. Having examined the
+links one by one, let us see how they look when riveted together and what
+conclusions they suggest. The straight-nosed, straight-haired, relatively
+thin-lipped, wiry, copper or bronze complexioned (“pale-gold” as one
+writer puts it) Fulani male, with his well-developed cranium, and refined
+extremities; and the Fulani woman, with her clear skin, her rounded
+breasts,[143] large eyes,[144] antimony-dyed eyebrows, gracefulness of
+movement, beauty of form, coquettish ways and general attractiveness—are
+Asiatics. They are the lineal descendants of the Hyksos, having migrated
+westwards with the overthrow of the Shepherd conquerors. Their customs
+bear record to their progenitors having been influenced both by the cult
+of ancient Egypt and by the Israelites, whose presence in the Nile Delta
+was contemporaneous with Hyksos rule. Their presence in West Africa
+dates back at least 2500 years. To dogmatise on such a subject would be
+foolish; to claim having evolved an original theory would be impertinent.
+But I am not aware that the Eastern theory of Fulani origin has been
+hitherto worked out with any attempt at consecutiveness, or an endeavour
+made to amalgamate and give in connected form—however imperfectly—the
+chief factors for further study which may be usefully followed up by
+some one more competent than the author.
+
+And what is to be the policy of Great Britain, of France and of Germany
+towards this wonderful race? Surely it should be dictated in the first
+place by a desire to preserve. With their faults—and what race is devoid
+of faults?—the Fulani have admirable qualities which can fit them to be
+worthy and reliable co-builders and assistants in the task which the
+Powers have undertaken in Western Africa. Their virility has hitherto
+been equal to all the calls upon it. They retain “the strong pride of
+race.” They possess in the highest degree the attributes of rulers.
+It would be a misfortune indeed if, with the advent of the European,
+possessed of those swift engines of destruction he is at times so prompt
+to use in the name of civilisation, the Fulani should disappear from the
+regions they have leavened with their intelligence.
+
+
+
+
+PART III
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+SANITARY AFFAIRS IN WEST AFRICA
+
+(By Major RONALD ROSS, F.R.C.S., F.R.S., C.B., Liverpool School of
+Tropical Medicine.)
+
+
+The first question which any one who has studied the history of West
+Africa will ask, is this—Why has the country developed so slowly?
+It is actually nearer to Europe and more accessible than several
+tropical countries, which have certainly progressed far more towards
+civilisation—such as the West and East Indies, Central America and the
+seaboard of China; it is, generally speaking, a rich country; with a
+fertile soil, sufficient rainfall, large rivers, good harbours, fine,
+well-watered plains, a vast population, and a climate not excessively
+hot. One would expect to find here flourishing settlements, large cities,
+a prosperous agriculture and a great commerce; but what we really have is
+a series of second-rate, if not third-rate, settlements which are just
+able to hold their own in the midst of the forests and marshes which
+surround them; and a native population which can scarcely be considered
+other than barbarous beyond a short distance from the settlements
+referred to. The discrepancy between the expectation and the fact is
+remarkable. India, for example, with her vast tracts of well-cultivated
+lands, her cities, her ports, her universities, her thousands of miles
+of railway, her society, and her well-organised Government is far indeed
+above West Africa. If the best West African province could be transferred
+bodily to the East and placed alongside even such outlying parts of
+India as Assam and Burma it would look very shabby in comparison. The
+principal West African towns seen by me, Lagos, Accra, and Freetown,
+cannot for a moment be compared with the great Indian capitals and
+stations such as Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Rangoon, Secunderabad,
+Allahabad, Delhi, Benares, Pindi, Lahore. In general appearance,
+construction, and style of living they are on a level with such
+“benighted” spots as Moulmein in Burma, Nowgong in Assam, or Masulipatam
+in Southern India. West Africa possesses no Simla, Bangalore, Darjeeling
+or Ootacamund.
+
+The whole country reminds one chiefly of the derelict Coromandel Coast
+minus its principal city. Yet it may perhaps be doubted whether in
+extent, fertility and natural resources West Africa is really far below
+India. Europe has been trading with West Africa for centuries; it has
+long drawn from it many valuable commodities; it has explored it and
+made settlements in it which have lasted for hundreds of years. Why has
+not Europe done more for it, then? The question is really one of great
+importance in the philosophical history of civilisation, especially in
+these days when civilisation tends so strongly to overflow from the
+temperate climates into the tropical ones. Here we have two countries
+equally gifted with natural resources and equally exposed to the
+civilising irradiance of Europe. Yet, while India is of itself already
+one of the great Powers of the world, the other still remains in the
+condition of a newly discovered continent, to be opened up in the future.
+
+Of the three reasons usually assigned for this curious fact, the first
+generally given is that in India Europe found a certain degree of
+civilisation already existing before her advent; while in West Africa
+she started to work upon a completely barbarous country. No doubt
+this has much to do with the result; but we must remember that many
+countries now far ahead of West Africa were little or no less barbarous
+than West Africa a few centuries ago—such as many portions of tropical
+America, Burma, and the Islands of the Pacific. It can scarcely be
+said that the antecedent semi-civilisation of India and China has been
+always favourable to progress, nor that a basis of complete barbarism
+is always fatal to it. Another reason, perhaps more frequently given,
+is that the natives of West Africa are incorrigibly indolent. Yet it
+is by the labours of these very people, controlled by Europeans, that
+the prosperity of the Southern States of America has been established.
+In my humble opinion the West African should be very good material
+for civilisation. Compared with the East Indian, he is perhaps not so
+patient, laborious, or thrifty; but, on the other hand, he is much more
+vivacious and virile; he is not hampered by the restrictions of caste;
+he is physically strong and healthy; he is capable of producing men who
+are intellectually not a whit inferior to the average European; and above
+all, instead of adhering obstinately to his own customs as the Indian
+so often does, he always shows a remarkable desire for the customs and
+culture of Europe. In fact, I personally feel, though I may be wrong,
+that these people are better material for civilisation than East Indians,
+and I do not think that the backwardness of West Africa can be wholly or
+even largely assigned to defects in their character.
+
+To many of us the real reason for this backwardness appears to be
+undoubtedly the so-called unhealthiness of the West African “climate” for
+Europeans. It is impossible to deny the fact that the European cannot
+live on the West African Coast in the same security against disease as he
+enjoys in the East and West Indies; and in my opinion it is this fact,
+and not the original barbarism of the natives, or their indolence, which
+retards progress here. The agent of civilisation dies on the threshold of
+the country which he comes to develop.
+
+It would require a large volume to deal adequately with this important
+subject, and I can only attempt an outline here. We shall first ask what
+is the cause of this unhealthiness, and secondly, what is the remedy.
+
+I shall not attempt to give any statistics of mortality among Europeans
+or natives, because what statistics exist are not at all reliable.
+But the fact that the country is extremely unhealthy for Europeans is
+universally accepted; and is, moreover, demonstrated by the high rates
+for life-insurance, by the large amount of leave which Government grants
+to its employés, and by the difficulty which all employers experience in
+obtaining European agents for West African work, even for high pay. In
+fact, the country is so notorious in this respect that it is unnecessary
+to labour the point farther.
+
+What are the causes of the unhealthiness of West Africa for Europeans?
+The first series of causes are undoubtedly a group of infectious
+diseases, certainly or probably due to parasitic invasion of the body.
+These are principally what is known as malarial or intermittent fever,
+with its most dangerous variety, blackwater fever; various other fevers,
+dysentery, and according to many physicians, yellow fever. The first
+attacks the European with greater force than it attacks the habituated
+native, but nevertheless produces great havoc among native children. It
+is so prevalent that new-comers frequently succumb within a few weeks
+after arrival, while old residents often suffer from relapses during
+the whole of their stay in the country. In addition, epidemics either
+of this fever, yellow fever, or some allied disease, sweep through the
+settlements, causing great mortality among the Europeans; dysentery
+and bowel complaints are scarcely less to be feared in some parts. The
+records of West Africa are blackened by these terrible plagues, which
+time after time have blotted out the names of the most daring travellers,
+the most capable governors, and the most enterprising traders; which
+mutilate the lives of those whom they do not kill; and which hamper every
+political or commercial enterprise by striking down or intimidating the
+agents who are sent out to execute it.
+
+But we must not imagine that these are the only factors of the total
+result. The heat and moisture of the climate are most enervating to
+Europeans. The general absence of good food—good meat, bread, vegetables,
+and milk—tends to produce dyspepsia and melancholy. The absence of most
+of the comforts and amenities to which Europeans are accustomed in their
+own home—good houses, good servants, society and exercise, not to mention
+the absence of wives and children—depress the mind; and when this general
+outline is filled in by such details as the ever-present dread of serious
+sickness, the constant stings of insects, the unsavoury surroundings of
+a squalid native population, it must be confessed that the colonist has
+much to depress him. What wonder if, in such circumstances, alcoholism
+and debauchery sometimes complete the sketch! The fact is, that what we
+call the “unhealthiness” of West Africa is a complex due to many causes
+which assist each other. People are apt to fall into a vicious circle
+from which it is hard to escape. I may say, indeed, that the whole of
+West Africa has fallen into this vicious circle and has not yet escaped
+from it. Let us consider the point farther.
+
+When we find much sickness in a given country we are too inclined to
+think that the sickness is entirely due to certain natural conditions
+which are present in that country and which render it unhealthy. We
+forget that the sickness may be due, not to the country itself, but to
+the fact that the inhabitants do not take proper precautions against the
+diseases which persecute them. Now the whole trend of sanitary science
+has been to show in a convincing manner that the great infectious
+diseases are preventable, if only the proper precautions are taken.
+Time after time we have witnessed the entire disappearance, or at least
+the partial disappearance, of such diseases from whole countries. For
+example, small-pox and typhus have almost vanished from the great States
+of Europe—at least we may say so when we compare their prevalence in the
+past with their prevalence at the present day. Typhoid and diphtheria
+are diminishing daily. Malarial fever and dysentery, which were formerly
+scourges of parts of Britain, have almost entirely gone from the country.
+Even in the tropics we shall find numerous instances of the same kind.
+Calcutta was once a hot-bed of fever and cholera, and was probably as
+fatal to Europeans as West Africa is now said to be. Rangoon was deadly
+when the British first went there. A century ago cholera often swept away
+whole regiments in India. We now look in vain for this state of things.
+As a whole, India is perhaps as healthy for Europeans as England is—at
+least if we exclude the enervating effects of mere heat; and, indeed, I
+think that in some respects, in the absence of colds and chest complaints
+and in the benefits of open-air life and exercise, Europeans in India are
+more fortunate than their brothers at home.
+
+Such facts alone clearly demonstrate that many diseases are not dependent
+upon natural factors beyond human control; but science has reinforced
+the argument by showing that a number of infectious diseases are due to
+microorganisms which spring from previously diseased persons and not
+from the air, soil, or water of localities. When, therefore, we speak
+of a given place being unhealthy, we merely mean that from some cause
+or other infectious disease is readily propagated from the sick to the
+healthy in that place. This may in part be due to the local conditions
+as regards heat, moisture, and so on being especially favourable to the
+transmission of the disease germs; but it may also be due to the fact
+that no precautions are taken to check this transmission.
+
+Thus in the case of West Africa we may ask, Is the local sickness really
+due to the climate being specially favourable to the transmission of
+disease; or is it due to the neglect of proper precautions? I would
+not be prepared to say that as regards heat, moisture, and profuse
+vegetation—conditions long known to be particularly favourable to
+malaria—West Africa differs much from Calcutta or Rangoon. So far as
+nature goes I can see little difference between West Africa and other
+tropical regions which I have visited. On the other hand, I see the
+greatest difference in the mode of life adopted by Europeans in West
+Africa and in India; and I am convinced that the excessive mortality
+amongst them is due largely, if not principally, to this cause, added to
+the imperfect condition of public sanitation in the country.
+
+My own visits to West Africa have been short and limited. I have thrice
+lived in Freetown for brief periods, and have paid flying visits to
+Bathurst, Accra, Lagos, and Ibadan. But though my experiences of the
+country were thus brief enough, I was always in a position to see a good
+deal in the time at my disposal, and my powers of sanitary observation,
+so to speak, were previously exercised by eighteen years’ employment in
+the Indian Medical Service. Moreover, for the last three years I have
+been in constant communication with many old residents on the Coast,
+and I have also learned much from the members of several expeditions
+sent there by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, and by reading
+numerous reports on the sanitation of the country. I state these facts
+simply in order to enable the reader to judge of the value of my
+testimony on the points under consideration. I do not pretend that a
+greater experience would not have increased that value; but at the same
+time it should be remarked that a sanitarian of any experience, like a
+trained physician, can often make a correct diagnosis in a comparatively
+short time; and that it is not necessary to examine every town in a
+country in order to arrive at a general conception of its sanitary
+condition. Moreover, the towns which I have seen are the capitals of four
+out of the six British Colonies on the Coast.
+
+In my experience, such as it is, the mode of life of Europeans in West
+Africa is not suited to the tropics.
+
+Take the houses to begin with. They are not generally good. It is
+absolutely essential in the tropics to have good roofs and large airy
+rooms. Our wise forefathers recognised this early in India, and built the
+great solid structures which are such a prominent feature of Calcutta
+and Madras and many Indian stations. I have seen nothing of the kind in
+West Africa. Even in Lagos and Accra the houses can be described only as
+second-rate. In Freetown they are simply execrable; and it is monstrous
+that Englishmen, much more ladies, should be compelled to live in them.
+It should be remembered that many of these West African hovels are built
+by Government. In Ibadan I saw a magnificent iron house which I was told
+cost the Government £6000, but which is so ill-designed and ill-placed
+that in the heat of the day the inmates are compelled to go outside and
+sit under leaf shelters! Then again, in India the Europeans and some of
+the better class natives live in a separate quarter; but in West Africa
+this seems to be the case only to a limited extent; while in Freetown
+the Europeans often live over native shops. Remembering that infectious
+diseases are communicated from the sick, we shall easily understand
+why the absence of a separate quarter is so dangerous to health. Those
+absolute essentials to comfort in the tropics, punkahs and mosquito-nets,
+which are invariably used in India, are often the exception in West
+Africa, or were so until quite recently.
+
+As regards food, we find little efforts made to help the African
+colonists to obtain good provisions. Fresh milk and butter often cannot
+be got at all, even where cattle exist in plenty. Government sometimes
+maintains, at considerable cost, botanical gardens for various economical
+purposes. I was told that these gardens used to grow vegetables for the
+Europeans until stopped by a mandate from England, on the ground that a
+Government botanist is not a vegetable gardener!—a type of the hopelessly
+unpractical spirit which has crept into all British administration. As a
+result the colonist has to fall back upon native vegetables, to which he
+is not accustomed. The meat is generally poor and coarse, and no proper
+effort is made to improve it. Ice—another essential in the tropics—cannot
+generally be obtained. I was gravely informed that ice-machines will not
+work in West Africa. It is difficult to see why this is the case, because
+they will certainly work in the hottest and dampest parts of India.
+Aerated waters have to be imported and cost about sixpence a bottle; I
+suppose that they, too, “cannot be made” in West Africa. In India they
+are made everywhere and cost about a penny a bottle. Singular effect of
+the West African climate!
+
+What are more necessary anywhere than exercise, recreation, and society?
+In India the smallest station has its gymkana; its polo, tennis, cricket,
+and even football; its dinners, its afternoon parties, its balls;
+its shooting and riding. As for West Africa, though, owing to the
+intelligent encouragement of the Governors, much attention is now being
+given to this subject, things are very different. A resident of Sekondi
+told me that their “only amusement is to drink.” So it seemed. In many
+places horses do not exist, because it is said they do not live there. So
+far as I know, Government has never attempted the slightest scientific
+inquiry into this most important matter, although probably the disability
+is due merely to some easily preventable parasitic disease. In Freetown
+many people take no exercise at all and are carried about even for short
+distances in hammocks. In up-country places, I hear, the dulness of life,
+owing to the absence of recreation and exercise, is often intolerable and
+heart-breaking.
+
+Turning now to affairs of state sanitation, let us first ask, what
+would have been the logical and business-like course for adoption by
+Government from the earliest days of these Colonies? Seeing the obvious
+fact that all development of the country was being retarded by the
+sickness and mortality among the European Officials and traders, a
+practical Government would from the first have strained every nerve
+to remedy this state of things. It would have spent every available
+penny in the sanitation of the coast towns, which are, in fact, the
+portals of the continent. It would have kept these scrupulously clean,
+swept and drained. It would have housed its employés thoroughly well
+in quarters removed from the infectious vicinity of the poorer native
+locations. It would have encouraged the traders to do the same for their
+agents. It would have organised farms for the purpose of producing good
+fresh food—meat, milk, butter and vegetables. It would have created
+or endowed places of exercise and recreation. It would have attempted
+to add in every possible way to the comfort of the Europeans, who are
+the backbone of the Colonies, knowing that reasonable comfort is half
+the way to health and happiness, and that senseless and unnecessary
+discomfort is more than half the way in the other direction. It would
+have taken scrupulous care of the water supply; of the conservancy; of
+the drainage of swamps. It would have insisted on the adequate sanitation
+of native locations near European locations, in the interests both of
+natives and Europeans. It would have maintained an up-to-date medical and
+sanitary department, provided with sufficient powers and funds for its
+work. It would have kept accurate statistics of sickness and mortality,
+especially among the Europeans. It would have ordered numerous scientific
+investigations into the causes of the most disastrous West African
+diseases, both among men and domestic animals. Above all, it would have
+put the direction of sanitary affairs into the hands of the ablest
+scientific men it could procure.
+
+Now I do not wish to take the _rôle_ of the fault finder; but I must
+say, so far as I know—and I hope I may be mistaken—the Colonial Office
+and the West African Governments and municipalities can scarcely be
+said to have given adequate attention to a single one of the items in
+this programme—at least until quite recently. Consider the question of
+surface drainage for instance. It has been well known, since the time of
+the Romans, that surface-drainage removes malaria; and malaria is the
+principal enemy of the West African Colonies. Surely, then, the most
+obvious considerations should have induced Government to reclaim the
+large marshes existing in the vicinity of the principal settlements. A
+small annual expenditure, if persisted in, would have gradually done the
+work; and, as Sir William MacGregor once observed, the local Governments
+have had at their disposal for years large gangs of gaol prisoners who
+could, with advantage, have been employed on such useful labours instead
+of shot-drill. But no; the marshes have been allowed to exist as they
+were. It is only quite recently that the swamps of Lagos and Bathurst
+have been touched. In Freetown the swamps existed in almost every street
+in the native quarters during the rains, and were, in fact, actually
+made by incompetent engineering efforts and maintained by the grossest
+sanitary neglect—the roadside drains being generally nothing but series
+of deep pools full of stagnant water seething with insect life. Yet
+this town was called the white-man’s grave; and Heaven was blamed for
+causing a disease which man could easily have prevented if the most
+elementary teaching of sanitary science had been attended to. Even after
+the connection between stagnant water and malaria was fully verified
+and explained by the discovery (completed in 1899) that the disease is
+carried from the sick to the healthy by certain kinds of mosquitoes which
+breed in stagnant puddles, no spontaneous effort was made by Government
+to improve the surface-drainage in Freetown.
+
+In 1899 the Liverpool School took the trouble to send out an expedition
+which made a complete map of the mosquito-breeding puddles in the
+town; and next year the Commission of the Royal Society extended our
+observations. Two years later, however, another expedition of the
+Liverpool School found that everything had been left in exactly the
+same old state, except that the salary of the chief sanitary official
+had been largely increased. Not a puddle, not a ditch had been drained;
+not a single effort worth mention had been made, to act upon the new
+discovery which was of such importance to these Colonies; and it was not
+until the advent of the new Governor, Sir Charles King-Harman, assisted
+by the Liverpool School, that any adequate attempt was made to clear and
+drain Freetown. In the other Colonies progress was equally slow, until
+Sir William MacGregor and Dr. Strachan commenced their anti-malarial
+campaign in Lagos. The central authority, the Colonial Office, instead of
+forcing on measures in a brisk, business-like way, contented itself with
+publishing good advice which every one had heard a dozen times before.
+The Governments of the Gold Coast (Sir Matthew Nathan), of the Gambia
+(Sir George Denton), are now pushing on in this direction; and we can
+only hope that the progress will be maintained in the future in all the
+Colonies.
+
+The other items of the programme mentioned above have also received
+little attention. The medical and sanitary services have not been kept in
+an up-to-date condition.
+
+For instance, in 1880, Laveran discovered the parasite which causes
+malarial fever; but even twenty years later there were few doctors who
+used the discovery for the proper diagnosis and treatment of the fevers
+prevalent on the Coast. In most cases they were not even provided with
+microscopes for the work. In these respects the West African medical
+services were only on a par with the other State medical services; which,
+while they often contain exceedingly smart men, are generally wanting as
+a whole in scientific ability and push, and in the influence which they
+should exercise in the government of the countries to which they belong.
+A high official once informed me that of all the men under his orders
+the doctors had the least sense of duty. This is little to be wondered
+at, since, in my experience, efficiency does not lead to advancement in
+these services, and the most perfunctory men reach promotion as readily
+as the most meritorious. I have noticed a dozen instances of the almost
+complete indifference to science shown in these public medical services.
+For example, when the first Liverpool expedition reached Sierra Leone
+in 1899, the principal medical officer of the R.A.M.C. forbade us to
+feed mosquitoes upon his cases of malarial fever for experiment, though
+neither he nor his subordinates took the smallest trouble to prevent
+their men from being bitten night and day by the insects in the barracks
+and hospitals. We were convinced that this order was given simply out of
+wilful desire to obstruct us. Similarly in India a military doctor once
+forbade me even to prick the fingers of his patients in order to study
+their blood. The manner in which the R.A.M.C. authorities interrupted
+the researches of Colonel Bruce, F.R.S., on tsetse-fly disease and
+horse sickness in South Africa, and in which the Madras Government
+persecuted Dr. King for his small-pox work, is well known. It would be
+folly to expect that services administered in this manner could ever
+take a leading part in organising great campaigns against disease in the
+colonies; and I fear that, until Sir William MacGregor led the way in
+Lagos, the West African medical services, even though they have possessed
+many able men, have done little to improve sanitation in that country.
+The fault is entirely with the chief offices of Government, which too
+often appoint and retain as heads of their medical departments men who
+have no scientific status or even scientific knowledge, and at the
+same time take no trouble to promote the deserving. I have known many
+instances of this. It would be much better, in my opinion, to fill such
+offices from the ranks of able civil practitioners or scientists at home,
+rather than to select men who have no other claim to the post than long
+official service.
+
+One of the greatest defects in the sanitary administration of West Africa
+has lain in the constant refusal of Government to investigate the causes
+of sickness by making use of the services of experts. Government argues
+that it is not its duty to investigate disease; but is it not? It admits
+the duty of maintaining expensive medical services, but not that of
+helping those services to increase their knowledge of their business!
+A logical position truly! In my own humble opinion the Colonial Office
+ought to have spent at least £5000 per annum during the last fifty years
+for investigation of the causes of sickness in West Africa alone. Do
+not talk to me of want of funds. There are plenty of funds, but they
+are thrown away on military expeditions; on the salaries of useless
+legal officials—chief justices and attorney-generals of little villages;
+and on building houses such as the one I referred to at Ibadan, which
+cost £6000, enough to pay for sanitary researches for years, and is
+uninhabitable! It is a case illustrating that peculiar form of mind which
+looks upon all research and investigation as idling and waste of time
+and money, a frame of mind which seems to be specially a British one. We
+have yet to learn the obvious fact that, if we wish to get a thing done,
+we must first make suitable inquiry as to how it should be done. Disease
+cannot be removed from a continent merely by establishing a medical
+service; we must also help the service to perfect its knowledge. The hand
+is not the same thing as the brain. In West Africa we have long possessed
+the hand, but the brain has been wanting.
+
+The truth is that the defects of the West African sanitation are really
+due to the fact that the colonial councils are almost entirely in the
+hands of certain castes which are not scientific castes, and which
+care little for sanitary matters. I mean the politicians, soldiers,
+tax-collectors and legal people. To these it is a matter of little
+moment to cleanse streets, to purify towns, to banish disease from
+thousands of homes. It is not given to them to stand powerless by the
+side of death-beds and to hear the cries of the bereaved at the moment
+of bereavement. If they have money to spend, do they spend it for the
+purposes for which it was really chiefly taken from the tax-payer—for
+conservancy and hygiene? The filthy condition of most native towns in the
+British tropical possessions gives the answer. No, it is a finer thing
+to build a grand new post-office or law-court, or to conduct a forward
+military policy which will find its place in the home papers and delight
+the heart of the British greengrocer (and voter) at his breakfast table.
+Well, after all, it is human nature—each man for his own caste. As for
+me, I have been too long an official myself not to understand these
+little matters.
+
+I have said that West Africa has fallen into a vicious circle, and the
+nature of this vicious circle will now be apparent. The unhealthiness
+of the Coast for Europeans tends to check their activities in all
+directions; and in return this detrimental effect on their activities
+tends to check their efforts towards ameliorating sanitary affairs. The
+two conditions work hand in hand. It is impossible to remain blind to the
+disastrous economical effect of the unhealthiness. It leads to a constant
+change in the working staff of the country, not only in consequence of
+death and sickness, but also in consequence of the frequent furlough
+which is rendered necessary. From the highest to the lowest, few
+Europeans remain in West Africa for more than two or three years at a
+stretch; and many Government officials are entitled to leave after one
+year. This has the effect of rendering all business discontinuous. As
+soon as a man has started a piece of work he is called away from his
+efforts, and is obliged to leave everything to a successor. In India
+the period of residence in the country before furlough can be demanded
+is five years at least, and even then the break in the business which
+occurs during the furlough is often very mischievous. How much more so
+must be the interruption which occurs in West Africa every year or two!
+The same thing prevents people in West Africa from taking sufficient
+interest in the homes of their exile. Many of them have told me that all
+the time they are in the country they are indifferent to what happens,
+that they simply live from hand to mouth, careless of their surroundings
+and longing only for the day when, if fate spares them, they can escape
+once more for a brief interval to Europe. It is this feeling which
+makes them indifferent to the houses in which they live, to the food
+they eat, to their surroundings—and sometimes, I fear, to their duties.
+The danger, discomfort and _ennui_ of life are so great that a chronic
+condition of callousness inimical to all serious effort is frequently
+arrived at. We must remember these facts when we are inclined to blame
+them. What wonder then that a matter like sanitation, which requires
+such constant endeavours, is apt to be neglected. Thus the circle comes
+“full round” again; and the neglect of sanitation leads to the paralysing
+unhealthiness which leads to the neglect of sanitation. I have observed
+the same thing elsewhere—notably in the unhealthy planting districts of
+India.
+
+What must we do to mend this state of affairs? Well, the vicious circle
+must be broken at all costs.
+
+But how? I think that there is really only one way in which it can be
+done, and that is by the introduction of a new force into the vortex. I
+mean public opinion and public effort at home in Europe. These must be
+roused for the sake of our countrymen in West Africa. This country should
+be made to understand that it has something more to do than to watch
+processions of colonial troops and to brag of its Empire. It is its duty
+to see that the Empire which it boasts of is properly administered, and
+that our countrymen who are sent to carry on the affairs, both official
+and commercial, of that Empire are not left to die there unnecessarily.
+This duty has certainly been most grossly neglected in the past. It
+should be the work of all of us, especially of those who govern the
+country, of the wealthy merchants who trade with it, of the rich people
+who do not know what to do with their money, and of men like myself, who
+are hired to study and teach tropical sanitation—it should be the work of
+all of us to see that it is not neglected in the future.
+
+As every one knows, this new force has already come into being. Every day
+sees some notice of West African affairs in the Press. The able Governors
+of the Colonies are, I think, doing all for the cause which their limited
+means allow. The merchants of Liverpool and London have come forward most
+handsomely with their tropical schools, which I make bold to say are
+doing well also. A single philanthropist has actually drained and cleaned
+the houses in Freetown _pro tempore_, at his own expense, and last, but
+by no means least, many young pathologists have given their time and
+risked their health for the cause.
+
+But what are the exact steps which should be taken? I have already
+indicated these above. It is the duty of the Government to see that
+the principal settlements are kept scrupulously clean and drained; to
+construct and publish proper statistics of sickness and mortality among
+the Europeans; to appoint whole-time health officers; to enforce sanitary
+laws; and to encourage the building of good houses and the establishment
+of dairies, settlement farms, gymkanas and other institutions or trades
+which are likely to conduce to the comfort and health of the colonists.
+Thus Government has a great deal to do. It has only begun as yet.
+
+But it is not Government alone which must act. Sir William MacGregor
+recently pointed out to the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce that men who
+carry on business on the Coast have much to do for their employés—to
+give them good houses, to force them to take proper precautions against
+malaria, and to add to their comfort in every possible way.
+
+Then there is the philanthropist millionaire. I wish that we could
+get hold of him in earnest. Sir Charles King-Harman once told me that
+£100,000 would reform the West Coast if presented as a free gift, by
+enabling Government to start gymkanas, dairies, and such like for the
+Europeans. So it would; and the money ought to be obtained.
+
+Lastly, the Colonial Office ought to do one thing—a thing which was
+recommended by a deputation which waited upon the Colonial Secretary some
+time ago. That is, it ought to appoint a Sanitary Commissioner on the
+Indian model, to make constant inspections of sanitary matters in the
+West African Colonies, and to report directly to the Colonial Office.
+We were told, however, that the scheme was too costly, and otherwise
+impossible. But shortly afterwards a gentleman with a large salary was
+appointed in order to inspect the knapsacks, &c., of the black troops—a
+much more important matter than any sanitary business!
+
+I may mention here an opinion which I frequently heard expressed on the
+Coast, namely, that the West African Colonies have now outgrown the
+present system of control by small detached Governments placed under
+an office in London. It is contended that the whole country should be
+administered by a Governor-General on the Indian lines. I fancy that
+sanitation would not lose by the change.
+
+Such are my humble opinions on sanitary matters in West Africa. They are
+given in response to an invitation from the author of this book; and, of
+course, exigencies of space have prevented my dealing with many points
+which should be dealt with in a complete survey of the subject—which
+would require a book for itself. I have thought it best to say exactly
+what I think without much reservation; but, of course, my views may,
+perhaps, not be so sound as I imagine. It would be the grandest thing in
+the world if sanitary science could give to civilisation such a glorious
+gift as West Africa; and I believe that it will. But the thing will be
+done only by straight speaking, hard hitting, and the most indomitable
+action.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+LAND TENURE AND LABOUR IN WEST AFRICA
+
+    “In dealing with the natives, one must never touch their rights
+    in land.”—SIR WILLIAM MACGREGOR.
+
+    “The so-called labour problem is, in my opinion, created by
+    the people who complain of it, and not by the natives, who are
+    perfectly willing to work when fairly treated.”—Mr. J. A. DAW,
+    of the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation.[145]
+
+    “I know the Gold Coast natives well, and I repeat, you can
+    get all you want out of them, if people will only realise
+    that the native is a human being, and not an animal or a
+    machine.”—Captain DONOVAN, late of the Gold Coast Police.[146]
+
+    “Nothing in all the history submitted on this subject is more
+    misleading, untrue, and unjust than the reiterated statement
+    that the chiefs and people of Western Africa are unfitted for
+    peaceable self-government. It is not pretended they will reach
+    for the present any Western European ideal, but they will not
+    lag behind some people who claim to be better. The people do
+    not want war; the very facility with which their disputes are
+    temporarily adjusted serves to show this disposition. The Coast
+    is far from having recovered from the dire effects of the slave
+    trade. The chiefs are weak, and much of their power is taken
+    from them by the very British Administration which scolds them
+    for their non-success.”—C. S. SALMON, “The Crown Colonies of
+    Great Britain.”
+
+
+If there is one thing more than another upon which the most competent
+students of West Africa are agreed, it is the tenaciousness of the West
+African Negro to his landed rights. Land tenure in West Africa has been
+properly described as a “cult.” The most experienced English, French and
+German observers have noted this characteristic. Wherever it has been
+adequately studied, the system of native land tenure, in its tribal,
+family, individual and commercial aspects, is found to be at once simple
+in its broad lines, elaborate in its details, and approaching in many
+respects to the most advanced democratic conceptions of Western Europe.
+Before the torchlight of scientific inquiry, the old idea of the Negro
+being more or less of an animal, incapable of evolving any rational
+or consistent policy; too backward to frame anything approaching an
+unwritten code of law; his every act of life being merely the outcome
+of natural instinct, can no longer be entertained. And to the knowledge
+that these beings, who were thought irrational, and inconsequent to the
+extent of being the half-devil, half-child of popular imagination, has
+been added the conviction that the commercial and political success of
+the Powers of Europe in their West African Possessions depends for its
+attainment upon the recognition of native law in respect to property.
+
+But although the testimony to this effect is shared by those who have the
+largest experience of West Africa, and although evidence is accumulating
+on all sides which corroborates in the most ample manner the statements
+of Ellis, Sarbah and Mary Kingsley,[147] it is nevertheless unhappily
+true that the tendency on the part of the European Powers, not only to
+interfere with the native law of land tenure, but to frame legislation
+without regard whatever for its importance in the relationship between
+the European and the Negro, is increasingly manifest. It would seem as
+though, having discovered that the West African Negro is not a brute
+but a man, evidence which establishes the discovery is deliberately set
+aside; because it is so much easier to go on treating the native as a
+brute, that is to say, as a being deprived of the faculty of reasoning,
+and who, on the principle of “a woman, a dog and a walnut-tree, the more
+you beat ’em the better they’ll be,” will come fawning to our feet in
+abject humility upon every fresh exhibition of our superiority.
+
+It is very curious to observe this conflict of forces; painstaking
+research, its published results, and the influence it wields, _versus_
+impatience and disinclination to investigate on the one hand; and selfish
+material interests on the other. The future of European political and
+commercial enterprise in West Africa is largely bound up with the
+struggle for the capture of Public Opinion which is going on in this
+country and on the Continent. At present, the purely materialistic
+notion, assisted by its twin-brother Indifference, is in the ascendant.
+Apparent success having been secured in that part of tropical Western
+Africa where, under the tuition of his white masters, the native has
+become a mere machine for the production of dividends to European company
+promoters, a great impetus has been given to the conception, popular
+in so many quarters, that the _raison d’être_ of West Africa and the
+West African is their exploitation by Western Europe, on such lines and
+in such fashion as the peoples of Western Europe see fit. The European
+Governments are alternately allowing themselves to be dragged along this
+perilous path whose ultimate destination is the abyss called Failure, or
+are hanging back from it, beset with doubts. But the danger is acutely
+realised by many, and as it gathers in extent and consistency, is being
+energetically opposed. The merchants, English, French and German, are,
+as a body, unanimous in condemnation. The exceptions to the rule are
+exceedingly few and far between. The best type of Colonial Administrator
+in West Africa also is utterly antagonistic, and amongst the still
+restricted but daily growing section of the Public which follows the
+affairs of West Africa with intelligent interest a strong feeling of
+protest gathers volume every day. These forces are numerically inferior,
+but they carry great weight, and if they can succeed in combining they
+must ultimately win the day. But the struggle will be long and bitter.
+
+An attempt has been made in this volume to show (1) the unwisdom of
+interfering too rapidly, and without sufficient care and thought, with
+native customs generally, and (2), as regards the evil of slave-raiding,
+the advisability of seriously considering whether force is the only
+weapon which a great Empire can forge to suppress it. In the latter
+case, the Powers are able to put forward a plea justifying interference,
+insomuch as the evil is an active one. The only difference of opinion,
+as already stated, is the form which such interference should take. In
+the former case the evils, if some of them are evils—a matter which
+admits of a good deal of qualification—are of a kind that patience,
+tact, and time—time above all things—will prove the most efficient
+means of combating. But in respect to native law of land tenure, we are
+not confronted with any evil. On the contrary, the system of native
+land tenure is essentially just, thoroughly adapted to the needs of
+the country and its people, a striking refutation of the “arrested
+development” theory as applied to the Negro, and _per se_ an eloquent
+vindication of the Negro’s claim to consideration at the hands of
+the European invaders of, and settlers in, his country. There can be
+no justification whatever for the break-up of land tenure, or for
+the alienation of native property, under any pretext. It is morally
+indefensible, and what is morally indefensible is seldom politically wise.
+
+In West Africa, the circumstances being what they are, interference with
+native property is bound to affect, not in theory but in practice, the
+interest of every single individual in the country. In the coastwise
+regions of West Africa proper, as far south, that is to say, as the
+Rio del Rey, where Bantu culture begins, it may be accepted as a rule
+(whatever differentiation may exist in the system of land tenure in
+widely removed districts), from which the departures are extremely
+rare,[148] that every square yard of the country is _owned_. Sarbah for
+the Gold Coast; Clozel and Delafosse for the Ivory Coast; Ellis for
+Yoruba; Mary Kingsley for the Rivers; Bohn for French Guinea; Fabre for
+Dahomey, have borne witness in their respective fields of observation to
+this fact—that there is no land without an owner. There is also a vast
+amount of untabulated corroborative information from almost every part
+of the Coast. South of Rio del Rey the land customs of the natives have
+not been the object of so much inquiry as north of it, and there the
+population is not in the main so dense, but what gleanings are available
+to us appear to be conclusive on the same point: in all inhabited
+districts land is never without an owner, whose claims, whether tribal or
+family, are as sacred in native unwritten law as they would be if duly
+set forth in a legal document, in accordance with the full requirements
+of European jurisprudence.
+
+It is easy to understand why this should be so. The native lives on
+the produce of his land. He not only lives upon it, it is also his
+wealth, his currency, his medium of exchange for European goods. The
+products which he gathers in his forests, the plantations he makes in
+the clearings and the plains, these are at once his sustenance and his
+cash. Is it astonishing, therefore, that he guards his land and all that
+grows therein, or is built thereon, with passionate jealousy; and that,
+whereas he can be induced without difficulty to lease his property rights
+under certain conditions to Europeans for even a long term of years, he
+can seldom be brought, save by physical compulsion, to alienate them for
+ever? Ought it to be matter for surprise that legislation calculated to
+hinder his free use of the products of his land, or action of which the
+logical consequence is to reduce him from the position of land-owner to
+tenant, either provokes him to pit his spears and flintlocks against the
+repeating-rifles of the despoilers, or breeds in him such utter confusion
+of mind, such bewilderment and terror, that,
+
+    Fleeing to the forest’s dim recess,
+    He broods in sullen unproductiveness,
+    Plunged in deeper savagery,
+    Witness to the high morality
+    Of Christian peoples?
+
+Strange, indeed, does it seem, with the burden of historical proof to
+the adaptability of the Negro; with the abundant and cumulative evidence
+of his willingness to trade, to learn, to take on new industries, to
+everywhere follow up his natural profession of agriculture; with the
+actual and daily evidence of his enterprise and producing capacity in the
+existing oil-palm, ground-nut, mahogany and rubber industries; strange,
+indeed, that European statesmen worthy of the name should for a moment
+entertain the idea, or lend ear to the suggestion, that in a country
+like West Africa, where the white element compared with the black is as
+a grain of sand on the sea-shore, and where the European can attain
+nothing that is permanent or lasting without the willing co-operation
+of the Negro, the spontaneous production of the Negro as a free man,
+in the enjoyment of the fruits of his own land, can be replaced by the
+forced production of a serf deprived of his lands, his freedom, and his
+individuality!
+
+If in one sense the question of native land tenure in West Africa is
+distinct from that of native labour, it is in another way closely allied
+to it, and to treat of one without referring to the other is difficult,
+if not impossible. But it is equally difficult, when once the labour
+problem is raised, to confine oneself to West Africa only; for the theory
+of “assimilation” is very much to the fore just now, and although the
+conditions prevailing in West Africa differentiate absolutely from those
+in Central, East, and South Africa, the same general arguments are made
+to apply more or less to all four. I must, therefore, crave the reader’s
+indulgence if I wander somewhat afield.
+
+There is not the least shadow of doubt that the tendency to go past the
+law of native land tenure in West Africa owes its origin in large measure
+to the oft-repeated statement that the Negro will not work. Numbers of
+people have for some time past been assuring the Public that West Africa
+can only be developed by compelling the native to work.[149] It is, of
+course, assumed _à priori_ that the native of West Africa does not work.
+How the contention can be justified in the face of demonstrable and
+easily accessible facts to the contrary, we need not pause to inquire.
+It suffices that the contention exists, and that there is not a paper
+dealing with African affairs in Great Britain, or the Continent of
+Europe, which does not contain in almost every issue some reference to
+the matter. Nor is discussion limited to such papers. In the speeches of
+public men whose interests are associated with Africa; in conferences, in
+books, pamphlets, and not infrequently in the daily press, the subject
+crops up again and again. The refrain is usually much after this style:
+“The native will not work. We have to work and pay income-tax. Why should
+not the native? What is the use of Africa to us if the native refuses to
+work? It is intolerable. He must be made to work.”
+
+It must be admitted that the spirit of the hour is admirably suited to
+act the part of receiver to these laments. The signatory powers of the
+Berlin Act have allowed the gradual establishment and consolidation in
+Western Central Africa of an institution the existence of which is based
+upon repudiation of the inherent right of the native to his land or the
+fruits thereof; and upon forced labour on the part of the dispossessed
+for their despoilers. What wonder that the public of France and Germany,
+observing the enormous profits derived by people immediately connected
+with this institution, and led astray by the apathy of their statesmen
+to the evil, should put down to political ability what is merely
+outrage; and impatient at the comparatively slow progress of their own
+possessions, should begin to loudly call for the adoption of a similar
+system therein? “The King of Belgium has succeeded in making the natives
+work. He and his coadjutors are reaping a huge harvest. Belgian industry
+is the gainer. Antwerp has become the first rubber market in the world.
+Why not imitate the King of Belgium?”
+
+[Illustration: THE IDLE NATIVE! MARKET SCENE IN WEST AFRICA]
+
+It would be grossly unfair to describe this mental attitude on the part
+of public opinion in France and Germany as having been due, or as being
+due, to a natural callousness. At one time, indeed, the proceedings
+of the Congo State were severely condemned in both countries, and not
+farther back than 1895 Count Alvensleben, German Ambassador in Brussels,
+was carrying on a correspondence with the then principal Secretary
+of the Congo State anent the payment of rubber premiums by the Congo
+State to its agents and the trading operations of that State, couched
+in such language as would have brought about between two European
+Powers an immediate rupture of diplomatic relations. But wealth commands
+great power, and its rapid acquisition is a blunter of conscience.
+The Belgian financiers who control the two great Trusts in the Congo
+State—the _annexes_ of the Domaine Privé Trust and the Thys Trust—were
+desirous for their own ends of still further extending their power.
+They managed to obtain the co-operation of many highly placed persons
+in France and Germany, and to secure the assistance of an important
+section of the Colonial Press in the two countries. The result is seen
+in the creation of what is known as the Concessionnaire _régime_ in the
+Colony of French Congo; its partial adoption in the French Colony of
+Dahomey; its attempted establishment in the auriferous French Colony
+of the Ivory Coast; and its introduction into German Cameroons, where,
+however, experience has led to a revulsion of feeling as healthy as it
+is encouraging. In other words, the indifference of the Powers to the
+violation of the Berlin Act by the Sovereign of the Congo State has
+involved the application of the new slavery to another vast tract of
+territory in Africa. Public opinion has been worked to such good purpose
+that the lucubrations of a Carl Peters or Camille Janssens are not only
+listened to with patience, but are regarded by many as the embodiment
+of a rational colonial policy; while in France, open appeals have for
+the past year and more been uttered every day in favour of a _régime_
+of forced labour at the point of the bayonet. The theory that the Negro
+will not work and must be compelled to do so has, therefore, made strides
+rapid enough among the Western nations on the Continent of Europe to
+satisfy the fondest hopes of its promoters.
+
+In England the modern school of thought in African affairs shows a like
+tendency. We hear in various forms how essential it is to inculcate
+the African with the notion of the “dignity of labour.” As we are here
+dealing with West Africa, it would be out of place to discuss at any
+length the labour questions connected with South Africa. But it is only
+too obvious that the financiers of the Rand and their friends at home
+are the leading spirits through whom British public opinion is being
+influenced towards coercion in the matter of native labour in Africa
+as a whole, just as the Brussels and Antwerp financiers who run the
+Congo State are the instruments whereby similar notions are propagated
+on the Continent of Europe. As already stated, special conditions, as
+well as the nature of the native population and, indeed, nearly all
+attendant circumstances, differ profoundly in West Africa and South
+Africa, but it is necessary to indicate the prevalence of a common
+shade of thought which it is sought to apply in practice wherever the
+European has secured a sufficiently strong hold upon the Dark Continent.
+In a fascinating volume of African travel recently published by a
+brilliant young explorer, Mr. H. S. Grogan, can be found embodied, in
+a style distinguished for its honest vulgarity, frank brutality and
+entire absence of those hypocritical sophistries so much in vogue, the
+views of the “modern school” as to what is, or what ought to be, the
+inter-relationship of European and Hamite in Africa.
+
+Here are a few samples of his arguments:
+
+    “But few people at home,” he writes, “realise what an alarming
+    and ever-growing difficulty has to be faced in the African
+    native problem. It is a difficulty that is unique in the
+    progress of the world.... Under the beneficent rule of the
+    white man he thrives like weeds in a hot-house.... What is to
+    be done with this ever-increasing mass of inertia? We have
+    undertaken his education and advancement, as we have carefully
+    explained, by the mawkish euphemisms in which we wrap our
+    land-grabbing schemes. When we undertake the education of a
+    child or beast we make them work, realising that work is the
+    sole road to advancement. But when we undertake the education
+    of a nigger, who, as I have endeavoured to show, is a blend
+    of the two, we say; ‘Dear Nigger, thou elect of Exeter Hall,
+    chosen of the negrophil, bread-and-butter of the missionary,
+    darling of the unthinking philanthropist, wilt thou deign to
+    put thy hand to the plough, or dost prefer to smoke and tipple
+    in undisturbed content? We, the white men whom thy conscience
+    wrongly judges to be thy superiors, will arrange the affairs
+    of state. Sleep on, thou ebony idol of a jaded civilisation,
+    may be anon thou wilt sing ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers.’ ... A
+    good sound system,” proceeds Mr. Grogan, “of compulsory labour
+    would do more to raise the nigger in five years than all the
+    millions which have been sunk in missionary efforts for the
+    last fifty.... Why should not other peoples be called upon to
+    work for the cause of progress? Throughout Africa the cry is,
+    ‘Give me labour.’ There is a sound maxim in the progress of
+    the world: ‘What cannot be utilised must be eliminated.’ And
+    drivel as we will for a while, the time will come when the
+    negro must bow to this as to the inevitable. Why, because he
+    is black and is supposed to possess a soul, we should consider
+    him, on account of that combination, exempt, it is difficult
+    to understand, when a little firmness would transform him from
+    a useless and dangerous brute into a source of benefit to the
+    country and of satisfaction to himself.”
+
+What a typical passage is this! The Negro lazy and degraded, useless
+and dangerous: the European doing all the work while the Negro smokes
+and drinks—whether imported European liquor or liquor manufactured
+locally is not stated: narrow-minded visionaries at home preventing the
+salvation of Africa in the shape of compulsory labour on the Rand mines
+which constitutes “education”: the perfection of morals that result from
+such education, and so forth! The crowning folly is conveyed in the
+words “what cannot be utilised must be eliminated,” which, I suppose,
+means a “thinning-out process”—such as Professor Gregory tells us has
+been accomplished only too successfully in Unyoro, where “it has been
+estimated that in the four years following the establishment of British
+rule the population was reduced to a fourth”—in order to prevent the too
+rapid propagation of these “hot-house weeds!” And yet what Mr. Grogan
+says is repeated by many and believed by more—the mass who swallow
+this tainted diet as though ’twere nectar, and absorb these grotesque
+distortions as if they were gospel truths.
+
+Let us endeavour to examine this question in a practical, temperate, and
+impartial spirit. According to ethnologists, the true, uncontaminated
+Negro is only found in West Africa, roughly from Senegal to the Rio
+del Rey. He inhabits the coastwise regions and the forest belt. The
+innumerable creeks and forests of the Niger Delta shelter the purest
+specimens, ethnologically, of his race. South of Rio del Rey the Bantu
+stock begins, and predominates as you work southward. Behind the forest
+belt the true Negro stock has become changed and modified by infusion
+of Berber and Fulani, and also, but to a lesser degree, of Arab blood.
+In the Niger bend, in the regions round about Lake Chad, in Northern
+Nigeria this blending of races has created a bewildering variety of mixed
+types, while here and there both the invaded and invading elements have
+preserved their purity—for instance, among the Negroes, the Bambarra
+of the Upper Niger; among the Berbers, the noble Imosagh; among the
+Arabs, the Shuwa; among the Fulani, the Pullo herdsmen of Futa Jallon,
+Adamawa, Bondu, and of many other parts of the Western Sudan. Leaving
+west for east, you have the Shoa, Galla, Somali, and Jew in Abyssinia
+and its confines; then the Bantu—product, as Dr. Voight thinks, of
+Semitic and Negro mixture—spreading southwards, inwards and westwards;
+universal everywhere, right down to the Cape—the Masai, Wahuma, Pigmies,
+Hottentots; and, in the French Congo, the Fans, presenting small channels
+of ethnic divergence in a vast sea of Bantu stock.
+
+[Illustration: WEST AFRICAN “YOUNG HOPEFULS”]
+
+Throughout all this huge expanse of territory the soil is in the main
+so fertile that it produces with little trouble everything which the
+native requires for his subsistence and his comfort, where his sense of
+what constitutes comfort has not expanded as the result of intercourse
+with a higher ethical development—a “higher civilisation,” to use the
+hackneyed term. The climate being mostly hot, it militates against great
+physical energy, which, moreover, is not, and has not been, economically
+necessary for the African for countless generations. The degree of
+development of the native depends upon the extent of his contact with,
+or remoteness from, influences tending to create in his mind fresh
+ideas; a higher conception of arts and crafts—influences which may
+have filtered through to him either by the medium of trade, successive
+migration, conquest by a more advanced race, or the infiltration of a
+revealed religion. The more inaccessible the region, the further inland
+the people, the wider removed from highways of commerce their situation,
+the more primitive their state. That is logical, although there are, of
+course, exceptions. But that in his primitive state the African is the
+“useless and dangerous brute” which the shallow materialism, the frenzy
+for expansion, the unthinking, rather blatant callousness of the hour
+would make him out to be, is one of the many fictions which pass for
+truths about Africa. The Wa-Kavirondo are the most primitive people in
+the Uganda Protectorate. They go absolutely naked, are more moral than
+their partly clothed neighbours, and are agriculturists. “Wherever they
+settle, the jungle around them is soon converted into fruitful fields,
+yielding sweet potatoes, or various forms of corn. Those who can afford
+it keep goats and sheep, and the wealthy have herds of cattle,” says
+Dr. Ansorge, adding that among them, “where the European villain with
+his lies and frauds has not yet made his appearance, the white man’s
+simple word is equal to a solemn and a binding oath.” In most parts of
+Africa, south of the equator—in the huge central portion at any rate—in
+the Upper Nile valley, the region traversed by Mr. Grogan, the native
+has never had the motive, the spontaneous impetus to produce more than
+his needs required or his fancy led him to. Yet he works in iron, moulds
+pottery, has in many cases a highly developed artistic instinct,[150]
+manufactures cloth and ingenious and elaborate weapons of offence, has
+some notions of harmony, and often enough a vein of true poetic instinct.
+When local conditions have been favourable to the evolving of important
+social agglomerations, a native state form has grown up which was a cause
+of abundant astonishment to the early European travellers in Central
+Africa. Yet, as far back as we are able to plunge in the dim recesses
+of the past, these millions of natives—this “mass of inertia”—were
+entirely cut off from intercourse with the outside world, isolated from
+all contact with the “superior” races. A few stray Egyptian traders
+probably penetrated to the head waters of the Nile and the Great Lakes.
+Later on, a handful of Arabs wandered inwards from Zanzibar, but until
+Burton, Speke and Grant, Livingstone (working from the south), Baker,
+Emin, and Stanley revealed the interior of Africa, its inhabitants had
+been innocent of all communication with the higher culture. One need not
+inquire whether the lot of these people has been much brighter since
+the advent among them of the half-caste Arab slave-trader, the Belgian
+ivory and rubber hunter, the over-zealous European missionary, and the
+land-grabbing fever of the Powers. An estimate on that point must be
+largely a matter of opinion. But to expect that these natives are going
+to willingly emigrate _en masse_ to the Rhodesian mines, hire themselves
+out for the performance of arduous labour, dig, delve, undertake
+plantation work and the like with the zeal of a European workman anxious
+to earn a living wage, is a piece of consummate folly. They can only
+be induced to do so by the most tactful treatment; by the payment of a
+decent wage; by the selection of European agents possessing some sense
+of proportion, and at least a rudimentary knowledge of the teachings
+of history. To attempt to revolutionise these peoples’ conceptions in
+a few years is madness, and to try and drive them by coercive measures
+constitutes a policy at once immoral, short-sighted, and disastrous.[151]
+
+Until quite recently British West Africa remained unaffected in any
+material sense by the gradual gravitation of European public opinion
+towards the use of coercion in dealing with the African, together with
+the non-recognition of native land tenure and the various concomitants of
+the “exploitation” policy. The birth of a scientific gold-mining industry
+in the Gold Coast, however, has let loose a flood of ignorant talk
+about West Africa, and raised up a whole host of evil advisers who are
+busily intent in introducing South African methods in the West African
+goldfields. Constant complaints are being raised about the scarcity of
+labour, the indolence and the slothfulness of the native. Experienced men
+like Mr. Daw, of the Ashanti goldfields, have not hesitated to speak out
+boldly against these views; and so far the Colonial Office,[152] to its
+honour be it said, has refused to yield to the clamour, and has declined
+to repeal the law on the acquisition, extent, and registration of mining
+concessions whereby the rights of the native owners of the soil are amply
+safeguarded. In that respect the Concessions Ordinance must rank as the
+most equitable legislative measure for the protection and preservation of
+native land tenure which exists in West Africa. It is true that of the
+numerous complaints which the Ordinance has given rise to, those that
+refer to the actual working of the measure are justified. The machinery
+for registration is hardly complete enough, and in that and some other
+respects matters might be improved. It is also true that cases have
+occurred where native chiefs have, knowingly or unknowingly, sold their
+properties twice over, and thus perpetrated a fraud which, no doubt, is
+exceedingly reprehensible; but certainly not more so than the numerous
+frauds deliberately consummated by sundry Gold Coast company promoters in
+foisting upon the British public bogus concerns, causing pecuniary loss
+to hundreds and thousands of English men and women. The African chief who
+indulges in sharp practice can be punished in the Gold Coast, but his
+European prototype generally manages to escape the clutches of the law.
+It is to be hoped that the Colonial Office will maintain the Concessions
+Ordinance in its integrity, while perfecting the machinery to administer
+it, for the law, as a law, is a credit to British justice in West Africa.
+
+On the other hand, it is much to be regretted that the Colonial Office
+should have framed a code of laws and regulations in respect to the
+development of forest products and the attribution of forest reserves,
+in Southern Nigeria, which have given rise to grave objection, and must
+continue to do so. The effect of these regulations in the aggregate is
+to authorise the High Commissioner to issue any rules he chooses with
+regard to all kinds of forest produce, not excepting the produce of the
+palm. No proper distinction is drawn between so-called “waste”[153]
+lands and forest lands at the disposal of the native and the Government
+respectively. Natives are to be compelled to take out licences to enable
+them to do what they have hitherto done without restriction. The licences
+are to be granted by the Government officials. Half the money goes to the
+local treasury, the other half to the native owner, but only if he can
+show that he is entitled to it! The native is tried, under the penalties
+provided by the proclamation, by the European officer and not by his own
+local court. All this is bad and short-sighted policy. It must inevitably
+tend to suggest to the native mind that the Government is taking entire
+possession of his land. His rights of land tenure are being treated as
+though they had ceased to exist, and had been vested in the Government.
+We are officially assured that the native chiefs are satisfied that
+this is not the case, and that they welcome these regulations. It is
+impossible to regard these assurances otherwise than with scepticism. In
+Southern Nigeria the Crown Colony Government is a despotism absolute and
+entire. There is no legislative council; there are no native newspapers.
+The native has no means of ventilating his grievances. The powers of
+the High Commissioner are more sweeping than that of the Tsar of all
+the Russias. There is no check upon him, no control of any kind. He
+does exactly what he likes, and “force” in Southern Nigeria, in other
+words, punitive expeditions are but of too frequent occurrence. For
+upwards of three-quarters of a century the natives of Southern Nigeria
+have been encouraged by successive British Governments in the belief
+that they were free to utilise the products of their own forests. I
+defy any jurist to say what amount of freedom they will enjoy if these
+regulations are carried out to the letter. I have sought the opinion
+of English lawyers not unversed in native law on this matter, and they
+have been anything but impressed with the justice or legality of the
+measure. The regulations have been compared to a retrogression “to the
+days of William the Conqueror.” “The interpretation of the Commissioner’s
+powers, under this Ordinance”—I am quoting from the letter of a lawyer
+to whom I submitted the measures in question—“are far too arbitrary.
+What privileges are left to the native who, you will remember, is the
+owner of the soil? It seems that he is in the unfortunate position of
+being the owner of his land without being able to obtain the slightest
+advantage from that land, and if he attempts to deal with the products
+thereof, even with the very best intentions, he is liable at the will
+of the Commissioner to imprisonment or fine as provided by the Bill.
+This is surely not the intention of the framer of the Bill; at least I
+hope not.” The Chambers of Commerce on the one hand, and the Aborigines
+Protection Society on the other, have protested against this reactionary
+legislation, which shows that both in commercial and philanthropic
+circles a similarity of feeling exists in regard to its tenour. It is one
+thing “to protect the forests from destruction,” which is understood to
+be the motive of these regulations, and no reasonable being would object
+to the framing of common-sense rules for the preservation of rubber trees
+and vines (although it is not rules but _instruction_ which is required)
+and certain young hardwood trees of slow growth; but it is quite
+another thing to introduce a series of cast-iron laws of this wholesale
+character, of doubtful legality, of still more questionable expediency,
+inevitably calculated to lead to friction and distinctly prejudicial
+to the development of legitimate commerce. The Crown Colony system in
+the Rivers has not been such a brilliant success that it can afford to
+deliberately run such risks! These proclamations, it may be added, were
+passed into law in Southern Nigeria without the merchants who supply the
+whole revenue of the country being advised or even consulted. Such is the
+business-like method with which we conduct our affairs in West Africa!
+
+[Illustration: AN IBO FAMILY GROUP—SOUTHERN NIGERIA]
+
+In Lagos, where a similar measure was introduced (it should be stated
+that the law is of home manufacture), it met with considerable native
+opposition, and passed through several stages of amendment before
+becoming law. In Lagos there is a legislative council on which natives
+sit—in a minority it is true—and there are local newspapers. Channels
+exist, therefore, through which native opinion can make itself heard.
+There is also, happily, a Governor of the widest sympathies, of great
+and extensive knowledge and experience. Under his auspices we may feel
+assured that nothing will be wittingly done to alienate native rights in
+land. The Bill, as amended, provides that it shall be open to the duly
+constituted Native Councils, or Governments, of the inland protected
+States, to construe its clauses in accordance with native custom and
+usage; and as the chiefs are just as interested in preserving their
+forests as the legislators or the merchants, we may feel tolerably sure
+that the objects aimed at will be secured. Moreover, it is further
+provided that the Native Councils shall themselves issue licences
+when required, the proceeds of which shall come to their own local
+treasuries entirely; and shall themselves inflict fines under their own
+law, and in their own courts; and the Governor is further recommending
+that the Government reserves shall be conveyed under lease.[154]
+There you observe the difference between the two procedures. The one
+arbitrary, dogmatic, despotic—the other such as it is seen to be. If
+any difficulties arise in Lagos in the course of the working of the
+Bill,[155] it will not be for the want of doing everything possible
+to avert them, of surrounding the rights of native land tenure with
+safeguards which, so long as they are adhered to, will be sufficient
+to protect them, of imbuing the native mind with the feeling that
+the Administration intends to conform to the traditions of native
+usage; but they will be due to the principle involved in the Bill, the
+principle, that is, of a _primâ facie_ right of interference, directly
+or indirectly, on the part of the Government, in the affairs of native
+States, whose internal independence in contradistinction to their
+external relations is guaranteed by treaty. On that point opinion will
+differ, and some of us will continue to think that, in all matters
+affecting native industries, instruction is better than restriction.[156]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+A COTTON INDUSTRY FOR WEST AFRICA
+
+
+Within the past few months a subject of the greatest possible moment to
+West Africa, and of vital importance to no inconsiderable section of the
+inhabitants of Great Britain, has been discussed in concrete fashion, and
+there is every reason to hope—nay more, to feel assured—that practical
+results will follow. I refer to the movement for the promotion of
+cotton-growing in West Africa.
+
+What has already been done may be stated in a few words. On May 8 a
+memorable meeting was held at the Albion Hotel, Manchester, under the
+auspices of Mr. Arthur Hutton, the President of the Manchester Chamber of
+Commerce. The Chambers of Commerce of London, Liverpool, and Oldham were
+represented at the meeting, together with the managing director of the
+British West African Steamship Lines, Sir Alfred Jones,[157] the Oldham
+Cotton Spinners Association, the Manchester Cotton Spinners’ Association,
+various other associations of a similar character from Blackburn and
+other Lancashire towns, the West African merchants, cotton merchants,
+brokers, weavers and manufacturers, &c. The object of the meeting was
+to widen the area of cotton cultivation under the British flag, more
+especially in West Africa, and before the close of the proceedings a
+“British Cotton Growing Association” had been formed with a preliminary
+capital of £10,000, to be exclusively devoted to experimenting in West
+Africa and other over-sea possessions. This meeting was followed by
+another held in Manchester in June, in the course of which the decision
+arrived at previously was confirmed and enlarged, and it was decided to
+raise a fund of £50,000. The resolutions passed at this second meeting
+were as follows:
+
+                          RESOLUTIONS.
+
+    “(1) That, in the opinion of this meeting, the continued
+    prosperity of the British cotton industry depends on an
+    increased supply of cotton, and it is desirable that our
+    sources of supply should be extended.
+
+    “(2) That in order to attain this end an association be formed,
+    to be called the British Cotton Growing Association.
+
+    “(3) That its principal object be the extension of the growth
+    and cultivation of cotton in British colonies, dependencies,
+    and protectorates.
+
+    “(4) That a guarantee fund of £50,000 be raised, to be spread
+    over five years, no guarantor being required to contribute more
+    than one-fifth of his total guarantee in any one year.
+
+    “(5) That this association shall have power to form a
+    subsidiary company, or companies, and to dispose of any of
+    its assets to any company thus formed, on conditions that
+    subscribers to this association have the first option of
+    taking up shares in any such company in proportion to their
+    subscriptions.
+
+    “(6) That a general committee should be appointed.
+
+    “(7) That this general committee should appoint from their
+    number members to form the executive committee.
+
+    “(8) That the executive committee shall immediately collect
+    all the available information on the subject and despatch
+    expert expeditions to report on the best methods of procedure,
+    and shall have power to (_a_) acquire land on which to make
+    experiments and to establish plantations; (_b_) distribute seed
+    among the natives to encourage them by advice and assistance to
+    grow cotton on their own land, and to engage experts for this
+    purpose if necessary; (_c_) establish stations to buy and sell
+    cotton, or any of its by-products, animals, implements, or any
+    other articles or goods necessary for the expeditions; (_d_) to
+    adopt any other means that may suggest themselves from time to
+    time to attain the object in view.
+
+    “(9) That the general committee issue a report once each
+    half-year of the work which has been done.”
+
+A third meeting took place at the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce on July
+14, in the presence of Sir William MacGregor, Governor of Lagos, and Sir
+A. King Harman, Governor of Sierra Leone, when practical ways and means
+of promoting the cultivation of cotton in their respective Colonies for
+export to Europe were debated.[158]
+
+Having thus briefly indicated the various measures adopted, we may
+profitably inquire into the origin and causes of the movement. That
+inquiry cannot fail to impress the thinking public with the importance
+of the issues. With every year that passes Great Britain is becoming
+more than ever dependent upon the United States for her cotton supply,
+and with every year that passes the increase in the cotton production of
+America accentuates itself by comparison with the production of other
+countries. Thus in the decades 1870-80, 1880-90, and 1890-1900 America
+has produced 4½, 6½, and 9½ millions of bales, while India has produced
+2, 2½, and 2 millions; Egypt 384,000, 400,000, and 700,000; and Brazil
+600,000, 300,000, and 380,000 in the same period. The gradual position
+assumed by America as controller of the world’s cotton is, therefore,
+clearly apparent, and although the production of Egypt and India is
+increasing, the ratio of increase when compared with America is trifling,
+while the production from countries outside India and Egypt is decreasing.
+
+That is one consideration. Another consideration is this. Forty years ago
+England took the bulk of American cotton. To-day the Continent, thanks to
+the growth and to the marvellous success of Continental spinners, takes
+one-third of the entire American crop.
+
+Yet another factor is the increase in the American consumption of cotton.
+A few years ago the American _consumption_ of cotton was almost _nil_.
+America now consumes a third of her produce. In the opinion of some
+experts—although in some quarters a contrary opinion is held—America
+will consume by the end of next year at least one-half of her production.
+
+Now these are very serious facts for industrial Lancashire. The terrible
+distress which visited Lancashire in the days of the American Civil
+War is still sufficiently recent to be remembered, and one shudders
+to contemplate the consequences which would ensue if anything should
+again prevent Lancashire from obtaining her share of the cotton crop of
+America, with nothing but the existing inadequate supplies from other
+parts of the world to fall back upon. The danger is a very real and
+pressing one. As matters stand at present, Great Britain is practically
+at the mercy of the United States, and in a position of almost entire
+dependence upon the market manipulations of American speculators, in
+whose power it is to regulate the price to suit their own convenience.
+So unsatisfactory is the actual condition of affairs, that for the past
+three years it has hardly paid importers to ship cotton to Liverpool. The
+fear of an American syndicating of cotton is not, perhaps, altogether
+groundless in these days of vast trusts and combinations, while the
+competition from Continental spinners, and, above all, increased
+American consumption, make the outlook as gloomy as it well can be. It
+is therefore imperative that something be done to increase the area of
+cotton production under the British flag. So much for the wider aspect of
+the question.
+
+Those to whom this matter specially appeals have naturally enough
+turned their eyes towards West Africa, and it is in connection with the
+possibilities of the development of an export cotton industry in that
+part of the world that some remarks may fittingly be made in this volume.
+I say an “export” industry, because, as we know, a native industry to
+supply local wants has existed in West Africa for centuries past. We
+have seen, for example, the paramount part which the cotton industry
+plays in the prosperity of Kano and Northern Nigeria generally, where,
+in addition to supplying local wants, manufactured cotton cloths are an
+article of barter; in some regions indeed a veritable currency, sent
+far and wide to countries of inland Western Africa where the excellence
+of the Kano article is in perpetual demand. But what is true of Kano is
+true of many other portions of West Africa. The cotton shrub (_Gossypium
+herbaceum_)[159] is met with in a wild state all over West Africa, and
+cultivated very extensively. Wherever Islam has spread, cultivation has
+increased, but in pagan communities the manufacture of cotton cloths
+is indulged in to no inconsiderable extent. The pagan tribes of Sierra
+Leone, of the Gold Coast and Liberia, turn out the most beautiful cloths.
+Their excellence and felicity of design are such that no one who has seen
+them can fail to be impressed with the capacity of the races, with their
+primitive appliances, which produce them. The endeavour to promote cotton
+cultivation on a larger scale in West Africa will not be, therefore, a
+new thing, and what might have been an initial difficulty is happily
+non-existent.
+
+Nor will West Africa be called upon for the first time in its history to
+supply Europe with raw cotton. When the American Civil War broke out,
+high prices were offered for West African cotton, which was universally
+pronounced by experts to be of excellent quality. Cotton was exported
+in its raw state from the Gold Coast, Fernando Po, Lagos, the Gambia,
+and Angola. Indeed the export was continued long after that, and between
+the years 1878 and 1885 raw cotton to the value of £56,501 was shipped
+home to Europe from the Gold Coast and Lagos. Even before the American
+War, as was recently recalled to memory by Mr. Elijah Helm,[160] himself
+a Quaker, the constitutional objections of the Quakers to utilise the
+products of slave labour led to the formation of a small association,
+which imported cotton from West Africa of a quality so good, and in
+quantities so considerable, as to provide for the not very extensive
+wants of the Quaker fraternity.
+
+But with the close of the war, and the considerable fall in price since
+those days, the West African export cotton industry has become virtually
+extinct. A very little, I believe, still finds it sway to Europe from
+the banks of the Volta and from Angola, but that is all, with the
+exception of the Togoland experiment of last year, of which I shall speak
+later.
+
+The four main requirements for the successful cultivation of cotton are:
+(1) a suitable soil, (2) adequate irrigation or a regularly recurring
+rainfall, (3) sufficient labour, (4) transport facilities. British West
+Africa can, in the main, give the first three, in some places better than
+in others. British West Africa’s capacity to furnish the fourth depends
+upon whether the grassy upland plains of the interior may be considered
+more fitting or less fitting than the swampy, better-watered regions of
+the coast. If the former be thought the most likely, the country behind
+Lagos alone affords the necessary qualifications at present. Lagos,
+moreover, is particularly fitted in respect to the third requirement,
+that of labour. A railway 125 miles long runs up from Lagos town to the
+interior, passing through the naturally rich and productive belt of
+forest, where it is hopeless to expect, and where it would be dangerous
+to attempt to promote, cotton cultivation. But beyond the forest belt
+a park-like country opens out of an area of some 10,000 square miles
+in extent, the greater proportion of which would be suitable to the
+cultivation of cotton, and would go far to justify and hasten, if
+taken up in earnest, the extension of the existing railway line to the
+Niger. If, therefore, it be a question of experimenting in a region of
+grass-covered plains—similar to those of Texas—Lagos, by reason of its
+railway, is the only British colony where such experiments can at present
+be undertaken. The intelligence of the Yorubas, their agricultural and
+industrial capacity, the dense agglomeration of population met with in
+the country, the need of providing or strengthening the _economic_, as
+opposed to the strategic, argument for a continuation of the line (let
+us fervently trust under different conditions) to the Niger; all those
+factors render it in the highest degree to be hoped that Lagos may be
+chosen as a centre of activity for the new movement. Lagos, let it never
+be forgotten, is one of the doors of Northern Nigeria.
+
+If, on the other hand, the consensus of expert opinion favours the
+low-lying coastwise regions, where fluvial transport to the actual port
+of shipment is relatively easy, the Gambia and Southern Nigeria primarily
+suggest themselves. Those possessions seem to me to offer advantages
+over Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast. The present condition of Sierra
+Leone is not encouraging. The railway, if it achieves anything at all,
+which is doubtful, can only do so by increasing the yield of the fruit
+of the palm, and by bringing the interior oil-palm districts into closer
+touch with the coast markets. This may enable that unfortunate Colony
+to bear the heavy burden under which it is now staggering. To cut down
+the forests in the Eastern districts of Sierra Leone in order to plant
+cotton would be suicidal. In the Gold Coast, again, there is an opposing
+factor in the shape of the gold-mining industry. The mining companies are
+perpetually grumbling about the scarcity of labour, for which in many
+cases they have themselves to thank. Their demands upon the population
+have already resulted in drawing away a number of people from their usual
+avocations, with the result that the export of timber is decreasing; and
+any further deviation of available labour, such as the cultivation of
+cotton would necessitate, would seriously affect the producing capacity
+of the country, not only as regards timber, but in respect to other
+natural and cultivated products, such as palm oil and kernels in the
+first category, and cocoa in the other.
+
+For the Gambia, on the other hand, the advent of a new industry would be
+a boon. The Gambia entirely relies for its existence upon the ground-nut.
+It is always a bad thing to have all your eggs in one basket. When an
+article like the ground-nut is in question, it is very bad, because
+you are at the mercy, as it were, of the seasons. The ground-nut is
+necessarily a fluctuating article on that account, and one year may
+produce a fine crop, to be followed the next by an indifferent one. Sir
+George Denton—the genial and popular Governor of the Gambia—intended, I
+know, to try and start a better system of irrigation in certain parts of
+that Colony, in order to widen the extent of ground-nut producing land,
+and any such project would be all to the good, of course, for cotton
+cultivation. The population of the Gambia being mostly Mohammedan and
+largely composed of those most enterprising people the Mandingoes, and
+Mandingoes crossed with Fulani blood—remnant of the old empire of Melle—a
+cotton industry (to which they are long inured) could be started with so
+much greater hope of success from this fact.
+
+In Southern Nigeria[161] the field is vast. You can march for miles on
+either bank of the main river through a cotton-growing country. The
+density of the population varies, of course, in different districts.
+Fluvial means of transport abound. The people, it is true, are not
+blessed, or cursed, with many wants; but there is no valid reason
+why, with a little painstaking care and sympathetic treatment; with
+improvements in the production of kernels which, as already suggested,
+would release a considerable amount of native labour for other pursuits;
+with a greater display of combination between the official and mercantile
+class; with a good deal less blood-letting, fewer punitive expeditions,
+“clearing away of the refuse of the population,” “drastic measures,” and
+so forth; the natives of Southern Nigeria should not be induced to take
+up cotton cultivation for purposes of export.
+
+Granted the necessity; given the soil, irrigation rainfall, labour and
+transport, as specifically mentioned above; admitted an experience in
+cotton growing, spinning and weaving among the natives; what remains to
+be studied in this great enterprise destined, let us hope, to make of
+British West Africa a great cotton-producing country on which England can
+count in case of need; to assist in freeing us to a large extent from
+a position of dependence upon America, and so prevent the accumulating
+dangers of the hour, and of which the creation cannot fail to confer the
+greatest benefit upon the British West African possessions?
+
+Obviously the first consideration is one of price. Can a cotton industry
+in West Africa be made to pay? Can sufficient inducement be offered
+to the native to encourage him to produce cotton for export? Can West
+African cotton compete with any degree of success against the American
+product in the matter of price? On what lines can a cotton industry in
+West Africa be promoted? Based upon the data available, which are not, of
+course, by any means complete, the general consensus of opinion amongst
+experts appears to be that, with the inculcation of scientific methods of
+cultivation, the treatment of the cotton shrub as an annual instead of a
+perennial, the introduction of the necessary implements and of ginning
+and compressing machinery it will be possible to make cotton-growing
+profitable. In this respect the experiments of the Germans in Togoland
+are particularly interesting. To Germany belongs the credit of initiating
+the new cotton movement. From the German Colony of Togo came last
+year, for the first time in its history, fifteen thousand marks worth
+of cotton. The conclusions of the German Agricultural Committee were
+precise. The absence of adequate transport facilities alone prevented the
+complete financial success of the first experiment. Further, it was shown
+upon analysis that, of the various types of cotton raised from American,
+Egyptian, Indian and native seed, the type raised from the native seed
+produced, as a whole, the best staple, equal in quality to average
+American. This absence of transport is likely to be remedied in time,
+as a survey is now being made for a railway from the coast to Misahöhe.
+Meanwhile the Germans are so far from being discouraged that a company
+is, I understand, about to be brought out for the express purpose of
+developing the cotton industry in Togo[162] with a capital of £37,500.
+
+[Illustration: TRAVELLING ON THE NIGER IN THE DRY SEASON]
+
+The French are also devoting a great deal of attention to the subject
+just now. Some years ago the then military Governor of the French Sudan,
+Général de Trentinian, took the matter up. Nothing came of his efforts,
+but M. Roume, the new Governor-General of French West Africa, has
+now adopted it as one of the planks of his platform, so to speak. He
+is anxious to establish a cotton industry in Senegal, which, like the
+Gambia, lives upon ground-nut production. More ambitious schemes are
+vaguely mooted, and some enthusiasts already speak and write as though
+the valley of the Upper Niger were about to be converted, as it were by a
+flash of the magician’s wand, into a rival of the Southern States. That
+with its magnificent soil and splendid natural irrigation the valley of
+the Upper Niger may some day fulfil the aspirations of the French is,
+perhaps, more than possible.[163] But we are a long way off that yet.
+
+It seems difficult, then, to believe that this simultaneous impulse on
+the part of competent men in England, Germany and France can be founded
+upon a miscalculation in respect to working expenses, and I think we may
+feel tolerably certain that, if cotton costs an average per lb. of 2⅛
+_d._ to produce in Texas, such parts of West Africa as can be endowed
+with similar facilities in respect to machinery, and where transport,
+either by rail or water, is available, will be able to produce cotton at
+a lower figure; and as the interest of the West African shipowners is to
+fill their ships homeward bound from the West Coast, we may also presume
+that they will make reasonable concessions to encourage the industry.[164]
+
+There remains the question of how to set about establishing a cotton
+industry in West Africa upon a sound basis. Shall it be attempted in
+the form of plantations managed by white overseers and with paid native
+labour; or shall it be left very largely to native initiative, and
+develop itself on the lines of a native industry—as, I believe, is the
+case in India? I think that all who have some knowledge of West African
+matters will unhesitatingly pronounce in favour of the latter solution.
+West Africa is essentially a country of native industries, and the best
+economic results have been obtained in West Africa when the motive power
+all through has been the native, with the European as teacher, instructor
+and guide, but _not_ as manager or director of native labour.[165] In
+the construction of public works the same phenomenon is observable in
+a somewhat different form. Experience has demonstrated that where the
+recruiting of labour for railways or road construction has been left in
+the hands of the chiefs, requisite labour was forthcoming, and sufficient
+left on the farms to allow usual production, and therefore the export
+trade has remained unaffected; whereas when recruiting operations have
+been directed by Europeans outside the authority of the chiefs, labour
+was indeed obtainable, but at the cost of disorganising the general
+labour supply of the country and consequently affecting adversely the
+export trade.
+
+A knowledge of these facts suggests, therefore, that the cotton industry
+can be promoted with the greatest chance of success by interesting the
+rulers of the country and their councils in the movement; by giving the
+chiefs the benefit of expert advice; by enlisting their sympathies and
+good-will; by supplying them with cotton seed, implements, and possibly
+hand-gins, gratis; and so on. Here at least the necessity of proceeding
+on lines of instruction entirely is manifest. The object is to improve
+an existing industry, to greatly enlarge and systematise it, _to get the
+people of the land interested in it_. If the native can see a profit in
+the business, he will take it up. That is morally certain. It has been
+so in every branch of West African commerce. So keenly has the native
+embraced new trade outlets offered to him that upon occasion he has, when
+uninstructed in the art of production, compromised the future. Absolute
+and entire co-operation of officialdom and commerce is essential if the
+cotton movement in West Africa is to be attended with success. The
+Germans may here serve us as a model to imitate. The home Government,
+the local Government; the forces of industry and commerce in Germany,
+and in the particular Colony where the experiments are being made, have
+vied with one another in the effort to achieve an aim of common interest
+to all. Centres of instruction have been established in the Colony;
+model farms have been created; Negro farmers from the States have been
+brought over through the instrumentality of Mr. Booker T. Washington, the
+distinguished Negro scholar and manager of the Tuskegee Institute.[166]
+In all these matters the official world has worked hand in glove with the
+commercial world.
+
+It is equally important that the cotton associations and merchants should
+be in earnest. No mere pecking will suffice. Disappointments and delays
+must be discounted in advance. There are sure to be plenty of both.
+Ginning and compressing machinery must be set up either on the coast,
+or, if it be decided to try Lagos, at large centres such as Ibadan and
+Abbeokuta; and preferably what is known as the “American round lap,”
+which ensures simultaneous ginning and compressing in 250 lb. round
+bales, instead of the more cumbrous and more expensive separate ginning
+and compressing machines, which produce the 500 lb. square bale. In
+short, the movement must be engineered, from the beginning, on a real
+scientific basis. If Togoland with its transport difficulties has been
+able in the first year’s experience to export 70,000 decimal pounds of
+cotton, what may not be achieved by those of our West African Colonies
+where transport facilities exist; where the population is at least as
+dense if not denser; and where British subjects have been in contact with
+the natives for periods ranging from fifty to one hundred years?
+
+I cannot leave this subject without referring to the indirect relation
+it bears to the Negro problem in the States. At present all is vague
+and uncertain. We cannot tell what may be the outcome of the movement;
+but if it be a success, what vistas does it not open up for the future!
+We have seen how the Germans have invited the co-operation of American
+Negro cotton farmers. The few who have gone out—the German reports assure
+us—have elected to remain. More, it is announced, are to follow. What
+would the attitude of the American Government be in the face of a steady
+flow of emigration on the part of the coloured population of the Southern
+States, to help to build up in its country of origin what it has built up
+in America? In what light would the Americans regard the up-springing of
+a great cotton industry in West Africa? If, as events seem to indicate,
+America is likely to become on an ever-increasing scale the principal
+consumer of her own raw cotton, would such an occurrence be viewed with
+equanimity by the American public? Or if not with actual equanimity,
+with at least the feeling that the danger, presuming it to be one, might
+be cheerfully faced if a deeper peril could thereby be diminished, and
+in time perhaps altogether removed? Could white labour in the American
+cotton plantations, with the exception of the more swampy and malarial
+regions, be substituted for Negro labour, in the event of appreciable
+emigration? These are questions for American statesmen and thinkers
+to answer. If American intelligence can perceive in these tentative
+suggestions a clue, be it ever so faint now, of future potentialities,
+a clue worth following up and investigating, let America remember that
+a million square miles of African territory, which was declared in 1884
+internationally free commercial land, and in the consolidation of which
+under its present _régime_ America is to a large degree responsible, is
+in the grip to-day of a band of greedy monopolists in whose bowels reside
+no scruples, no pity, no humanity; who are sowing red ruin wherever their
+influence can be asserted. If America ever seriously turns her attention
+to West Africa as a solution of the greatest problem of her internal
+politics, let her cast her eyes upon the Congo State, misnamed Free—the
+abode of cruelty and persecution, of slavery and reaction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+THE MAHOGANY TRADE
+
+    “The traveller who wanders through the dim recesses of the
+    tropical forest of Western Africa soon feels the sense of
+    its beauty lost in that of its mournful grandeur, and there
+    steals over him a profound feeling of solitude and a deep
+    consciousness of the solemnity, majesty, and utter loneliness
+    of this great, gloomy wilderness.”—Dr. AUSTIN FREEMAN.
+
+
+The great forest region of Africa is one of the wonders of the world.
+It is a moot point whether Africa should be described as possessing two
+forest belts or only one. Roughly speaking, the forest region takes the
+form of an inverted hatchet or axe, with French Congo, the Congo Free
+State, and a portion of the Great Lakes districts as the blade; while
+the West Coast, from Sierra Leone downwards, provides the handle. There
+are gaps here and there; in the Cameroon hinterland; among the mangrove
+swamps of the Niger Delta, and behind Lagos on the Niger side. The
+forest is densest in the Upper Congo, where Stanley, we know, struggled
+in it for many weary weeks, as though held in the grip of some hideous
+nightmare from which there was no escape.
+
+In this natural hot-house, always bathed in an atmosphere of humidity and
+steam, vegetation flourishes in the wildest profusion and exuberance, and
+with the widest diversity of size and species, from the mighty _bombax_
+to the creeping lichen. So abundant is this luxurious growth, so thick
+the canopy formed by the spreading branches and creepers overhead,
+that, save here and there, where some giant has fallen and broken down
+the surrounding undergrowth, leaving a gap overhead through which the
+sunlight penetrates flickeringly, the forest is plunged in eternal
+gloom. This gloom and the silence which accompanies it are the two
+great characteristics of the African forest. Except for the occasional
+chattering of monkeys, the crash of a falling tree, or the far-off
+chirrup of birds, who seek the sunlight in the topmost branches, the
+silence broods everlastingly. The effect of living amongst this gloom
+and silence is most depressing to the European, and it is no matter for
+surprise that the terrific solemnity of their environment should have
+exercised a profound influence upon the naturally superstitious minds
+of the native Africans who dwell therein. It is amongst the dwellers in
+the forest region that we find the lowest type of African humanity[167]
+and the most sombre developments of African religious conceptions. All
+European travellers who have spent some time in this great forest region
+have been alike impressed by its grandeur and its melancholy, and their
+descriptions bear witness to the way in which their feelings have been
+wrought upon by the natural phenomena with which they were surrounded.
+
+It is only within quite recent years that European enterprise has
+concerned itself with the potential riches of this vast forest region, or
+rather of that portion of it which it is as yet possible to commercially
+develop, viz. the belt on the West Coast—or, to refer to the illustration
+given above, the handle of the axe. The results already achieved in a
+short period of effort, which can hardly be called more than tentative
+and unsystematic, are such as to warrant the most sanguine expectations
+for the future, when facilities of transport shall have brought the main
+portion of the forest region within reach of the European markets. It is
+curious to observe how, in its main lines, the trade of Western Africa
+has arisen in a succession of well-defined stages. The earliest trade was
+in gold-dust, and, so far as we know, confined to gold-dust, unless the
+gorilla (or more probably the chimpanzee) skins brought home by Hanno
+be counted as trade—which would be a somewhat humorous classification.
+Then ensued a long period of absolute neglect of West Africa by civilised
+man. When once more the latter turned his attention to that part of the
+world, gold was again the principal item of trade, accompanied by ivory,
+and later on by slaves—the later a monstrous evil, whose Nemesis is
+to-day making itself felt in the United States. The gold trade died out,
+the ivory trade languished, and the gum, palm oil and kernel trades came
+into existence, to be followed by the rubber trade, and lastly by the
+timber trade—principally confined to mahogany. On the principle of _plus
+ça change, plus c’est la même chose_, the gold industry is now again
+reviving, although on very different lines from the old barter system.
+That is, of course, a general statement. There have been, now and then,
+exceptions to prove the rule, and so far as timber is concerned, a not
+inconsiderable business was carried on in the Gambia and Sierra Leone
+some fifty years ago.
+
+[Illustration: FELLING A MAHOGANY-TREE]
+
+[Illustration: SQUARING THE TREE]
+
+Sir Alfred Moloney, however, was able to write in 1887 that, after having
+made many inquiries, such timber trade as had previously existed “may
+be said to have altogether ceased or to have sunk into the export done
+in dye-woods and ebony.” The following tabulated statement shows how
+insignificant was the timber trade in West Africa between the years 1878
+and 1885:
+
+          WOOD AND TIMBER EXPORTS FROM WESTERN AFRICA, 1878 TO 1885.
+
+  Year.    Articles.       Countries whence imported.    Quantity.  Value.
+                                                           Tons.      £
+
+  1878   Wood and timber   From the West of Africa,         Nil.     Nil.
+          unenumerated    not particularly designated
+  1879           ”                       ”                   ”        ”
+  1880           ”                       ”                  1733    14,892
+  1881           ”                       ”                   No mention.
+  1882           ”                       ”                  1458    10,750
+  1883           ”                       ”                  1441    11,100
+  1884           ”                       ”                  1395     9,980
+  1885           ”                       ”                  1181     9,565
+
+In 1889 the total import of African mahogany was only 68,000 feet, and
+in 1890—or a little over ten years ago—it did not amount to more than
+259,000 feet. To-day the mahogany trade has grown to be one of the most
+important branches of commerce in West Africa. Enormous quantities of
+logs are shipped home from the Gold Coast, Lagos and the Ivory Coast, and
+the mahogany exports from the Niger Coast Protectorate,[168] which were
+started in August, 1899, produced 23,983 superficial feet in the year
+1899-1900.
+
+The industry is carried on by two categories of shippers, viz. the
+European merchant established on the coast, who either employs native
+labour to cut down his own trees, or who buys timber direct from the
+native; and the native merchant who ships home on commission. The chief
+centres of the mahogany trade on the coast are: for the Gold Coast—Axim,
+Twin Rivers, Sekondi and Chama; for the Ivory Coast—Assinie, Half
+Assinie, Lahou and Grand Bassam; for Southern Nigeria—Benin and Sapelli.
+Lagos timber is carried round to Forcados in branch boats, and there
+shipped on the homeward-bound steamers. The South Coast mahogany trade
+is chiefly confined to Botica Point, Gaboon, Eloby and Mayumba, although
+a few logs have been sent home in the steamers of the Cie Belge Maritime
+du Congo, from near Boma in the Congo Free State. The South Coast timber
+trade appears to be dying out, owing chiefly to the pale colour of the
+wood, which does not now commend itself to buyers.[169] The vast forests
+of the Upper Congo cannot, with advantage or profit, be tapped until
+the Congo Railway Company lowers its preposterous rates, and until the
+administration of the country is in other hands than the monopolist
+clique which controls it.
+
+[Illustration: DRAGGING THE SQUARED LOG THROUGH THE BUSH]
+
+[Illustration: SAPELLI, SOUTHERN NIGERIA’S PRINCIPAL TIMBER PORT]
+
+It may be interesting to give the actual exports of timber from the Gold
+Coast and Lagos from 1895 to 1899, showing the wonderful strides which
+have taken place. The Gold Coast, it may be stated, has a total forest
+area of 12,000 square miles.
+
+    EXPORTS FROM THE GOLD COAST.
+
+    Year.       Value.
+
+    1895       £28,245
+    1896        52,234
+    1897        90,509
+    1898       110,331
+    1899        87,076
+
+    EXPORTS FROM LAGOS.
+
+    Year.       Value.
+
+    1895          Nil.
+    1896          £275
+    1897         8,271
+    1898        12,944
+    1899        34,737
+
+Liverpool, Havre, Hamburg, Marseilles and Bordeaux absorb nine-tenths of
+the exports of mahogany from Africa, but a certain proportion finds its
+way from those ports to the United States.[170] Of the ports mentioned,
+Liverpool holds far and away the first place. The statistics of Liverpool
+imports from 1889 to 1900 inclusive will be found in the Appendix.
+
+In view of the evidence given of the phenomenal increase of the mahogany
+trade, it seems almost incongruous to say that the existing condition
+and the future prospects of the trade have, for some months past, been
+causing much apprehension in West African commercial circles. The truth
+is that the growth of the trade has been checked, and for the last twelve
+months has even been showing signs of decay. There was a decreased
+export in 1901 of over 11,000 tons, and the figures for the first six
+months of the present year show a further decline, although prices have
+considerably advanced and the demand for good logs exceeds the supply.
+
+It is a fact recognised by all the interested parties that the export
+of mahogany from West Africa has received a serious check. What are the
+reasons? They differentiate with the localities. In the Gold Coast the
+falling off which has occurred is due, in the first place, to labour
+being attracted from the timber to the gold-mining industry, and to the
+needs of railway construction. Many thousands of natives have thus been
+drawn away from timber-felling to work on the railway; for the mines, or
+as carriers for the various prospecting expeditions into the interior.
+A second contributory cause has been the necessarily trade-disturbing
+element of warfare, otherwise stated, the Ashanti War, in the shape of
+the general unrest and disorganisation brought about by the excessive
+demands for carriers, &c. In the Ivory Coast, prospecting expeditions
+have also affected the output. As far as Lagos is concerned, the remarks
+of the Governor in the last report of that Colony for last year afford
+the requisite explanation.[171]
+
+The freight question is undoubtedly held to militate against the
+development of the timber industry, and it had been freely prophesied
+that the effect would begin to make itself felt last year. How much the
+decline was due on the whole to high freights, and how much to other
+causes mentioned, it would be difficult to say. With the technicalities
+of the subject I will not bore my readers. Suffice it to say that the
+principal objection which is advanced against the steamship owners,
+is the way in which the system known as the “sliding scale” is worked
+out. At present logs over two tons pay increased freight, and a further
+increase is made upon logs of three tons and upwards. It is urged
+that, if the principle of the bigger the log the better the timber
+were sound, this would be all right enough; but it so happens that the
+average sale price of a one-ton log is much the same as that of a two-,
+three- or four-ton log, except when the heavier log is what is termed
+a good “figured”[172] log. Figured logs fetch any price, according to
+the fancy of the purchaser, and in such cases the question of freight
+is a bagatelle. But the vast majority of the logs do not possess these
+qualifications, and the increased freight on the heavier logs tells
+very heavily against the merchant, and may even go so far, when low
+prices prevail on the home market, as to render any profit on the sale
+impossible. Of course, the steamship owner has his reply ready; and, so
+far, he considers it good enough to justify the existing rates.
+
+When all is said and done, the fact remains that the timber trade is
+languishing. It would be a thousand pities to allow this to continue,
+if it can be avoided. A trade once abandoned or paralysed is not easily
+restarted. It is in the interest of all the parties concerned to arrive
+at a _modus vivendi_ which shall allow the native who cuts and squares
+the wood, the merchant who ships it, and the steamship owner who carries
+it, to make a profit. In this as in other respects one would like to see
+some systematic measures of instruction adopted, under joint official
+and commercial auspices, to show the natives how the best logs can be
+selected for felling, which would avoid the sending home of a mass of
+worthless and immature timber calculated at times to flood the market and
+depreciate prices, while damaging the forests in Africa.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA
+
+
+The steady and continuous spread of Islam in the western portion of the
+Dark Continent is a fact which no one acquainted with the subject will
+attempt to deny. It is, indeed, so well established that to specialise
+particular instances where it has been observed would be a needless
+undertaking. It is everywhere palpable, striking, impressive. It can no
+more be disguised or ignored than the concurrent circumstance of relative
+failure on the part of Christian missions. While Mohammedanism continues
+to gain converts far and wide; to absorb whole tribes; to filter down the
+rivers to the ocean; to pierce the forest belt, with hardly a check—save
+here and there, as, for example, among the Ibos on the Niger—Christianity
+makes no headway in the interior; and even in its confinement to the
+coastwise region, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say, some of
+the Europeanised towns on the coast, its progress is slow, so slow,
+indeed, that well-informed observers are not wanting who believe that it
+is losing rather than gaining ground. At any rate, it is not, I venture
+to think, an exaggeration to say, Christianity is maintaining itself with
+difficulty among heathen communities in West Africa, and beats in vain
+against the strong tide of Mohammedanism.[173]
+
+It cannot be without interest to Englishmen whose West African Empire
+covers so large an area, and numbers between thirty and forty millions,
+to devote careful attention to a subject which is fraught with such
+far-reaching importance, and which it is imperially necessary for Great
+Britain to take into serious consideration as constituting a factor which
+has to be reckoned with and appreciated at its proper value. On that
+account it may not be out of place to discuss in a general way the whole
+subject of Mohammedanism in West Africa. The problem is a great one, and
+although there is no pretence here to more than touch the fringe of it,
+even a tentative effort is, perhaps, of interest to the daily increasing
+section of the public, which begins, although still but dimly, to realise
+the nature and the extent of the responsibilities Great Britain has
+undertaken in West Africa.
+
+Rejecting, as, in my opinion, we can do with safety, the legend that
+attributes the existence of Mohammedanism in Walata (Biru), the seat
+of the Ghanata Empire as early as the sixtieth year of the Hejira, or
+about 682 A.D., there is yet good reason to believe that Islam crossed
+the Sahara, and became powerful in the Western Sudan, earlier than the
+eleventh century A.D., which is the period assigned to that event by the
+majority of authorities. We know positively that the fifteenth prince of
+the first and Za dynasty of the Songhay, Za Kasai, was converted to Islam
+in the year 1000 A.D.[174] From El Bekri we glean that Mohammedanism
+had taken such firm root in the Songhay Empire about sixty years after
+the conversion of Za Kasai (1067 A.D.) that none but a Muslim could be
+king. In the reign of Yusif Ibn Tashfin, the founder of Morocco, 1062
+A.D., many Negroes, according to Leo Africanus, became followers of
+the Prophet. Barth’s invaluable “Chronological Table of the History of
+Bornu” shows us that Islam was introduced into Kanem (and Bornu)[175]
+in the reign of Hume, the first of the Muslim rulers of that extensive
+Empire (1086-89), and the circumstance that this potentate died in Masr
+(Misr)—_i.e._ Egypt, infers that he was either on his way to or from
+Mecca.[176] Now it seems inconceivable that Gao or Gogo, the capital
+of the Songhay Empire, which was situate on the Niger about 500 miles
+in the heart of the country of the Negroes, should have yielded to the
+influence of Islamic preachers who came from the north, before the
+introduction of that religion in the intervening region comprised between
+the southern limits of the Sahara and the Western Sudan. That it should
+have struck the Niger, and followed it as providing the swiftest vehicle
+of penetration inland before permeating the countries that lay on either
+side of the river, is natural enough, and we find indirect confirmation
+that it did so in the circumstance that the other great Negro kingdom
+contemporary with Songhay, that of Melle or Mali, which had succeeded
+Ghanata, only embraced Islam in the person of its king, Baramidana,
+in 1213, or about two centuries after the conversion of Za Kasai. It
+may therefore, I think, be assumed, without departing from the limits
+of inherent probability, that if the existence of mosques in Walata
+were relegated to 900 A.D. instead of 682 A.D., the former date would
+approximately represent the truth; and that Mohammedan proselytisers
+must have been busily at work in the Senegal about that time or a little
+later, pushing southwards and eastwards from thence, until they reached
+the Niger, and pursuing their course onwards to the most important city
+on its banks, Gao; reaching it, as already stated, in the opening years
+of the eleventh century,[177] and having met with success, continuing
+their triumphal progress to the third great Negro kingdom of West Africa,
+Kanem.[178]
+
+The introduction of Islam revolutionised Western Africa. His first
+contact with a revealed religion powerfully affected the naturally
+intense spiritual nature of the Negro. What was the precise nature of
+the religious beliefs entertained by the Songhays, Mandingoes, Fulani,
+Hausas and other tribes inhabiting the Upper Senegal and Upper Niger at
+the time of the advent of Mohammedanism it is difficult to say. It may
+have been the animism which, under its modern appellation, Fetishism,
+is met with to-day in its purest form among the true Negroes of the
+coastwise swamp and forest regions. Or, as is much more probable, it
+may have been a form of pantheism allied with animal worship inherited
+from contact, at a remote period, with Egyptian culture; as witness the
+_Tarik’s_ description of the original fish-god of the Songhays, believed
+by some authorities—and not without reason—to have been the manatee;[179]
+the alleged regard of the Mandingoes for the hippopotamus;[180] and the
+strong presumptions of an ancient bovine worship among those Fulani who
+have remained faithful to their original calling of _bororoji_ (herdsmen)
+as distinguished from their more ambitious countrymen of the towns, whom
+destiny has fashioned into statesmen, diplomatists and warriors. Whatever
+those beliefs may severally have been they were flung aside, and Islam
+struck so deep that the Negro became in time not only as zealous, but
+upon occasion more zealous than his Semitic teachers. Under the fostering
+impulse and care of the new religion, these backward regions, says
+Thomson,[181] commenced an upward progress. A new and powerful bond drew
+the scattered congeries of tribes together and welded them into powerful
+communities. Their moral and spiritual well-being increased by leaps and
+bounds, and their political and social life took an altogether higher
+level.
+
+    “Islamism is in itself stationary, and was framed thus to
+    remain; sterile like its God, lifeless like its first principle
+    in all that constitutes life—for life is love, participation
+    and progress, and of these the Coranic deity has none. It
+    justly repudiates all change, all development, to borrow
+    the forcible words of Lord Houghton, the written book is
+    there the dead man’s hand, stiff and motionless; whatever
+    savours of vitality is by that alone convicted of heresy and
+    defection.”[182]
+
+The underlying thought in the above passage is evidently comparative.
+The writer is unconsciously drawing a comparison between the two great
+revealed religions of the world, Christianity and Islam, as such.
+But as we are here concerned merely to treat of the performances of
+Islam in West Africa, and of the effect upon the _Negro_, primarily
+of Islam, indirectly of Christianity, it can without hesitancy be
+asserted that what may be partly true in the description given of
+Islam in its relation to mankind as a whole is wholly false as regards
+its influence in West Africa. To the _Negro_ the God of Islam is not
+sterile: Islam is not lifeless. It is a living force, giving to its
+Negro converts, as Mr. Bosworth-Smith says, “an energy, a dignity, and
+a self-respect which is all too rarely found in their pagan or their
+Christian fellow-countrymen.” Individually and collectively the Negro
+has progressed since Islam crossed the desert, and just as to the Negro
+fetishist of the forest and the swamp religious conceptions permeate
+every act, preside over every undertaking and insinuate themselves in
+every incident of his daily existence, so Islam, where it has laid
+permanent hold upon the Negro, claims from him an allegiance entire and
+complete.
+
+We need not seek for proof of this. It is writ large over West
+Africa. Negroes, not by dozens or by scores, but by tens of hundreds,
+traverse thousands of miles on foot from the innermost parts of the
+Mohammedanised Continent; from Senegal, from the Niger Bend, from Bornu,
+from Hausa, from our Coast Colonies of Sierra Leone and Lagos, to perform
+the Haj, the sacred journey to Mecca, which every true believer should
+accomplish at least once in his life. A clergyman belonging to the
+Church Missionary Society, writing from Tripoli,[183] recently spoke
+of “a ceaseless stream of Hausa pilgrims continually passing through
+Tripoli on the way to Mecca after a wearisome tramp across the desert,”
+a significant admission from such a source. This “ceaseless stream” is
+not confined to Hausa. It flows from all parts of Western Africa. It has
+flowed thus for many centuries, and the volume, far from diminishing,
+increases. That is not the sign of sterility. Burton, during his stay in
+Mecca, was witness of the extraordinary influence wielded by Islam on the
+Negro mind. The case, as he remarks, was not an exceptional one.
+
+    “Late in the evening,” he says, “I saw a negro in the
+    state called Malbus—religious frenzy. To all appearance a
+    Takruri,[184] he was a fine and powerful man, as the numbers
+    required to hold him testified. He threw his arms wildly about
+    him, uttering shrill cries, which sounded like _le le le le_,
+    and, when held, he swayed his body and waved his head from side
+    to side like a chained and furious elephant, straining out the
+    deepest groans. The Africans appear unusually subject to this
+    nervous state, which, seen by the ignorant and the imaginative,
+    would at once suggest ‘demoniacal possession.’ Either their
+    organisation is more impressionable or, more probably, the
+    hardships, privations, and fatigues endured whilst wearily
+    traversing inhospitable wilds and perilous seas have exalted
+    their imaginations to a pitch bordering upon frenzy. Often they
+    are seen prostrate on the pavement, or clinging to the curtain,
+    or rubbing their foreheads upon the stones, weeping bitterly,
+    and pouring forth the wildest ejaculations.”
+
+Dr. Blyden, speaking of the native Moslems of Sierra Leone, has said,
+“Wherever they go, they take the Koran with them. In a wreck or a fire,
+if nothing else is saved, that book is generally rescued. They prize and
+honour it with extreme reverence and devotion.... I have known them to
+pay as high as five pounds sterling for a Manuscript Koran and think it
+cheap.” One might fill a volume in giving concrete instances, as well as
+general statements founded upon the personal observations of travellers
+in all parts of Western Africa, to prove the inapplicability as concerns
+West Africa of Palgrave’s passage quoted above, a passage which I have
+specially chosen because it represents, unfortunately, what may be called
+“home opinion” on the subject.
+
+It can, no doubt, be said with truth, that the majority of West African
+Mohammedans cannot read Arabic, and that a large proportion of them
+only know the ordinances of the Koran by hearsay; but this, far from
+being an argument against the influence of Islam in West Africa, is but
+an added proof of the grip which Islamic thought has attained over the
+African mind, and of its having supplied the Negro—not through specific
+rules, regulations and ordinances, but in its main conception—with
+something which he required both in a spiritual and material sense. It
+is, moreover, advisable to accept with caution the general statements
+attributing wholesale ignorance of letters to Muslims in West Africa.
+Blyden gives a long list of works which he observed in a Mallam’s house
+in the Sierra Leone hinterland. The _Tarik_ tells us that, not long
+after the introduction of Islam in West Africa, many Negroes rivalled
+their Semitic or Berber teachers in knowledge and erudition. Barth met
+in the wildest parts of Adamawa a Fulani from far-off Massina carrying
+a considerable number of Arabic books as _trade_. Many other instances
+could be given.
+
+Islam in West Africa is, indeed, a living force and a most powerful
+agency “everywhere knitting the conquerors and the conquered into an
+harmonious whole,”[185] and Englishmen must regard it as such. It
+confronts them more particularly in its political aspect in Northern
+Nigeria; and in Sierra Leone, the Gambia, the Gold Coast, Lagos, and to
+a much lesser degree, in Southern Nigeria, in its social aspect. People
+in England appear strangely unacquainted with these facts. West African
+Mohammedanism is presented to them in distorted shape by those who
+have interest in so doing, and to whom the public ear is more readily
+accessible. But the local authorities in the West African Colonies
+realise the state of affairs; and what is more, are rapidly coming to
+the conclusion that the Mohammedan section of the community is not only
+the most orderly and the most progressive, but necessitates, both as a
+matter of duty and of policy, recognition on the part of the Government.
+Within the last few years Mohammedan schools have been established with
+official sanction and support in all our Colonies; a mosque built by the
+late Shitta Bey has been opened at Lagos[186] by the (then) Governor in
+person, and in Sierra Leone a Director of Mohammedan Education has been
+especially appointed at a fixed salary per annum.
+
+As with Great Britain, so with France, but to a very much greater
+degree. France’s African Empire is almost wholly an Islamic one, and
+confining ourselves to that part of it which is properly West African,
+the overwhelming majority of the inhabitants are Muslims. With the
+exception of a small section of Bobos, Diakankes and Bambarras, a larger
+but declining section of the Malinkes and a few wandering Fulani in
+the more remote districts of Barani, Fuladugu, Bobo-Dialassu, &c., the
+whole of the Western Sudan is more or less Muslimised. In the north
+of her colony of Guinea, France has the large Muslim Fulani State of
+Futa-Jallon; in Senegal, Mohammedanism has spread right down to the
+ocean; in the Chad region, in Baghirmi and a considerable distance up
+the Shari, Islam has flourished for at least four centuries, and through
+Fulani cattle-rearers and Hausa traders, the tenets of the Prophet are
+being propagated as far south as the Shari, Sangha and Ubanghi. The
+French have established numerous schools at which the sons of Mohammedan
+chiefs receive instruction on Western lines. Among such schools may be
+mentioned those of Kayes and Medina. Special instructors appointed by
+the French Government teach Arabic side by side with French, and every
+effort is made by France to secure Muslim co-operation on lines of
+Western thought in the great work which she has taken in hand. The French
+African Committee go so far as to print a special bulletin in Arabic,
+which, together with the Arabic newspaper _al Mobacher_, published in
+Algeria, is distributed gratuitously to a large number of influential
+Mohammedans throughout the Western Sudan, especially in such centres as
+Jenne, Timbuctoo, Nioro and Sokolo. Needless to say these publications
+are largely composed of laudatory articles calculated to inspire their
+readers with the justice, generosity, and liberty of French political
+conceptions. The French seem to be adopting in this, as in many other
+respects in West Africa, a very enlightened attitude. At the Kayes
+school, for instance, they have appointed a special teacher from Algeria
+to superintend instruction in the Arabic tongue.[187] Moreover, in
+order to make clear to the Muslim population that their sons can attend
+the Government schools without fear of having to listen to teaching
+conceived in a spirit of hostility or criticism towards Islam, the
+French authorities not only permit but encourage the presence during
+class time of the Muslim schoolmasters themselves, thus removing the
+natural suspicion of Muslim parents, and at the same time making allies
+of the “marabouts.” This line of conduct, it may be added, is especially
+embodied in the instructions given to all District Commissioners.
+
+How comes it that Islam has succeeded with the West African Negro when
+Christianity has fared so badly? Islam has marched from triumph to
+triumph among the Negroes, but of the greatest effort ever put forward
+by the Christian Church in West Africa, that by the Portuguese in the
+Congo in the sixteenth century, there remains little or no trace, and the
+results of more widespread but less consistent (because rent by internal
+differences) efforts of to-day cannot be termed otherwise than profoundly
+discouraging, when one considers the lives expended in a fruitless task;
+pitifully sterile, when one is aware of the large sums that have been,
+and continue to be, spent in the attempt. It would seem as though the
+failure of the Christian Church in North Africa, and the failure of Roman
+Catholicism in South West Africa, in the sixteenth century, were to be
+repeated in these later days by the multifarious sects and denominations
+the monotony of whose painful struggles to gain a foothold on the western
+shores of the unfathomable continent is only varied by the jealousies and
+recriminations which they indulge in towards one another.
+
+The Protestant churchman is wont to ascribe the failure of Christian
+propaganda in South-Western Africa in the sixteenth century to Roman
+Catholicism, which to him is the embodiment of an evil little if at all
+removed from the evil of Islamic doctrine.[188] I have heard English
+and French Roman Catholics attribute it to the inherent incapacity, or
+weakness, or corruptibility—according to the particular views of the
+individual—of the would-be converters, the Portuguese. Persons devoid of
+special religious prejudices are sometimes inclined to argue that the
+mere fact of the slave trade being in existence contemporaneously was in
+itself sufficient to account for it. Upon examination none of these views
+appear very conclusive. Protestantism has not fared better in West Africa
+than Roman Catholicism. Indeed, it may be doubted whether it has fared,
+on the whole, quite as well. No argument worthy of serious attention has
+been adduced to prove the exceptional unfitness of Portuguese prelates to
+successfully accomplish the task they had begun, nor does the decline
+of the political influence of Portugal in West Africa provide a fitting
+explanation, because the flimsy nature of the first apparent successes
+of the Roman Catholic Church had become evident before that decline took
+place. As for the alleged slave-trade deterrent, it was, contradictory as
+the statement may appear, probably no deterrent at all, but rather the
+reverse; for the policy of the Portuguese consisted in promoting friendly
+relations with the more powerful potentates of the littoral, and in
+supplying them with guns and gunpowder to make war on the inland tribes.
+The latter, and not the coastwise natives, were, in the main, the chief
+sufferers by the slave trade; and the coast people, being guaranteed from
+molestation, would have no occasion to invoke the miseries inflicted upon
+them by the Portuguese traffickers in human flesh, when approached by the
+Portuguese inculcators of Christianity. In fact, if the political acts
+of professing Christian nations in West Africa are to be considered as a
+factor in the measure of success, or failure of Christian propagandism
+in West Africa—a debatable proposition upon which I propose to refer
+later on—it may without hesitation be affirmed that recent developments
+of European policy have done more to prejudice the natives against the
+doctrines of Christianity, as propounded by European teachers, than the
+slave trade with all its savagery and horrors.
+
+[Illustration: A SUSU MALLAM]
+
+We must go deeper than this, and in doing so try and clear our minds
+of preconceived opinions, no easy matter when certain errors have
+been so persistently dinned into our ears that they have come to be
+regarded as cardinal articles of faith; and those who in this respect
+occasionally venture to disturb the serenity of our convictions are
+looked upon as outside the pale of respectable society. One of such
+preconceived opinions is embodied in the quotation from Palgrave’s
+“Arabia” already commented upon. Another bears on the nature of Islamic
+proselytism in West Africa. It is an ingrained belief with most people
+that Mohammedanism in West Africa has ever been propagated by brute
+force; is ever and always associated with “slave-raiding.” The mere
+epithet of “slave-raiders” applied in Reuter’s telegrams to a tribe
+with whom trouble has occurred, is sufficient to justify in the eyes
+of the public any expeditions of a punitive kind which the authorities
+in their wisdom think fit to organise, against those who have incurred
+the displeasure of a District Commissioner or Military Commandant. Far
+be it from me to assert that occasions do not arise when the adoption
+of punitive undertakings is not only an unavoidable necessity, but a
+positive duty owed by the Suzerain Power to its protected subjects. But
+I would venture respectfully to suggest that the term “slave-raiding” is
+much abused, not a little distorted, and sometimes most unfairly applied.
+It is used almost exclusively in connection with Mohammedan tribes. When
+a difference comes about with pagans, we are told that it is caused by a
+predilection to human sacrifices. A reference to the frequent collisions
+which have taken place between Great Britain and the natives of Western
+Africa during the last six years will show that, either as a primary or
+an accessory cause of the difficulty, human sacrifices are invariably
+given in the case of a pagan community and slave-raiding in the case of a
+Mohammedan community.
+
+There could be no greater error than the prevalent idea that in West
+Africa, Islam has attained its remarkable successes _manu militari_. Most
+of Islam’s triumphs in West Africa have been won by the peaceful sect
+of the Quadriyah, founded by Sidi-Abd-el-Kader-el-Jieari in 1077 A.D.,
+first introduced into West Africa in the fifteenth century; and the work
+accomplished by this sect has been more enduring and more widespread
+than that of the other great order in West Africa, the Tijaniyah, which
+believes primarily in the sword as a means of conversion.
+
+    “In the beginning[189] of the present century[190] the great
+    revival which was so profoundly influencing the Mohammedan
+    world stirred up the Quadriyah of the Sahara and Western
+    Sudan to renewed life and energy, and before long learned
+    theologians or small colonies of persons affiliated to the
+    order were to be found, scattered throughout the Sudan,
+    on the mountain chain that runs along the coast of Guinea,
+    and even to the west of it, in the Free State of Liberia.
+    These initiates formed centres of Islamic influence in the
+    midst of the pagan population, among whom they received a
+    welcome as public scribes, legists, writers of amulets, and
+    schoolmasters; gradually they would acquire influence over
+    their new surroundings, and isolated cases of conversion would
+    soon grow into a little band of converts, the most promising
+    of whom would often be sent to complete their studies at the
+    chief centre of the order; here they might remain for several
+    years, until they had perfected their theological studies, and
+    would then return to their native place, fully equipped for the
+    work of spreading the faith among their fellow-countrymen. In
+    this way a leaven has been introduced into the midst of fetish
+    worshippers and idolaters which has gradually spread the faith
+    of Islam surely and steadily, though by almost imperceptible
+    degrees. Up to the middle of the present century[191] in the
+    Sudan, schools were founded and conducted by teachers trained
+    under the auspices of the Quadriyah, and their organisation
+    provided for a regular and continued system of propaganda among
+    the heathen tribes. The missionary work of this order has been
+    entirely of a peaceful character, and has relied wholly upon
+    personal example and precept, on the influence of a teacher
+    over his pupils, and the spread of education.”
+
+The Quadriyah order, moreover, is not animated by hostility towards
+Christians, in which it differs materially from that of the Tijaniyah.
+The French find it advisable to co-operate politically with the former
+sect. “It is,” writes Captain Morrison in the interesting report already
+alluded to, “our business to see that the Negroes, Moors, Tuaregs and
+other inhabitants of the Western Sudan should become more affiliated to
+the Quadriyah (Kadria). It is, thanks to the spirit with which the Imam
+of Lanfiera inspires his adepts, that friendship and protection have been
+granted to all our explorers in that region.” M. le Commandant Binger
+thus describes the work of Quadriyah Muslims in the important city and
+country of Kong, in the hinterland of the Ivory Coast, which he was the
+first to discover and bring to the notice of Europe:
+
+    “A hundred years ago, the influence of the Muslim community of
+    Kong did not extend beyond a few miles of the city. Surrounded
+    on all sides by pagan tribes who existed by rapine and
+    brigandage, the people of Kong could not carry on trade and
+    dispose of their cotton goods without great loss, consequent
+    upon the exorbitant taxes imposed by the pagan kinglets,
+    non-payment of which involved the pillage of caravans. What did
+    the Muslims do? They established Mohammedan families from Kong
+    in all the villages situated between Kong and Bobo-Dialassu
+    first, and between Kong and Jenne afterwards. It took them
+    fifty years to settle one or two families in each village.
+    Each of these immigrants organised a school, asked some of
+    the inhabitants to send their children there, then little by
+    little, through their relations with Kong and other commercial
+    centres, they were able to render service to the pagan king of
+    the country, to gain his confidence, and gradually to take part
+    in his affairs. If a difficulty arises it is always a Muslim
+    who is appealed to. Even if he be quite alone in the country,
+    the king will empower him to negotiate, because he is usually
+    able to read and write and has the reputation of being a good
+    and holy man. If the Muslim ambassador fails in his mission, he
+    proposes to the pagan king that the mediation of the people of
+    Kong shall be invoked. Thus the country becomes placed under
+    the protection of the Mohammedan States of Kong. Gradually
+    Islam makes progress. More Muslim families settle among the
+    pagans, who do not fail to become converts. The latter quickly
+    recognise that the one means of finding aid and protection
+    wherever their travels may lead them lies in the adoption of
+    Islam.[192] Moreover, have not the pagans a significant example
+    before them? Do not the Muslims live in comparative ease and
+    comfort? The pagan, while acknowledging that it is commerce and
+    industry that render Mohammedans prosperous, attributes much
+    of that prosperity to the Supreme Being, and the Muslim takes
+    care to point the moral, ‘God wills it thus.’ It is clearly
+    apparent from the above that the Islamic propaganda of Kong is
+    carried on by persuasion. Force is but rarely employed, and
+    only against pagan peoples composed of thieves and brigands,
+    and when the Kong Mussulmans are driven to make use of it.”[193]
+
+The practices of the Kong people in this respect are not at all peculiar
+to themselves. We find the same procedure mentioned by Thomson, Barth,
+and numerous other explorers; and the influence of Islam among the Hausas
+could never have been maintained if to the early conquests of Othman
+Fodio had not succeeded the peaceful efforts of the Muslim teacher,
+schoolmaster and priest. Dr. Blyden once described to the writer the
+incidents relating to the conversion of one of the largest pagan towns in
+the Sierra Leone hinterland, the knowledge of which he gleaned from the
+inhabitants themselves in the course of his travels in the Protectorate.
+On a certain day the inhabitants of the town observed a man, black like
+themselves, but clad in a white garment, advancing down the main street.
+Suddenly the stranger prostrated himself and prayed to Allah. The natives
+stoned him and he departed. In a little while he returned, and prostrated
+himself as before. This time he was not stoned, but the people gathered
+about him with mockery and reviling. The men spat upon him and the women
+hurled insults and abuse. His prayer ended, the stranger went away in
+silence, grave and austere, seemingly oblivious to his unsympathetic
+surroundings. For a space he did not renew his visit, and in the interval
+the people began to regret their rudeness. The demeanour of the stranger
+under trying circumstances had gained their respect. A third time he
+came, and with him two boys also clothed in white garments. Together they
+knelt and offered prayer. The natives watched, and forbore to jeer. At
+the conclusion of the prayer a woman came timidly forward and pushed her
+young son towards the holy man, then as rapidly retreated. The Muslim
+rose, took the boy by the hand and, followed by his acolytes, left the
+village in silence as before. When he came again he was accompanied by
+three boys, two of them those who had been with him before, and the third
+the woman’s son, clad like the rest. All four fell upon their knees,
+the holy man reciting the prayer in a voice that spoke of triumph and
+success. He never left the town again, for the people crowded round
+him beseeching him to teach their children. In a short time the entire
+population of that town, which for three centuries had beaten back the
+assaults of would-be Muslim converters by the sword, had voluntarily
+embraced Islam!
+
+It is in incidents such as these, which are by no means rare in West
+Africa, that the moral force of Islam lies, and which is largely
+accountable for its astonishing successes. The fanatical zeal of an
+Ahmadu, a Samory and an El-Haji-Omar are but drops in the ocean compared
+with the systematic moral suasion exercised by Islamic teachers, who,
+carrying no staff or scrip, relying solely upon the inward strength
+derived from contact with a higher creed, brave the perils and
+discomforts incidental to their calling with a sublime indifference only
+met with in Biblical narrative. There is a passage in Arnold’s “The
+Preaching of Islam” which accurately interprets the misconceptions which
+exist on the subject of Islamic propaganda in West Africa:
+
+    “Unfortunately,” says that author, “for a true estimate of the
+    missionary work of Islam in Western Africa, the fame of the
+    _jihads_, or religious wars, has thrown into the shade the
+    successes of the peaceful propagandist, though the labours of
+    the latter have been more effectual to the spread of Islam
+    than the creation of petty short-lived dynasties. The records
+    of campaigns, especially when they have interfered with the
+    commercial projects or schemes of conquest of the white man,
+    have naturally attracted the attention of Europeans more
+    than the unobtrusive labours of the Mohammedan preacher and
+    schoolmaster.... These _jihads_, rightly looked upon, are but
+    incidents in the modern Islamic revival, and are by no means
+    characteristic of the forces and activities that have been
+    really operative in the promulgation of Islam in West Africa;
+    indeed, unless followed up by distinctly missionary efforts,
+    they would have proved almost wholly ineffectual in the
+    creation of a true Muslim community.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA
+
+
+Being now perhaps in a somewhat more open frame of mind with regard to
+the work of Islam in West Africa, we may attempt to investigate the
+methods of Islam and the methods of Christianity in their relationship to
+the Negro. In this manner we may hope to come to still closer quarters
+with the subject, and by so doing arrive at a tolerably clear impression
+of its various phases. Why does Africa, which was, as has been truly
+said, “the nursing mother of Christianity,” remain impervious to the
+teachings of the highest religion? Why does Christianity, which has
+laboured for so many centuries in Western Africa, make no appreciable
+advance in that country? The failure may, I think, be ascribed to four
+main causes: first, the refusal to admit that the circumstances which
+regulate certain natural laws vary with climatic considerations and
+racial idiosyncrasies; secondly, the tendency which Christianity, as
+taught in West Africa, has to denationalise; thirdly, the incompatibility
+between the ideals of Christ and modern conceptions of Christianity;
+fourthly, the political action of Christian Powers.
+
+For obvious reasons the question of polygamy is a very difficult one
+to publicly discuss, but the subject of Christianity and Mohammedanism
+in Western Africa cannot adequately be treated without referring to
+it. It is no use shutting our eyes to the fact that the refusal of the
+Christian Church to admit polygamists into its fold is one of the great
+obstacles with which the Church in West Africa has to contend. That is
+not seriously disputed, and yet, so far as can be observed, the chief
+dignitaries of the Church with whom all decisions affecting missionary
+enterprise in West Africa must ultimately lie, give no sign that they
+realise the paramount importance of the problem. Now and again individual
+utterances are made, which tend to show that some Churchmen, at least,
+are possessed of a spirit sufficiently broad to approach the subject in
+more practical fashion. A well-known Canon of the Church once remarked
+that, “owing to polygamy, Mohammedan countries are free from professional
+outcasts, a greater reproach to Christianity than polygamy to Islam.”
+Although the first part of that statement may not be accepted _ad
+literatim_, there are, unfortunately, sufficient data to show that the
+morals of Mohammedan communities in West Africa are higher than those of
+the Europeanised West Coast towns, where alone Christianity has gained a
+sort of foothold, and where a monogamous Christianity has been preached
+off and on for centuries past. And it is, at any rate, true that in West
+Africa the Mohammedan is, as a rule, distinctly averse to relationship
+with public women; and also, as a rule, jealously guards the honour of
+his wives and daughters.
+
+Let us consider for a moment how this refusal on the part of the Church
+to receive polygamists appeals to the Negro in relation to Christianity.
+If there is one social feature of the Negro which all observers are
+agreed in recognising, it is the sincerity and depth of the link between
+mother and son.[194] With what sort of feelings, then, must the Negro
+look upon a religion which, according to its expounders, brands his
+parents with immorality? In very truth, whether we approach this great
+subject from a standpoint of common sense and severe practicability,
+or whether we claim to study it on moral grounds alone, only one
+conclusion can be arrived at. To offer Christianity to the Negro at
+the price of repudiating the members of his household is unreasonable,
+preposterous, unjust, and even cruel. It is unreasonable, insomuch as
+it ignores the most fundamental laws of human affection which exist in
+more or less developed form in every community and under every clime.
+It is preposterous, because it displays an extraordinary ignorance
+of the customs of the Negro and the strength of the family tie, and
+all that appertains to it among the Negroes. It is unjust, because it
+would deprive the rejected women (and children) of all they possess,
+cover them with shame and obloquy, thus deliberately inciting them to
+lead immoral lives. It is cruel, because, with an entire inconsequence
+and heedlessness of after effects, it would break up a social system
+consecrated by immemorial usage. There is a noble passage in Faidherbe’s
+great work which I cannot refrain from quoting in this connection:
+
+    “Certain people,” said that distinguished Frenchman, “would
+    seem to desire that the natives should be induced to repudiate
+    their wives and to retain but one. This method appears to me
+    to be thoroughly immoral. What! Our object is to strengthen
+    family ties, and we would begin by disorganising the family! We
+    should commit a great injustice, and we should be displaying
+    a singular callousness towards the women and children, if we
+    professed to grant to the native the title and privileges of a
+    citizen on the condition that he kept one wife and expelled the
+    others. We should place venerable fathers of families in the
+    position of sending away, with their children, wives with whom
+    they had lived for fifteen, twenty, or thirty years. And how
+    would they distinguish between their wives?... Disorganisation
+    would be complete.”[195]
+
+There is another aspect of the question which cannot fail to arrest the
+attention of all enlightened and truly Christian men. Is polygamy a
+necessary institution on physical grounds for the Negro _in Africa_? The
+evidence in a corroborative sense is not to be lightly dismissed. Without
+stopping to discuss the generally admitted theory that the sexual side of
+man’s nature becomes more pronounced as the tropical zone is approached,
+it is incontestable that a well-grounded belief exists in West African
+educated native circles that the effects of monogamy upon the Negro _are
+racially destructive_. Dr. Blyden’s testimony in this respect may not,
+perhaps, command universal acknowledgment, but the following passage
+from his writings is well worthy of note:
+
+    “Owing,” he says, “to the exhausting climatic conditions, the
+    life and perpetuity of the population depend upon polygamy.
+    The difference is marked between children born under monogamic
+    restrictions and those whose parents are polygamists. In the
+    one there is the evidence of physical deterioration and mental
+    weakness; in the other are manifest physical vigour and mental
+    activity and alertness. In the one there is the sad evidence
+    of arrested growth, suppressed physical development, and
+    intellectual sluggishness; in the other there is astonishing
+    muscular strength and fully developed chest—a reproduction of
+    their fathers’—not weaker, but wiser than their fathers’, when
+    not diverted from aboriginal simplicity by alien influence.”
+
+The exhausting climatic conditions of which Doctor Blyden speaks is
+accountable for a custom, almost universal throughout West Africa, among
+both Mohammedans and pagans; which, although it may have some drawbacks
+attaching to it, must nevertheless be assumed to entail preponderating
+advantages for the racial welfare of the people, or it would hardly have
+been so widely adopted. I refer, of course, to the extensive period of
+lactation—three years as a rule—during which time husband and wife have
+no connection; connection, indeed, generally ceasing when conception has
+taken place. The custom is attributive to the belief that too frequent
+child-bearing is injurious to the health of the mother and the offspring,
+in view of the climate.[196] This is a point which also deserves the
+most attentive consideration. The instinct of primitive peoples in such
+matters is generally found to be based upon knowledge born of experience.
+The only portion of the Dark Continent where orthodox Christianity has
+made any appreciable inroad is Uganda. Now what does Sir Harry Johnston
+tell us in his last report? He says there is a serious decrease in the
+birth-rate of the Bantu Waganda. He quotes Monseigneur Strachir’s opinion
+that one of the causes of this state of affairs is the introduction of
+monogamy, consequent upon the spread of the Christian faith.
+
+    “In many parts of West Africa,” continues Sir Harry Johnston,
+    “where Christianity prevails, but where there is very little
+    result other than pious utterances from the mouth, ostensible
+    monogamy is corrected by the possession of recognised or
+    unrecognised concubines, and by a general promiscuousness in
+    sexual matters. But in Uganda, Christianity seems to have taken
+    such a real hold upon the people that, though by no means free
+    from immorality—as no nation or community is free from the same
+    tendency—they really seem to be striving at genuine monogamy
+    and the exclusive possession of one wife for a partner. As the
+    Baganda women are certainly very poor breeders, this means that
+    the majority of couples only have one child. In fact, the birth
+    of a second child on the part of the wife is such an unusual
+    occurrence that the wife, in consequence thereof, is given a
+    new and honorific title.”
+
+A Liberian Bishop—one of the kindliest of men—to whom I showed the
+above passage, replied sententiously that the ways of the Almighty were
+unfathomable, but that the disappearance of the few could not be held to
+weigh in the balance as compared with the salvation of the many; which
+seemed to me to bear a curious analogy to that passage in “Azurara”
+in which the old Portuguese historian, apostrophising Prince Henry
+the Navigator on the occasion of the first appearance at his court of
+West African slaves, torn with every accompaniment of barbarity from
+their homes by those gallant knights Antam Gonçalvez and Nuno Tristram,
+exclaims:
+
+    “O holy Prince, peradventure thy pleasure and delight might
+    have some semblance of covetousness at receiving the knowledge
+    of such a sum of riches, even as great as those thou didst
+    expend to arrive at that result?... But thy joy was solely
+    from that one holy purpose of thine to seek salvation for the
+    lost souls of the heathen. And in the light of this it seemed
+    to thee, when thou sawest those captives brought into thy
+    presence, that the expense and trouble thou hadst undergone
+    was nothing: such was thy pleasure at beholding them. And yet
+    the greater benefit was theirs, for though their bodies were
+    now brought into some subjection, that was a small matter in
+    comparison with their souls, which would now possess true
+    freedom for evermore.”
+
+I hope it will not be thought that these references are made with any
+idea of depreciating the efforts, and in some respects surprisingly
+successful efforts, of Christian propaganda among the Bantu races of the
+Uganda Protectorate. The point under discussion is not the evangelising
+success of the Church in Uganda, but the physical effects of a monogamous
+Christianity upon the races of Africa.
+
+[Illustration: FULANI MALLAM]
+
+I have been at great pains to obtain all the evidence available bearing
+directly or indirectly on this subject, and in the aggregate it bears out
+what precedes. The highest type of the Christian educated Negro urges
+that an entire latitude should be left to the aboriginal element in the
+matter, and although professing monogamists themselves, they strictly
+maintain—whether rightly or wrongly is not for the layman to decide—that
+in so doing the Church would not be acting contrary to the principles of
+divine revelation.[197]
+
+I have given as the second contributory cause of the non-success of
+Christian missions in West Africa the tendency to denationalisation.
+It is unhappily true that the Christianised Negro becomes to a large
+extent denationalised, and the reason of it lies in the methods employed
+to convert him. Islam, on the other hand, not only encourages the
+spirit of nationality in the African, but intensifies it. The Muslim
+Negro is elevated among his pagan neighbours; he gains their respect
+and increases his own. Islam takes the Negro by the hand and gives him
+equality with all men. From the day the pagan adopts Islam, no Semite
+Muslim can claim racial superiority over him. Islam to the Negro is the
+stepping-stone to a higher conception of existence, inspiring in his
+breast confidence in his own destiny, imbuing his spirit with a robust
+faith in himself and in his race. Christianity does not do this for the
+Negro. Its effect, indeed, is quite contrary. Instead of encouraging, it
+discourages. Instead of inculcating a greater self-reliance, it seems
+to lessen that which exists. The Christian Negro for the most part is
+a sort of hybrid. He is neither one thing nor another. His adoption of
+European clothes causes him to be looked upon partly with suspicion,
+partly with ridicule, by his pagan fellow-countrymen; although they make
+use of his services as clerk or secretary when occasion requires it.
+Mohammedans treat him with undisguised contempt. More bitter perhaps
+than anything else is the scorn which Europeans themselves bestow upon
+him. Question any white official, military man, trader or traveller, as
+to his impressions of the West African native. He will tell you that the
+pagan native of the interior is more often than not a fine fellow, one
+of nature’s gentlemen, hospitable, kindly, simple, courteous; that the
+Mohammedan native is a splendid man, with a carriage full of pride and
+self-reliance, arrogant may be, haughty, but singularly dignified, with
+a conscious superiority and quiet confidence stamped all over him. But
+the Christian Negro is seldom spoken of without opprobrium. His vanity,
+his conceit, his “veneer of civilisation,” the vices he has acquired and
+so forth, are the inevitable theme. His unfortunate habit of adopting
+the latest vagaries of European fashions, both in his own person and in
+the person of his women folk, is the butt of constant sarcasm, as are
+the accounts of the solemnisation of the Christian form of marriage in
+a native West Coast town. Even the missionaries are compelled, although
+with natural unwillingness, to admit an unpalatable fact. “There are a
+great many natives on the coast and in Lower Nigeria,” writes Canon
+Robinson, “who call themselves Christian; there are distressingly
+few converts.... My advice to travellers on the coast in search of
+trustworthy servants would be to prefer the heathen or Mohammedan to the
+professing Christian, because a bad religion sincerely accepted, or even
+no religion at all, is to be preferred to a religious profession which
+is only a sham.” A humiliating confession, humiliating to the Christian
+Church, humiliating to European civilisation. What between one thing
+and another, the Christianised Negro is a _déclassé_, a _culotté sans
+culottes_.[198] Of course there are exceptions, but they are relatively
+scarce, and consist in the main of natives who have acquired wealth by
+commerce (wealth being a safeguard to open obloquy all the world over, no
+matter what the colour of the possessor’s skin), and who either through
+the enjoyment of special educational advantages, or because they are men
+of unusually high character and intelligence naturally, have succeeded
+in grasping the true Christian ideal and have gained moral and spiritual
+ennoblement thereby. It is my privilege to number such a man among my
+friends. But I greatly doubt whether he would feel at ease in travelling
+or sojourning alone in the interior, even among the tribe to which he
+belongs, in his own country of origin. There seems to be a barrier
+between the Christianised Negro and his non-Christian countrymen; a
+barrier which excludes sympathy, and which European policy tends to still
+further accentuate.
+
+To what are these things due? To no one particular circumstance, but to
+a whole set of circumstances, which together produce the effect. To the
+general, omnipresent suggestion—possibly quite unintentioned in many
+cases—of the Negro’s inherent racial inferiority, inculcated by European
+missionaries. To the never absent, one might say inevitable insistence,
+whether outspoken or only understood, upon a great intellectual, social,
+moral gulf which yawns between the Negro and his Caucasian instructor; a
+gulf that can never be bridged by Christianity, as taught in West Africa
+by Europeans.
+
+The third and fourth contributory causes, viz. incompatibility between
+the ideals of Christ and the modern conceptions of Christianity, and
+the political action of Christian Powers, may be treated together, for
+they are closely allied one to the other; as, indeed, they also are to
+the third cause, upon which I have briefly touched. There is a striking
+passage in the last literary contribution on West African affairs,
+penned by Miss Kingsley on that fatal voyage to the Cape, which puts in
+more pregnant language than I could hope to do the underlying thought
+expressed above:
+
+    “I know,” wrote Miss Kingsley, “that there is a general opinion
+    among the leading men of both races that Christianity will
+    give the one possible solution to the whole problem. I fail to
+    be able to believe this. I fail to believe Christianity will
+    bring peace between the two races, for the simple reason that,
+    though it may be possible to convert Africans _en masse_ into
+    practical Christians, it is quite impossible to convert the
+    Europeans _en masse_ to it. You have only got to look at the
+    history of any European nation—the Dutch, the Spanish, the
+    Italian, the German—every one calling themselves Christian, but
+    none the more for that tolerant and peaceable. Each one of them
+    is ready to take out a patent for a road to heaven, and make
+    that road out of men’s blood and bones and the ashes of burnt
+    homesteads. Of course, by doing this they are not following the
+    true teachings of Jesus Christ, but that has not, and will not,
+    become a factor in politics.”
+
+The bewildering contradictions between the ideals laid down by Christ,
+as taught by the expounders of his word, and the practical effect of
+that teaching as exemplified in the conduct of Europeans and European
+Governments, confronts the Negro at every turn. The more intelligent he
+is, the more advanced in the social scale, the more puzzling does it
+become. Is it a question of charity? The Muslim propagandist speaks of
+Christ with deep respect amounting to reverence. He is _Kalima_—the Word;
+_Masih_—the Messiah; _Qual-ul-Haqq_—the Word of Truth; _Ruh_—the Spirit
+(of God). He is “One illustrious in this world and in the next”: “One who
+has near access to God.” The Christian missionary speaks of Mohammed “as
+an impostor;” “an arch impostor;” “a man full of evil and wickedness.”
+Islam is a “bad religion”: “its ways are the ways of darkness”: “it is
+Satan’s work,” and so on. Is it a question of self-abnegation? The Bible
+and the Koran utter the same precepts in almost identical terms. But what
+a difference in the spiritual practice of their respective expounders
+in West Africa! The Muslim preacher follows out the letter of his book.
+He goes on his way alone and unattended, carrying neither purse nor
+scrip. He lives the life of the Negro, enters into his pursuits, shares
+his hardships and his pleasures, assimilates himself in every possible
+way with those whom he hopes to convert. The European missionary is
+compelled, by the exigencies of the climate very greatly, to attend
+primarily to his own comforts. He travels with a long file of carriers
+bearing his baggage; preserved foods, linen, camp impedimenta and what
+not. Some of the most earnest missionaries keenly realise the drawbacks
+which such procedure must entail in the prosecution of their work, both
+physically and morally. They are deeply sensible of the adverse influence
+which it cannot fail to exercise over their labours. We have seen an
+English prelate, high up in the hierarchy of his Church, suggest a
+decrease in his salary, in order that the balance might be devoted to the
+appointment of another helper in the great cause.[199] On the other hand,
+we find in the works and letters of prominent missionaries engaged in the
+West African field, egotistical essays of the following description:
+“Care must be taken that the waterproof cloak is _stitched_. Sponges,
+bath-towels, &c., will suggest themselves. Do not forget the table-linen;
+a neatly arranged table helps to tempt the appetite, which is often
+fastidious. Antibilious compounds are worth in my judgment _two guineas_
+a box.” The above passage is derived from a book recently published,
+written by a missionary with nine years’ experience in West Africa. The
+articles mentioned by the writer are recommended by him as indispensable
+to the welfare of a teacher of the Gospel in West Africa. The following
+is a typical passage culled from the epistolary effusions published from
+time to time in the organ of the Church Missionary Society from the pen
+of a most energetic Bishop, who has been endeavouring with singular
+ill-success, and not without some danger of arousing disturbances, to
+evangelise the Hausas. “We are all well.... Our appetites are enormous.
+We have plenty of food. We receive presents of food from the people every
+day—rice, onions, corn, maize, fowls, bananas, &c. B—— shoots a good many
+partridges and guinea-fowl, and we have a good reserve of European and
+English stores.” That these little peculiarities do not in the slightest
+degree detract from the sincerity of the writers may be accepted without
+reserve. All we are here concerned with, is to consider the general
+effect which these conceptions of the methods of propagating Christianity
+in West Africa are likely to have upon the African. Are men who profess
+so tender a regard for their well-being calculated to make much headway
+in an evangelical sense? It may reasonably be doubted.
+
+Is it a question of vice? The Mohammedan preacher does not leave a
+stone unturned to combat drunkenness in every form, and to a very
+large extent he succeeds. The sobriety of the great mass of Muslimised
+Negroes no longer requires to be demonstrated. Laxity in this respect
+is the exception which proves the rule. The European missionary also
+denounces drunkenness, and with a fervour at times which is not always
+discriminating. But he is terribly handicapped (1) by the European
+trader, about one-fifth of whose total trade consists in the importation
+of freshly distilled liquor, often but not invariably containing various
+impurities, and in quality not exceeding that which is sold in low
+public-houses in this country, and which freely mixed with water may
+not be very injurious, but drunk neat, as for the most part it is, in
+the _coastal_ regions of West Africa, is—we have overwhelming testimony
+to that effect—harmful;[200] (2) by the European Governments who,
+although they do now and again raise the duty on spirits in deference to
+public opinion, tacitly encourage a traffic without which their whole
+administrative machinery would become temporarily paralysed, seeing
+that from 45 per cent. to 75 per cent. of the revenue of their Colonies
+is derived from this traffic. These circumstances may, or may not, be
+preventable. They exist, and cannot be ignored. As for another kind of
+vice; the life lived by many white men in West Africa is not, perhaps,
+calculated to give the Negro a high idea of the morality of Christian
+Europe. His occasional visits to Europeanised coast towns—presuming him
+to be living some distance in the interior—do not probably imbue him
+with the notion that his trousered countrymen are the gainers in moral
+ethics, through contact with European civilisation; nor, unhappily, can
+it be said that the tales and personal experiences related by those of
+his educated brothers who visit our great cities are of a kind to lessen
+the impression he may already have formed as to the results of twenty
+centuries of Christianity in Europe.[201]
+
+Is it a question of gauging the true inwardness of the doctrine of peace
+and love? It is to be feared that the political aims of European Powers
+in West Africa are too often associated with Maxims and Martinis to
+admit of much doubt on that score. The Negro is a shrewd man, and he
+distinguishes professions from actions. The readiness with which the
+white interlopers in his country appeal to the sword as the shortest cut
+to the solution of a misunderstanding is instructive. The hastiness with
+which his habits and customs are trampled upon by his would-be elevators;
+the cheerful alacrity he is expected to show in swallowing innovations
+thrust upon him at what, to his conservative prejudices, appear to him a
+moment’s notice; and, finally, the increasing desire on the part of his
+European friends to appropriate his most precious heritage, his ancestral
+lands, and the fruits thereof, for their own use—all these things,
+whether in fashionable parlance they be the “inevitable” accompaniments
+of opening up West Africa by Western Europe or not, constitute those
+contradictions of which I have already spoken, and whatever else they
+may do, militate against the spread of Christianity in the land of the
+Negroes.
+
+Is there a remedy, and if so, on what lines is it to be sought for?
+There is only one _native_ Christian State in Africa—Abyssinia—and its
+Christianity is declared by eminent divines to be tainted with all
+sorts of heresies and objections. But it has endowed Abyssinia with
+sufficient vitality to enable her to repel Mohammedan invasion for a
+long term of centuries, and the strong religious zeal of Abyssinia’s
+warriors was not a negligible factor in beating back the unjustifiable
+aggression made upon the independence of that country by Italy. To-day
+the Emperor of this African Christian State is, with one exception,
+probably the most powerful native ruler in the world. No doubt, it does
+not enter the heads of European statesmen to encourage the growth of a
+similar State in West Africa; which, indeed, is an obvious impossibility
+for many reasons. Yet Abyssinia provides a moral for the Christian
+Church. The Christianity of Abyssinia is an _African_ Christianity,
+originally taught by an _African_, perpetuated by _Africans_. Orthodox
+or unorthodox, it has shown itself suitable to the necessities and the
+requirements of Africans; and if Christianity in West Africa, is ever
+destined to make appreciable progress, it will be when it is provided
+with its only feasible agent, a West African Church: a Church designed
+to respond to the needs of West Africa, which are not the needs of
+Europe; a Church whose servants shall be neither Europeans nor repatriate
+“Afro-Liberians,” but West African Negroes, imbued with the instincts and
+patriotism of race; a Church founded upon an enlightened acquaintance
+with nature’s immovable laws; upon principles of true science, which is
+true religion; upon a wise recognition that what is good and proper and
+right for one great branch of the human family may be bad, improper, and
+wrong for another.
+
+
+
+
+PART IV
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+ANGLO-FRENCH RELATIONS IN WEST AFRICA
+
+
+The subject of the relationship between England and France in West Africa
+is one to which every year that passes adds importance. The French
+have during the last few years left us far behind in Western Africa,
+so far as territorial expansion is concerned. They have now a great
+Empire there. They have acquired it by dint of persistent, far-sighted,
+courageous effort; qualities which it is regrettable to state have been
+conspicuously lacking on the part of the British official world. If
+a tithe of the energy which has distinguished Liverpool, Manchester,
+Glasgow, and Bristol merchants in Western Africa had been displayed by
+successive British Governments, the possessions of Great Britain in West
+Africa to-day would be infinitely more extensive than they are.
+
+In addition to getting the better of us, in a territorial sense,
+France—whose possessions touch our own at almost every point—is steadily
+becoming a serious commercial competitor. It is with that commercial
+competition that we shall have to reckon in the future to an increasing
+degree. It is of two kinds. There is legitimate competition and unfair
+competition. In either case it behoves us to carefully study its nature
+and consequences; to draw the necessary lessons therefrom; to candidly
+acknowledge in a spirit of tolerant common sense that in many respects
+the cause of its pressing hardly upon us is due to superior management
+on the part of the French; to appeal to the spirit of equity and fair
+play in our neighbours, when, as is the case in some parts of their West
+African possessions at present, British merchants, who have powerfully
+contributed in creating the trade of those very possessions, are getting
+neither fair play nor just treatment; and generally to brace ourselves
+together, realising that in West Africa, as everywhere else, the old
+position of undisputed commercial supremacy which Great Britain was
+able to maintain at one time with very little trouble, can no longer be
+retained unless we shake off our facile opportunism and tackle the new
+conditions in a scientific manner.
+
+Of early French enterprise in Western Africa very little seems to be
+known by the average Englishman; and yet the French were among the very
+first pioneers of Western Africa—probably the very first—before the
+Portuguese, at any rate, by at least 100 years. After the remarkable
+studies recently published in the French African Committee’s journal by
+Commandant Binger, the distinguished chief of the African department of
+the French Colonial Office, there is not, I think, any alternative but
+to accept as conclusive the French claim of being the first Europeans to
+visit the West African coast. Spanish and Genoese navigators; the former
+hailing from Catalonia, the Lancashire of Spain, may possibly have been
+contemporaneous with the French. But, apart from French testimony, it is
+affirmed by eminent Spanish authorities themselves, such as Navarette
+and Viera, that the French preceded their own countrymen. The Canaries
+were discovered by a Genoese of French descent, and with a French name,
+Maloisel to wit, about 1275 A.D. They were also conquered by a Frenchman
+named De Béthancourt in the first years of the fifteenth century. In
+the beginning of the fourteenth the West African coast as far south as
+the Senegal certainly, and Sierra Leone probably, was regularly visited
+by French ships. So much has now been established. Whether French ships
+then pushed south to the Gold Coast is not quite so clear. Personally I
+incline to the belief that this has also been satisfactorily made out,
+and the confirmatory testimony of Villaut-de-Bellefonds no longer stands
+alone.
+
+The paucity of historical and documentary evidence has hitherto been
+the principal objection to the French claim of priority. It has, of
+course, been made the most of by Portuguese historians. But, apart from
+the circumstance that Commandant Binger has now been able to partly
+fill up the gap, and apart from the eminently reasonable explanation
+of Labat that the old records of the port of Dieppe, from whence many
+of the French ships bound to the West Coast started, were destroyed by
+the bombardment of that port in 1694, there is very good reason, to my
+mind, why the Portuguese on the one hand should possess such splendid
+and unique accounts of their early exploits in West Africa from the
+middle of the fifteenth century onwards; and why, on the other hand, the
+French, who arrived on the scene at least a century before them, should
+be so poorly represented in their own national archives. The reason is
+this. The enterprise of Portugal in West Africa—which has so incomparably
+enriched the domain of geographical knowledge—was, from the first, an
+official undertaking. It was conceived by Prince Henry the Navigator,
+one of the most remarkable figures in history, and all the resources
+of the science and literature of the age were invoked by him to give
+to the new epoch of discovery a national and historical permanency,
+which should be the means of reflecting glory for ever on Portuguese
+annals. Very different was the enterprise of the French. It was in no
+sense official, but private. It was undertaken not by renowned knights
+and important personages in kingly service, but by hardy, illiterate,
+independent mariners and merchants of Normandy. The object was not, as in
+the case of the Portuguese, fame, geographical discovery, and religious
+zeal, but trade. The men who fitted out the French ships and sent them
+on their perilous course were Dieppe, Rouen, and Honfleur merchants; and
+the French vessels returned, not with captives forcibly torn from their
+homes with every accompaniment of cruelty in order to convert them to
+a faith of peace, charity, and good-will, but with ivory, spices, and
+gold dust. That was the earliest form of trade in West Africa by the
+people of Western Europe. The slave trade came afterwards. To this day a
+local industry in ivory carving exists at Dieppe, and every one who has
+visited that quaint old seaport has noticed the numerous ivory ornaments
+displayed in the shop windows. If, therefore, the British merchants can
+claim to be the latter-day pioneers of commercial enterprise in West
+Africa; if during the century that has just closed their commercial
+aptitude and initiative gained for them the foremost commercial position
+on the West African littoral, it was French merchants who originally
+led the way. We have too often led the way ourselves in most parts of
+the world to begrudge the French this honour, so far as Western Africa
+is concerned. Rather should it be a bond of respect, the twin sister of
+sympathy between us and our neighbours.
+
+The first recorded instance upon which Englishmen and Frenchmen met off
+the West African coast resulted, curiously enough, in an alliance. It
+happened in this way. One William Towerson, in the course of a voyage to
+Guinea in 1555, being pursued by some Portuguese brigantines, opportunely
+came across a fleet of French ships, with whom he joined company for
+safety. The alliance does not seem to have been a very satisfactory one,
+as it turned out; still, it was an alliance, of sorts. This first meeting
+took place some thirty-five years subsequent to the earliest known
+appearance of an Englishman in West Africa, in the person of one Andrew
+Battel, of Leigh—whether an ancestor of the three old maids of that ilk,
+history sayeth not—who put to sea in a Portuguese slaver, and after
+many extraordinary adventures amongst the natives of Angola, succeeded
+in getting back to his native country. The beginning of the sixteenth
+century marked the awakening of Englishmen to the potentialities of the
+West African trade. It had been preceded by a notable slackening in the
+energies of Normandy merchants. The Hundred Years’ War with England had
+crippled enterprise of any kind in France. The House of Valois was in a
+parlous state. The great war which began in 1337 and continued, with
+occasional breaks of short duration, until the marvellous successes of
+the Maid of Orleans compelled the English to give way, was marked by
+the crushing defeats the French sustained at Crecy and Poitiers at the
+hands of Edward III., and at Agincourt at the hands of Henry V.; and,
+to make use of some quoted words, “The State was reduced to bankruptcy,
+the nobility excited to rebellion, and the mass of the people sunk in
+barbarism.”
+
+No sooner, however, had the victories of Joan of Arc infused new vitality
+into the French, than we find renewed evidence of the enterprise of
+Dieppe and Rouen merchants in West Africa. The revival of that enterprise
+coincides with the entry upon the scene of English merchants: Windham,
+Hawkins of evil memory, Rutter, Baker, and others, and the records bear
+witness to the contemporary presence of French trading vessels on the
+West Coast from Senegal to the Gold Coast. Recent discoveries of old
+manuscripts, dating back to 1574, at Honfleur prove that from that year
+to 1583—a space of nine years—thirty-two French vessels left that port
+alone for West Africa. For some time English and French got on well
+enough on the West Coast. The power of Portugal was fast decaying, and
+adventurers of all nationalities, notably the Dutch, were hurrying to the
+spot. Then came more wars between English and French, with their natural
+effect upon commercial transactions in West Africa. In 1696 the French
+destroyed the British settlement at the mouth of the Gambia. For the
+next hundred years or so relations between the Europeans established or
+trading on the West Coast appear as a tangle of animosities. Every one
+seemed to be fighting his neighbour, and pirates of all nationalities
+attacked every vessel they came across, including those owned or manned
+by men of their own race, even Gambia Castle, garrisoned by a British
+force, being on one occasion captured and sacked by a notorious British
+pirate named Davies, presumably a Welshman! Notwithstanding all this
+dire confusion, the English were gradually getting the upper hand all
+down the coast. In 1794 Sierra Leone was bombarded by a French squadron
+without the authority apparently of the Revolutionary Government then in
+power. Twenty years later, the power of Napoleon having collapsed, all
+that was left to France by the Treaty of Vienna was her settlement on the
+coast of Senegal.
+
+England remained in a preponderating position politically and
+commercially on the West African coast. Such, too, was her position in
+the main until the revival of a French Colonial policy, under the impulse
+of those far-seeing statesmen Gambetta and Jules Ferry in 1883. At any
+period between 1815 and 1883 England had the opportunity of creating an
+extensive Empire in West Africa and annexing practically the whole coast.
+
+And here the curtain rings down on the old _régime_, and a new chapter in
+the history of Anglo-French relationship in West Africa begins.
+
+To whom should be properly attributed the initiation of the scramble for
+Africa? It has been a cause of considerable inconvenience to the Cabinets
+of Europe, and of still greater inconvenience, we may feel tolerably
+certain, to the natives of Africa. Each Power that participated in it
+throws the onus on its neighbour. So far as West Africa is concerned,
+whatever claim or credit may be taken, the French must, I think, be
+held guilty or meritorious, according as individual opinion may differ.
+The scramble in West Africa arose from what, for want of a better
+description, may be termed the discovery by the French of the West
+African hinterlands. When Gambetta and Jules Ferry awoke the slumbering
+colonial instincts of their countrymen, inland West Africa was to all
+intents and purposes a blank. Englishmen and Frenchmen sat on the coast,
+the former doing a large trade and the latter little or none. In two
+places only were organised attempts at interior penetration being made.
+On the Lower Niger, Englishmen were pushing their trade inland. On the
+Senegal, the era of political conquest begun by Faidherbe was being
+slowly developed, despite many difficulties and set-backs. The political
+energies of Great Britain were paralysed by the resolution arrived at in
+1865 to abandon all Government action in West Africa, with the possible
+exception of Sierra Leone. France was still feeling the effects of the
+disasters of 1870.
+
+With the propaganda of Jules Ferry and Gambetta in favour of a policy
+of Colonial expansion, a change came o’er the spirit of the dream as
+regards West Africa. Backed by a strong body of opinion; supported by
+men of note, such as M. Waldeck Rousseau, as he has himself recently
+reminded us, French activity in Western Africa became very pronounced,
+and the work once begun was not abandoned on account of the temporary
+reverses suffered by French arms in Tonquin, which drove Ferry from power
+and broke his heart. French missions, generally of a peaceful character,
+started eastwards and southwards from the Senegal, and northwards from
+the coast, to explore the unknown interior. They reported it to be a
+fairly salubrious, fertile, cereal-producing and cattle-rearing country,
+unobstructed by dense forests such as are met with inland from the West
+Coast proper to a depth varying from sixty to two hundred miles. This
+country was inhabited by intelligent races relatively advanced in the
+scale of civilisation, possessing flourishing industries and commercial
+aptitude. The French found regularly constituted States, more or less
+Muslimised, and in some of which social law and order had reached a high
+stage of development; large towns of 10,000 to 15,000 inhabitants with
+regular market-days, where iron smelting was highly advanced, where the
+natives dressed in handsome clothes of their own manufacture, and used
+leather sandals, sword-belts, and scabbards, despatch-bags, and saddles
+fabricated by themselves. It was a revelation. The chief drawback about
+this vast inland region, which seemed to offer such brilliant prospects
+under able administrative supervision, was its liability to be swept by
+fire and sword at any moment by some over-zealous adherent of a certain
+militant sect of Mohammedans, which enjoyed great influence in the
+Western Sudan. These French agents were generally well received, and by
+their means vast stretches of hitherto unknown country were opened up and
+brought to the knowledge of the world.
+
+Out of these discoveries was born the desire—the very natural and
+legitimate desire—on the part of the French to build up a mighty empire
+in West Africa, a black Indies, which should rival the Indies of the
+East in extent, in wealth, and in the prestige which its acquisition
+would confer. Exploring and semi-political missions were followed by
+expeditions of a definite political character, and district after
+district, State after State, tribe after tribe, came under French
+influence; by peaceful means in the majority of cases. All this time the
+English were doing nothing, in an official sense. Liverpool men were
+calling upon the Government to wake up to what was going on, but their
+efforts were entirely unsuccessful. Wider and wider grew the sweep of the
+French net, closer and closer to our own Colonies, which it threatened to
+throttle in its meshes. Sierra Leone became encircled on three sides by
+French territory; the magnificent country of Futa-Jallon, the Switzerland
+of Western Africa as it has been called, which had been visited at
+various times by agents of the Government of Sierra Leone (notably Dr.
+Blyden), of which it formed the natural hinterland, was acquired by
+France without firing a shot. The Gold Coast, and Lagos, and what is
+now known as Northern Nigeria—whose safety the Convention of 1890 was
+supposed to guarantee—were in imminent danger of sharing a similar fate.
+
+I have often seen it stated, even by authorities of no mean order,
+that the French were permitted or allowed to carry out the great task
+of securing the hinterlands of Western Africa. In point of fact, the
+statement is very misleading and has had a somewhat mischievous effect.
+England was not in a position to allow or disallow. The French conceived
+a plan and carried it out in the face of tremendous obstacles; they were
+prepared to undergo sacrifices which we were not prepared to accept, and
+such being the case, they were answerable to none but themselves. Their
+success and our failure was the due measure of their enterprise and our
+apathy.
+
+When the future of our Colonies appeared thoroughly compromised by the
+cutting off of the interior markets, the British Government suddenly
+realised that Liverpool and Manchester merchants had been clearer-sighted
+than British officialdom, and at the last moment efforts were made to
+secure for the British Colonies such of the hinterlands which remained
+unabsorbed. Then arose a very delicate position, which taxed the
+diplomatic resources of both Powers to the uttermost. British and French
+officers with excitable native troops under their command, remained
+facing one another in the far interior a few hundred yards distance for
+weeks at a time, awaiting instructions from the irrespective Governments.
+To the good sense, tact, and mutual esteem of these officers is due that
+peace was preserved between England and France. We owe a deep debt of
+gratitude to these men, who, suffering from the debilitating effects of
+the West African climate and the hardships attendant upon West African
+travel—neither of which are conducive to sweetness of temper, managed to
+keep their heads. Mainly thanks to them the quarrel was adjusted without
+bloodshed, and the Anglo-French Convention of 1898 was signed. It left
+our Colonies of the Gold Coast and Lagos greatly circumscribed, but
+assured us in “Nigeria” a magnificent territory some 504,000 square miles
+in extent.
+
+The era of territorial rivalry between Great Britain and France in
+Western Africa has, it may be legitimately assumed, quite passed away.
+We continue to be rivals in commercial matters, but that is a peaceful
+rivalry—or should be—which ought not to exclude friendship. Nevertheless,
+as trade questions are often converted into fertile causes of dispute, it
+is essential that Englishmen and Frenchmen, in order to work harmoniously
+together in the future, should thoroughly understand one another’s
+points of view in this connection. We, as a nation, are free traders.
+The French, as a nation, are protectionists. It would be absurd and
+undignified for us to complain of the different economic standpoint
+taken up by our neighbours. Moreover, there are various degrees of
+protectionism in France. There is the extreme school of M. Méline,
+which, if its doctrines were strictly applied to the French West African
+Colonies, would ruin them in five years. There is the school which
+upholds partial protectionism in France, but favours freedom of trade in
+the French Colonies. The latter is happily gaining in strength. We should
+endeavour as far as in us lies to work with the representatives of this
+school. One of the clauses of the 1898 Convention, which caused a great
+outcry in France when it became known, stipulated that no differential
+treatment was to be meted out to British trade throughout a considerable
+part of the French West African possessions for a term of thirty years.
+The following extract, bearing on this subject, from an address read by
+M. Bohn, the head of the largest firm of French West African merchants,
+before the Marseilles Geographical Society, in September 1898, three
+months after the Convention was signed, is interesting:
+
+    “A certain colonial school,” said M. Bohn, “starting from the
+    premise that the only object of colonies is to favour the
+    outlet of goods manufactured in the mother country, demands the
+    application of prohibitive tariffs upon foreign goods imported
+    into our colonies. This system, which contributed so powerfully
+    to lose Spain her finest colonies, flourishes in Gaboon,
+    which is the least prosperous of our colonies, and which only
+    subsists at all by constant grants in aid from the metropolis.
+    These examples are hardly encouraging. On the other hand, we
+    are able to see that those of our colonies which are developing
+    themselves in the most rapid and satisfactory manner are those
+    where no differential tariffs exist.... From that point of view
+    it is certain the Franco-English Convention of June 1898, by
+    abolishing for a period of thirty years all differential duties
+    in the Ivory Coast and Dahomey, has assured for that period the
+    commercial prosperity of these colonies.”
+
+That notable statement and others like it (the truth of which has been
+amply borne out since) show that experienced Frenchmen engaged in the
+West African trade realise, as we do, that a policy of free trade is one
+which in West Africa spells commercial success by the nation which adopts
+it. The existence of such views in France is a very encouraging sign for
+those who firmly believe that trade is the greatest progressive agency
+which can be brought to bear upon the relations between Western Europe
+and Western Africa.
+
+Recent events are proving that a natural community of interests exists
+between British and French merchants in Western Africa; that they will
+have to fight a common foe, the Concessionnaire, and that every action
+calculated to bring them into closer relationship is a step in the right
+direction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+TEN YEARS OF FRENCH ACTION IN WEST AFRICA
+
+
+The history of France’s action in West Africa during the last ten
+years has been so remarkable that it deserves to be recorded in some
+detail, and where possible her policy may be usefully compared with
+our own. On January 23, 1892, the Paris _Figaro_ published a literary
+supplement entitled “Our African Domain,” in which was set forth by
+various competent authorities—amongst whom was Captain Binger;[202]
+Emile Masqueray, the well-known student of Algerian problems; Georges
+Rolland, one of the foremost advocates of the Trans-Saharan Railway; and
+“Harry Alis,” the redoubtable Colonial propagandist, Lord Cromer’s _bête
+noire_, whose tragic end will be in the recollection of many—the past
+achievements, actual position and future aspirations of France in Western
+and Central Africa. The supplement was divided into five parts, entitled
+respectively “Algeria”; “Penetration towards the Chad”; “Senegal and
+Dependencies”; “Our Position on the Gulf of Guinea”; “Congo and Chad.”
+At the time this supplement appeared, the revival of Colonial ambition
+in France, which owed its inception largely to the foresight and courage
+of Jules Ferry, had taken firm root among the _élite_ of French public
+opinion. But although the seed where it fell gave forth lusty fruit, the
+sowers were relatively few, and the area under cultivation was still but
+small in 1892. The Chamber of Deputies was slow to grant fresh credits.
+Politicians as a whole viewed the eloquence of Eugène Etienne and other
+exponents of the Ferry school with ill-disguised nervousness, if not with
+positive apprehension, fearing that the country was being turned from its
+true business of guarding against possible aggression from Germany, and
+was playing into Bismarck’s hands by rushing into Colonial adventures
+which it was known that Bismarck, for his own reasons, was desirous of
+encouraging. No one party or rather group cared to identify itself too
+closely with the expansionists, remembering the whirlwind of popular
+passion which assailed and overwhelmed _le Tonkinois_. On the other hand,
+it was not wise to entirely dissociate one’s self from a movement which
+was steadily gaining a hold over the masses. So Parliament vacillated,
+and, swayed by contrary winds, voted funds one minute and sought to
+withdraw them the next.
+
+The _Figaro’s_ supplement was widely criticised. The schemes it
+elaborated were not merely ambitious, they were gigantic. “Our policy,”
+it argued, “is to make one homogeneous entity of Algeria, Senegal, and
+Congo _viâ_ the Tuareg-Sahara and the Central and Western Sudan.” The
+timid Deputy shuddered at the prospect. What must have been, even to the
+master-minds who initiated the policy, not much more than a fond hope
+strengthened by an unshaken faith in the destiny of the country; what,
+in the eyes of those who opposed it, appeared as a monstrous figment of
+the imagination, is to-day in its main lines a reality! How has it been
+accomplished?
+
+“Our intentions are pure and noble, our cause is just, the future
+cannot fail us,” wrote Faidherbe in 1859, and, on the whole, despite
+errors, despite the effects of temporary reaction coming after acute
+disappointment, despite some individual instances of cruelty and
+oppression, events have justified Faidherbe’s confident declaration.
+The work of France in Africa during the last ten years and more has, in
+the main, been a work of progress tending to benefit the populations
+with whom she has come in contact. Notable exceptions there have been,
+of course, especially during the years 1897 and 1898, when the scramble
+for West Africa was at its height, and under the spell of an insensate
+rivalry deeds were committed by all the parties in the struggle which
+cannot be too strongly condemned. To France’s debit account must be
+placed the ruthless proceedings of Bretonnet in Borgu; the needless
+bloodshed of which Mossi, Kipprisi, and Gurunsi were the scenes; the
+inevitable barbarity which characterised Marchand’s hunt for carriers
+in the Upper Ubanghi and Bahr-el-Ghazal. These incidents in themselves
+are odious and reprehensible; but it is only fair to recognise that they
+were the outcome of international jealousies the responsibility for which
+was collective rather than single, shared in by other Powers as well
+as by France herself. In what may be regarded as France’s own sphere
+of influence, acts have also been perpetrated from time to time which
+call for censure. The punishment meted out to certain towns hostile to
+the French in the Western Sudan have been altogether disproportionate
+to the offence. In the case of the French officers Voulet and Chanoine,
+an incalculable amount of suffering was inflicted upon the unfortunate
+people on the western banks of the Niger. But from these isolated
+transgressions against the principles of humanity, culpable as they have
+been, the records of no European Power in Africa are free; and they
+cannot, in the circumstances of France, be held to negative or even
+weaken the advantages she has undoubtedly conferred upon the population
+of the Western and Central Sudan, nor yet tarnish the great reputation
+France has achieved in the emancipation of millions from centuries of
+tyranny and invasion. If she has had her Voulets and Chanoines, France
+can show in the persons of her De Brazzas, her Bingers, her Monteils,
+her Crozats, her Foureaus, Noirots, Gentils, Hoursts, and Lenfants,
+performances which the subjects of other Powers may have equalled but
+have not surpassed; always excepting Barth, whose moral grandeur towers
+high above that of all his competitors on West African soil.
+
+From the time when the Sieur de Brüe—one of the clearest-headed Frenchmen
+who ever served his country in Africa—paid ceremonious visits to the
+King of Kayor and the “grand Seratik” of the Fulas at the close of the
+seventeenth and at the beginning of the eighteenth century; from the
+time when raiding bands of Trarza Moors, extending their depredations to
+the very confines of St. Louis (1840-60) compelled Faidherbe to take the
+offensive against them, to the present day, it has been the lot of France
+to find herself confronted in West Africa with races differentiating in
+every respect from the true Negro of the coast regions—the people whom
+England had, up to 1900, been chiefly concerned with. Eight years before,
+a certain Select Committee of the House of Commons, frightened at the
+responsibilities England was assuming in West Africa, pusillanimously
+recommended the abandonment of all our settlements except Sierra Leone,
+thus enunciating a policy the evil effects of which continued until
+1895 and greatly limited our footing in West and Central Africa; France
+had just emerged successfully from a death grapple with one of the most
+powerful individuals that ever sprung from African loins, el Haj-Omar,
+the great Tukulor Mallam and warrior. Looking backward at that long
+vista of years, when France was slowly but irresistibly thrusting her
+influence into West Africa, _viâ_ the Senegal and Upper Niger, by pouring
+out her treasure and the blood of her sons like water; while England
+remained supine on the coast heedless of the representations of her
+merchant-pioneers, it was not surprising that, awakening almost too late
+from our lethargy, we should have found the French, having triumphed over
+their obstacles in the north, forging southwards and cutting off our
+rich hinterlands in the interior. Writing to the Marquis of Dufferin in
+1892, Lord Salisbury contrasted the policy of Great Britain and France in
+Western Africa. “France,” wrote Lord Salisbury, “from her basis on the
+Senegal Coast, has pursued steadily the aim of establishing herself on
+the Upper Niger and its affluents.... Great Britain, on the other hand,
+has adopted the policy of advance by commercial enterprise.” There was,
+indeed, on the part of Liverpool, Manchester, and Bristol merchants,
+plenty of “commercial enterprise,” but it would have been difficult for
+Lord Salisbury to have quoted a single instance where that “commercial
+enterprise” had constituted “a policy of advance.”
+
+It is due to the type of native inhabiting the chief radius of France’s
+operations in Western Africa, that her task has been rendered so
+dangerous and so difficult, and its fulfilment so remarkable. Criticise
+as we may, and often enough unjustly, because ignorantly, the colonising
+capacities of our Gallic neighbours, and the fluctuations of their
+colonial policy, it is beyond question that no nation on earth could
+have achieved what she has achieved in Western Africa, without the
+possession of a doggedness and determination for which we do not—to
+our own injury, be it said—even now, give her the credit which she
+deserves. For centuries upon centuries the enormous tract which lies
+between the edge of the Sahara Desert and the fringe of the tropical
+forest belt—consisting for the most part of grassy uplands varied by
+wide plains of amazing fertility, by reason of the yearly overflow of
+the waters of the Niger—had been the cockpit of Africa. Empire after
+empire rose and fell; invasion and counter-invasion swept devastatingly
+over the country. The splendours of Jenne and Timbuctoo vanished with
+the sway of the Songhay, beneath the bullets of Morocco’s musketeers.
+Fulani domination arose and gave way before Tukulor cruelties. Semi-negro
+kingdoms came into being, declared their independence of this or that
+conqueror, only to be subdued, while their victors had, in turn, to bite
+the dust before some stronger foe. The mingling of races in that vast
+region has no parallel in Africa. Ages ago the pastoral Fula—veritable
+Asiatic—had settled therein with his flocks and herds, destined in
+time by the sheer force of superior intellect to become the master
+where he had been either the guest or the despised tenant. Later came
+infiltrations of the Moorish element proper; pastorals also these,
+emigrating from the plateaux of Adrar to the well-watered valley of the
+Niger. Tuaregs, the redskins of the Sahara, descendants, as some affect
+to believe, of those tall, fair-haired, long-limbed warriors of Northern
+Europe who, about 1500 B.C., advanced slowly through Gaul and Spain,
+and crossing the Mediterranean in ships, landed on the North African
+Coast, ever pushing southwards, overcoming the terrors of the desert and
+reaching the green pastures beyond, but repairing the greater part of the
+year to the desolate Saharan solitudes of which they remain the virtual
+masters, though Foureau and his _tirailleurs_ have for the first time
+in history passed through without paying the toll. Arabs too, but again
+later, and generally speaking farther south and east in Kanem, Wadai and
+Baghirmi, where Lamy met his death and Gentil was fighting two years and
+more; Arabs from the north with caravans of merchandise, and other Arabs
+from the east; Shuwas, of whom no man knows the history or the origin.
+They intermarried, these tawny, straight-haired nomadic strangers, with
+the aboriginal blacks, or raped their women, as the case might be; and
+from these unions, legitimate or otherwise, through long centuries,
+there sprang into existence fierce cross-races and wild, reared in war,
+nurtured in an atmosphere of turmoil and brigandage; negro Fula, negro
+Moor, negro Arab, exaggerating the savage instincts of the parent stock,
+whom they turned and rent when strong enough. One such hybrid product
+became in time the scourge of the Western Sudan—the Tukulor, offspring
+of Negro (Joloff) and Fula, unsparing, ruthless, dreaded alike by Fula
+and Negro, and whose atrocities are written in letters of blood from Toro
+(Senegal) to the frontiers of Hausa.
+
+In this medley of races there came in the tenth century of our era
+the first whisperings of a revealed religion. The whispering quickly
+changed to the deep hum of many voices proclaiming aloud the word of the
+Prophet. Islam spread with inconceivable rapidity. The Fulani became
+speedy converts, but the arts they employed to win over their pagan
+neighbours were usually peaceful. Not so with the Tukulors and the other
+cross-races. They saw in it naught but a fresh incentive to warlike
+deeds, and soon professed Mohammedans were not merely massacring the
+infidels, but waging battle against their more peaceable co-religionists.
+As though this were not enough, another fruitful cause of bloodshed
+and disturbance was fated to arise, and still further plunge in woe
+this distracted country. The Portuguese adventurers on the coast, in
+the course of their professed desire to save the soul of the Negro,
+made a discovery, to wit, that the muscular development of the Negro
+eminently fitted him for manual labour. From that discovery dates the
+most atrocious traffic the world has ever witnessed. In their greed
+for slaves, the Christians of Western Europe and of America—without
+distinction of nationality, though perhaps the Portuguese and English
+were the worst offenders—set tribe against tribe; and the better to
+stimulate the industry, imported wholesale guns and gunpowder, objects
+which they ascertained the Negroes greatly coveted. The blacks waged war
+right merrily upon one another, and their so-called prisoners of war
+filled the slavers’ hulks. Presently the tawny races beyond the forest
+belt joined in the game, desiring above all things the acquisition of
+guns and the wherewithal to use them, which meant power and increased
+facilities for plunder. Slave-raiding then assumed almost incredible
+proportions. Internecine warfare received a new and terrible impetus. No
+excuse, whether valid or imaginary, was henceforth needed to attack one’s
+neighbour; and where in former days contentment might have been secured
+by a rich booty of cattle and sheep, the requirements of the case now
+necessitated the capture of the human animal himself. In such a country,
+desolated by centuries of strife; among such a people, upon whose vices
+Europe had grafted her own; under such circumstances, has lain the
+destiny of France in Western Africa.
+
+A favourite argument used by those who favour a militarist policy in
+Northern Nigeria consists in pointing to the action of the French in
+the Western Sudan. It is held by some to be inconsistent to express
+approval of the military trend of French policy in regions adjacent to
+Northern Nigeria, and to disapprove of it in Northern Nigeria itself.
+I do not think that the charge of inconsistency will bear examination.
+In the first place, we should be careful not to generalise. In West
+Africa proper—that is, in the coastwise regions, the home of the true
+Negroes—the military policy has, on the whole, been rarely resorted to
+by the French. In the Western Sudan, although, no doubt, a good deal
+of bloodshed might have been avoided at different times, I fail to see
+myself, bearing in mind the object of French policy, how that object
+could have been obtained without military conquest. As far as the purely
+moral aspect of the matter is concerned, the right of any European Power
+to interfere in the internal affairs of West Africa may be queried; but
+if a given region can, in West Africa, be pointed to where the results of
+such interference are of a beneficent nature, that region is the Western
+Sudan. France is restoring to the enormous expanse of territory between
+the Niger and the tropical forest belt the prosperity which it possessed
+in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries under the Songhay, when Jenne
+was the granary and the store-house of the Niger countries. She is laying
+the basis of a prosperity far greater than in those days, because she
+is able to bring peace where the Songhays could not. Having conquered
+the cross-races, she wisely refrains from either interfering with their
+customs, such as domestic slavery, upon which the social fabric of West
+Africa depends, or from allowing, save in strictly circumscribed limits,
+Christian propaganda among them, being well aware that such propaganda
+in Mohammedan communities but newly subjugated is the certain precursor
+of trouble, bloodshed, and fanaticism. She has hunted down and destroyed
+the four tyrants who successively barred her way to the interior, and
+who had perpetrated untold miseries upon hundreds of thousands of human
+beings—El-Haji-Omar, Amadu, Samory and Rabah. Had she been able to
+acquire the services of these men, it would perhaps have been better, but
+the body of evidence is against the possibility of her power to have done
+so. But there is a limit to approval of French military action, and if,
+now that France’s political influence is internationally secure in the
+regions east and north of the Chad, she chooses to embark open-eyed in a
+struggle with the Senussi, she will be making a grave mistake. Unless
+deliberately incited by unprovoked aggression, her game there is to
+sheath the sword and give diplomacy the innings, and those Frenchmen who
+see the danger of precipitate, immature action in Wadai and Kanem, and
+are strenuously agitating against it, are wise in their generation.[203]
+
+But, taken all in all, the circumstances in which England finds herself
+in Northern Nigeria, and the circumstances in which France found herself
+in relation to the Western Sudan before the conquest, are widely
+different. The aims pursued by France in the Western Sudan, and by the
+English in Nigeria, were not in their inception the same. The regions
+coveted by France were for the most part widely removed—at immense
+distances indeed—from her basis on the coast and her basis on the Senegal
+River. To make her claims to those regions _internationally_ valid, it
+was requisite that France should wield some tangible influence over them,
+and in many cases that was impossible without conquest.
+
+But the British in Northern Nigeria were very differently placed.
+Northern Nigeria was the prolongation, so to speak, of the British base
+in “the Rivers.” It lay immediately at the back of them. The possession
+of the Niger’s mouth facilitated the extension of British influence up
+the River and its affluent the Binue. Moreover, British merchants and
+explorers had ascended both the Niger and the Binue many years before;
+they had paved the way for what was to follow; and for fifteen years
+before the advent of direct Imperial control in Northern Nigeria, its
+native potentates had been united in close ties of political relationship
+with a British Chartered Company. The Government stepped into the shoes
+of the Chartered Company, not to play the _rôle_ of _conquisitador_ and
+initiator, but to reap crops sown for it; to consolidate work already
+half accomplished. It should, in parenthesis, be stated that France
+manages the Western Sudan, a territory very much larger than Northern
+Nigeria, and where a state of continuous internecine warfare had existed
+for centuries, with an army not more than 3000 strong. Again, if warfare
+has attended the establishment of French influence in the Shari region,
+it has been due to special circumstances. Thus Gentil acquired a
+Protectorate over Baghirmi without firing a shot. It was only when the
+country which France had placed under her protection was invaded and laid
+waste by Rabah that military action became a duty.
+
+No comparison is really possible between the respective parts of Great
+Britain and France. Both are distinct, and must be judged according to
+their antecedents and special features.
+
+In Northern Nigeria[204] we have to do with native rulers with whom we
+have been in treaty relationship for fifteen years, and in commercial
+relationship for longer still. They are our wards, we are in a fiduciary
+capacity towards them; they are our _protégés_. We undertook by treaty to
+subsidise them; we pledged ourselves by treaty “not to interfere with the
+customs” of their people. It should be our object, following the precepts
+of Sir Andrew Clarke, to make those rulers “far bigger” men than they
+are, not to break them. They come of a proud race, a capable race, of
+superior mental calibre, possessed of statesmanship and skill. They have
+played a great part in the history of Western Africa. Barth, who knew
+them well, has said of them that “they are the most intelligent people in
+Africa.” To reduce them to impotence; to scatter their power; to break
+the organisation they have created into small pieces would be politically
+foolish, practically unwise, morally unjust, Imperially disastrous.
+To strengthen their rule where weak; to perfect it where oppressive;
+to assist them, work with them, and through them along their natural
+lines; to interfere as little as possible with the customs and habits
+of themselves and their people; to respect their religious beliefs; to
+work gradually, peacefully, tactfully, for the attainment of the only
+conceivable objects which have taken us to their country—commercial
+development, advancement, prosperity—those should be the political
+principles guiding us in Northern Nigeria.
+
+The accomplishment of the colossal plan sketched out by the _Figaro_
+in 1892, viz. the unification (if the word be permissible) of the
+French possessions in Africa by expeditions from north, west, and
+south, designed to meet on the shores of Lake Chad, may now be briefly
+given. It is a stirring tale. The first attempt—if we exclude that of
+Flatters from the north, of which the purpose was limited—was made from
+the south, by the blue-eyed, fair-haired enthusiast, Paul Crampbel. He
+fell assassinated by Rabah’s emissaries at El Kuti on April 15, 1891.
+Dybowski and Maistre, sent out by the French African Committee in
+Crampbel’s footsteps, had to retire without doing much more than useful
+exploring work. Then came Gentil’s turn, a modest naval lieutenant who,
+profiting by Rabah’s complications in Bornu, succeeded after incredible
+difficulties in reaching the mouth of the Shari (after signing a treaty
+of Protectorate with Baghirmi) and floating a small steamer upon the
+waters of the mysterious lake. But the success was short-lived. Rabah
+recrossed the Shari, forced the French to retire, and once again swept
+Baghirmi with fire and sword. France hurried fresh reinforcements to the
+spot, and these under Bretonnet were attacked by Rabah and decimated. A
+further and more vigorous effort was required.
+
+And here the scene shifts to the north. In October 1898 that intrepid
+explorer, Foureau, left the oasis of Sadrata, near Wargla, in Algeria,
+at the head of a force of picked men, 310 strong, consisting of troopers
+from the Senegalese and Saharan _tirailleurs_, than whom there are
+probably no more splendid fighters in the world, unless it be our own
+Sikhs. Foureau was accompanied by three civilian friends. Commandant
+Lamy led the military portion of the expedition, which comprised four
+other officers besides himself. The object of the expedition was to
+cross the Algerian Sahara and reach the Chad, while Gentil and Bretonnet
+gained a firm foothold on its shores by working upwards from the Congo
+and Ubanghi. Foureau and his companions plunged into the unknown desert,
+and for ten months entirely disappeared from view. Frequent rumours of a
+wholesale massacre reached Europe, and remembering the fate of Douls, De
+Palot, Dournaux-Dupérré, and Joubert, Flatters and Bonnier, at the hands
+of the fierce nomads who roam the desolate wastes through which Foureau
+had to pass, France held her breath. If Foureau fell, it would not only
+be a frightful disaster, fraught with peril to French policy throughout
+her vast Mohammedan zone in Africa; it might also mean a revulsion of
+popular feeling, a hanging up of cherished schemes for a generation or
+more. But Foureau did not fall or fail. He reached the Asben oases in
+safety, and demonstrated to timid minds that the Tuaregs, when confronted
+by a well-armed and disciplined force, skilfully led and sufficiently
+numerous to inspire respect, prefer, in the main, to hold themselves at a
+distance.[205]
+
+Again the scene changes. The plan was half-performed. The third advance
+came from the west by the way of the Niger Bend. It was at first attended
+by the direst results. The gallant Cazemajou met a cruel and treacherous
+death at Zinder. Voulet and Chanoine, who succeeded him, showed what evil
+unlimited authority and the disordering effects of the African climate
+can work upon ill-regulated minds. Denounced by one of their subordinates
+for barbarous conduct towards the natives, they, having already forgotten
+the ordinary dictates of humanity, forgot alike honour and patriotism,
+foully murdered the superior officer who had been instructed to replace
+them, tore off their uniforms, declared themselves renegades, and
+perpetrated the wildest excesses. But their shrift was short, and they
+soon met their fate from the rifles of the native soldiers they had
+temporarily led astray.
+
+The French Government, however, did not relinquish its determination. The
+fragments of the Voulet-Chanoine mission were got together, and under
+the joint leadership of Captain Joalland and Lieutenant Meynier reached
+the Chad, subsequently joining Gentil’s forces in the Lower Shari. By
+this time Foureau had also gained the Chad. The three missions, which
+after so many vicissitudes thus met together in their common goal, were
+immediately called upon to face a new and most formidable danger. Against
+the town of Kusri or Kusseri, where the French had established their
+headquarters, Rabah was marching at the head of 5000 men, of whom 2000
+were armed with guns of various patterns. He had also three fieldpieces,
+captured from Bretonnet. The French disposed of a total strength of
+774 officers and men—the latter natives without exception—with four
+fieldpieces. They were assisted by 1500 Baghirmi auxiliaries, who do not
+appear to have been of much use, contenting themselves with looting after
+the battle was over. Rabah pitched his war camp three miles from Kusri,
+and awaited the onslaught of the French. It proved to be irresistible.
+Rabah himself perished. His losses amounted to 1000 killed and wounded,
+and his camp, with the whole of its contents, fell into the hands of
+the French. The French losses were severe. They included the brave
+Lamy, Captain Cointet, a white non-commissioned officer and seventeen
+men killed. Their wounded amounted to sixty, among them Captain Lamothe
+and Lieutenants Meynier and Galland. But the victory was complete,
+and Rabah, the noise of whose conquests had filled Central Africa for
+close upon a quarter of a century; whose destructive strides had left
+a bloody track from the Bahr-el-Ghazal to the Chad; Rabah, the last of
+the great _conquisitadores_, had gone the way of El-Haji-Omar, and of
+Samory. The plan elaborated by the _Figaro_ eight years previously was an
+accomplished fact.
+
+Since Rabah’s overthrow the French have been engaged in systematically
+consolidating their hold upon the Central Sudan and the lower Shari. M.
+Terrier, the able Secrétaire-Général of the French African Committee,
+explains in the Committee’s Bulletin for April 1901 the procedure which
+is being adopted. One cannot but be impressed with the grasp, the
+sagacity, and the statesmanship displayed. The Shari region has been
+divided into two districts, the most northerly of which abuts on Lake
+Chad, and includes Baghirmi and the Shari mouths. It is administered
+on military lines. The southern district, comprising the upper reaches
+of the river and its affluents, is administered on civil lines. The
+population of the southern district is composed of Negroes, whose
+religion is fetishism, or what it pleases us to call fetishism. The
+northern district is inhabited by various branches of the Negroid
+Baghirmis; by the Kotokos; by the Shuwa Arabs, and by a few pastoral
+Fulani. The pagans of the southern district have for centuries been
+subjected to the raids of the Arabised-Negroes of Bornu and Baghirmi. It
+was from among them that the principal supplies of slaves which used to
+find their way across the desert route to Tripoli before the Firman of
+1865 were drawn. France, by ridding them of their external foes, claims
+the right to make them share in her administrative expenses. She is all
+the more justified in doing so, as for many years to come, and until
+the Shari is connected with the Ubanghi by a railway, there will be no
+trade upon which to levy duties in order to obtain revenue. One-half of
+the population is expected to furnish carriers, and the other half pays
+an annual tax of four pounds of rubber per hut, of which two pounds is
+returned to the chiefs as commission. We are assured—on the authority
+of M. Terrier—that the chiefs are bringing in the tax voluntarily from
+long distances. In the northern district, which was directly under
+Rabah’s influence, the French found an existing organisation which they
+have in the main retained, but the tax levied by the Emir of Baghirmi
+upon his subjects being considered too heavy, the French have reduced
+it by two-thirds, thus relieving the population from an undue burden
+of taxation. The Emir and his chiefs—through whom French influence is
+exercised—benefit by this reduced tax; that is to say, they keep it for
+themselves. Contributions of slaves to the Emir and chiefs in the form of
+tribute by the sub-chiefs are, of course, suppressed. The revenue of the
+Emir being thus limited, but nevertheless assured to him, together with
+the continuation of his prestige, the Emir himself, who owes his throne
+to the French, and has, moreover, been relieved by them of the necessity
+of paying an annual tribute to Wadai, is expected to furnish annually
+to the Administration 240 pounds of millet, 500 cloths, and 100 oxen,
+amounting roughly to £1680.
+
+Here, then, as in the Western Sudan, the words of Faidherbe ring sound;
+and M. Etienne, speaking at a Conference held the other day at the Paris
+Colonial School, was only saying what has hitherto been true when he
+asserted that:
+
+“France can in all sincerity maintain that she has delivered the peoples
+of inland Africa from an intolerable yoke. She has liberated millions of
+human beings from sanguinary tyrants who had reduced them to slavery. She
+has accomplished a work of emancipation, of liberty, and of generosity.”
+It would be sad indeed if, led astray by evil counsels, France should be
+induced in another portion of her West African domain, viz. French Congo,
+to tarnish the great reputation she has undoubtedly built up.
+
+It may be doubted whether the problems with which France has had to
+contend in West Africa have ever been rightly understood among us, for
+Englishmen are usually generous-minded enough to appreciate good work
+carried out by others, even though the others are sometimes rivals.
+Certain is it that of the nature of French exploits in West and Central
+Africa the average Englishman is hopelessly ignorant, and even English
+writers of repute persist in shutting their eyes to the great, the almost
+revolutionary changes which experience, dearly bought, has wrought in
+French Colonial conceptions. We have failed as a nation in doing justice
+to the actions of the French in Africa. We have underrated their capacity
+and refused to admit the existence at their council boards of a central
+plan carefully matured which the frequent shuffling of Ministerial
+portfolios merely retarded but did not alter. At the present moment we
+apparently will not realise that France is applying to the economic
+development of her vast territories the same strenuousness of purpose
+with which she steadily pursued her work of conquest and absorption.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL CONDITION OF THE FRENCH POSSESSIONS
+
+
+The logic of facts is gradually bringing home to Englishmen that the
+French have within recent years revolutionised the commercial position of
+their West African possessions; of those possessions, that is, which are
+at present commercially exploitable. But a singular amount of ignorance
+continues to prevail on the subject, and in non-specialist circles the
+French possessions are still in a sorry condition both commercially
+and financially. So far is that deep-rooted idea from the truth, that
+not only are the French doing exceedingly well commercially in West
+Africa; but they are doing comparatively better than we are. Moreover,
+their possessions are actually costing less to manage, and economy
+in administration is not secured at the expense of requisite public
+works; quite the contrary. The days when Englishmen could represent the
+ideals of French Colonial management in West Africa in the light of a
+custom-house official and a soldier; an expenditure overlapping revenue;
+constant grants from the mother country; an embryonic trade and a growing
+budgetary deficit, have passed and gone. In some respects the French
+are turning the tables upon us. Even so distinguished an authority as
+Sir Harry Johnston falls into the popular error when he says that “with
+the exception of Tunis, there is not a single French possession in
+Africa which is self-supporting or other than a drain upon the French
+exchequer.” It is a complete fallacy, and it can be proved so up to
+the hilt. Here and there, it is true, the old, bad, paralytic red-tape
+conception remains, but on the whole the French possessions north of the
+Bights are progressing with an astonishing rapidity; able to construct
+important public works out of their own surplus revenues, and to enter
+into railway contracts on guaranteed loans of their own raising. Miss
+Kingsley, in her “West African Studies,” suggested that, granting the
+possibility of France becoming “commercially intelligent,” she might
+“pocket the West African trade down to Lagos from Senegal,” and there can
+be no doubt that if British policy in West Africa continues to be carried
+out on the present lines, and if French policy in West Africa can escape
+the contamination of the concessionnaire _régime_ applied with such
+deplorable results in French Congo, France can and will do an enormous
+amount of commercial damage to our possessions in West Africa, and on a
+fair field, in legitimate competition. Senegal, French Guinea, the Ivory
+Coast and Dahomey are all self-supporting, and the growth of trade in
+these possessions is in all conscience eloquent enough, as the following
+figures show:
+
+               SENEGAL        GUINEA       IVORY COAST     DAHOMEY
+
+    1889     £1,520,000      £320,000        £160,000      £360,000
+    1899      2,920,000     1,000,000         520,000     1,000,000
+    1900      3,189,400       973,000[206]    686,300     1,101,084
+
+None of our Colonies can show such a rate of progress as their young
+(Senegal excepted) Gallic competitors. The increase is really phenomenal.
+In the French Colonies mentioned the expenditure is well within the
+revenue. In French Guinea conspicuously so. Would that we could say the
+same of our possessions! In all these Colonies the French are spending
+less than we are in the work of administration. In some of them they
+are nevertheless spending more in public works, and before long their
+expenditure in that respect will in the aggregate far exceed ours. It
+will suffice to give one or two instances in support of these general
+statements.
+
+The position of Dahomey is particularly interesting, because it adjoins
+Lagos, because Lagos is one of the transit ports for Dahomey, because
+both Colonies are building a railway in the same direction, and because
+both Colonies aim at capturing the bulk of the interior trade. Compared
+with Lagos, Dahomey is, of course, only an infant in years, but an infant
+of sturdy growth. Its trade has jumped from nineteen million francs in
+1893 to twenty-seven million francs in 1900. The growth in its export
+trade is very noticeable. In 1893 it amounted to £347,258 (8,681,463
+francs), and in 1900 had grown to £502,350. In 1893 the export trade
+of Lagos was £836,295; in 1900 it was £885,111. True, Lagos saw better
+days in 1896 and 1899 (£975,203 and £915,934 respectively),[207] but the
+ratio of increase has not been equal to that of Dahomey. In 1894, on an
+export trade of £821,682, the expenditure of Lagos amounted to £124,819;
+in 1900, on an export trade of £885,111 the expenditure was £187,124,
+including £37,214 for public works and £18,169 on account of public debt.
+In 1900, on an export trade of £502,350 Dahomey spent £119,664, of which
+£29,000 in public works, and in 1901 contributed £60,000 from its own
+local revenue for the railway.[208] In 1900 Dahomey spent £8000[209]
+in military and police; Lagos spent £39,095.[210] For some unexplained
+reason Dahomey does not export timber, but her exports of palm-oil and
+palm-kernels are increasing yearly. Dahomey is now actually exporting
+very nearly as much palm-oil as Lagos.[211] In palm-kernels Dahomey has
+not yet reached the level of Lagos, but is forging ahead, having exported
+24,211,614 kilos, or roughly 24,000 tons, in 1901, against 21,986,043
+kilos in 1900, and 21,850,982 kilos in 1899. Lagos shipped in 1900-1901
+over 47,000 tons of kernels. Some years ago the French, annoyed at being
+dependent upon Lagos as the only port of transit for the trade of their
+Colony (Lagos is connected with Porto Novo, the capital of Dahomey, by a
+lagoon, and the facilities of the Lagos route were, and still are, for
+certain classes of goods very much greater owing to the bar service),
+constructed at Kotonu one of the few wharves which exist on the West
+African coast-line. This wharf, aided by the duty imposed on the Dahomey
+transit trade _viâ_ Lagos by the Lagos authorities, has succeeded in its
+object, and the bulk of Dahomey’s trade now passes through Kotonu instead
+of _viâ_ Lagos. In this way has Lagos, for temporary revenue purposes,
+played into the hands of her competitors. The Colony is also building a
+railway[212] which is likely to prove a most important undertaking. The
+fiscal policy adopted by France in Dahomey since the 1898 agreement,
+abolishing the differential tariff for thirty years, has been well
+calculated to bring about the conspicuous advancement observable, and
+unless the railway concessionnaire, under his agreement with the local
+government,[213] is allowed to interfere in the territories ceded to
+him with the freedom of trade, and with native rights of land tenure,
+the wisdom of Dahomey’s fiscal policy will continue to bear fruit. Most
+people will be astonished to learn that Dahomey taxes her trade, in the
+main, at a lower rate than Lagos, and it is unquestionable that the
+circumstance acts in the former’s favour and to the latter’s detriment.
+There is so much misconception about on subjects of this kind, which
+nevertheless have so direct a bearing upon the prosperity and commercial
+position of our West African possessions and of their rivals, that it has
+been thought advisable to give in the Appendix as complete a comparative
+table as possible of the duties in both Colonies.[214] To that list the
+reader may be referred. On all articles but cottons Dahomey charges lower
+duty than Lagos. If Dahomey can manage her affairs, and get a surplus
+revenue to boot by charging 2_d._ a pound on tobacco and gunpowder, and
+11_s._ 4_d._ and 4_s._ 10_d._ respectively on rock salt and sea salt,
+why in the world cannot Lagos do the same, instead of charging 8_d._
+and 4_d._ a pound on tobacco, 6_d._ a pound on gunpowder, and 20_s._ on
+both classes of salt? The answer is, because the Crown Colony system is
+infinitely more costly than the French system of administration.
+
+France’s oldest Colony in West Africa, Senegal, despite the periodic
+ravages of yellow fever, against which it is to be hoped science will now
+be in a better position to struggle with success, is in a very healthy
+condition commercially and financially, although rather too dependent
+upon a single industry, viz. ground-nut production.[215] Its export
+trade has increased from £517,934 in 1891 to £1,000,000 in 1900; but its
+expenditure, instead of increasing in similar or greater proportion, as
+is generally the case with British Possessions; has remained practically
+stationary, at about £150,000; while surplus revenues have enabled her
+to agree to pay a yearly subsidy of £36,000 for a period of twenty-two
+years to the Western Sudan (Kayes-Niger) railway, from the completion of
+which she is sure to largely benefit. In the construction of public works
+Senegal is easily ahead of any European possession of West Africa. A
+railway 250 kilometres long connects St. Louis, the capital, with Dakar,
+the principal seaport, and the best on the coast. St. Louis, Dakar and
+Rufisque have all been provided with fresh water. The Faidherbe bridge is
+a great engineering triumph, and the wharves at Rufisque and Dakar are
+well organised. Surveys for another railway through the Salum district,
+with prolongation to Kayes, are being undertaken, and there is a project
+on foot for improving navigation on the Senegal River. Senegal seems
+destined to have a brilliant future.
+
+The Ivory Coast has come very much to the fore of late as a possible
+goldfield, to rival if not to surpass the Gold Coast. _Le Transvaal
+français_ is the title already given to it by enthusiasts. Prospecting
+work is being undertaken, and hundreds of permits have been granted. A
+good deal of secrecy is being observed in connection with the matter,
+and a wise check appears to have been kept upon the flotation of bogus
+companies. There seems to be good ground for believing that auriferous
+deposits exist in considerable quantities, and recent explorations have
+revealed the existence of many old native workings, and even of a mine
+actually being exploited by the natives, that of Kokombo in the Baoule
+district. Experts think that the Ivory Coast will prove particularly
+rich in dredging propositions. The Baoule, Indenie, Attie and Jaman
+countries are reported to be the four districts in the Colony which
+will repay the gold-seekers. Commandant Binger, who has travelled all
+over the country, is a great believer in its gold-bearing capacity, and
+in Dr. Freeman’s opinion, South-West Jaman is the gold country _par
+excellence_ of the entire region; richer than Ashanti and other portions
+of the British Protectorate.[216] At the Paris Exhibition of 1900 many
+samples of auriferous quartz from the Ivory Coast were exhibited, from
+Kuadikofi, Nangu-Kru, Alepe and Adokoi, and also some specimens of native
+gold workmanship from Baoule and Jaman which point to a high degree of
+artistic talent on the part of the workmen. Gold dust has been exported
+from the Ivory Coast for many years, of an average annual value between
+1890 and 1897 of £25,000. At present the trade of the Ivory Coast, which
+is steadily increasing, is chiefly remarkable for its timber export. The
+ports of Grand Bassam, Lahou and Assinie are among the most important
+timber-shipping centres on the coast. In 1892 the Ivory Coast exported
+mahogany to the value of £23,000; in 1900, to the value of £44,000.
+Nearly all the mahogany comes to Liverpool, which imported in 1899 from
+the Ivory Coast 4714 logs measuring 2,727,349 cubic feet, and in 1900,
+5748 logs measuring 3,697,416 cubic feet. In the old days the Ivory
+Coast, the “Elfenbein Küste” of the Germans, was celebrated for the
+article its name implies.
+
+Writing in 1730, Barbot says that “the inland country affords yearly
+a vast quantity of fine large elephants’ teeth, being the best ivory
+in the world, most of which is constantly bought up along this coast
+by the English, Dutch, and French, and sometimes by the Danes and
+Portuguese.” In quaint language, he goes on to tell us how important the
+ivory trade of the Ivory Coast was in those days, and how the natives
+profited thereby. “This great concourse of European ships,” he writes,
+“coming hither every year, and sometimes three or four lying together
+at anchor in the road, has encouraged the blacks to set so dear a rate
+on their teeth (_sic_), and particularly on the larger sort, some of
+them weighing two hundred pounds French, that there is not much to be
+got by them, considering the vast charges that commonly attend such a
+remote trade.” Barbot describes his own trading operations on the Ivory
+Coast, and speaks of having “six large canoes about the ship full of fine
+elephants’ teeth, each canoe manned by five or six hands at least—and
+all lusty, resolute men.” Quoting some Hollanders, the same author
+writes that “it is scarce to be conceived what a multitude of elephants
+there is about this country.” It is quite clear that in those days ivory
+was practically the only product exchanged by the natives against the
+iron bars and rings, beads, kettles, cotton, brandy, and other articles
+brought by European traders in their sailing vessels. Now the ivory
+trade has practically disappeared, owing, no doubt, to the extermination
+of the elephants in the coastal regions. What small quantity does come
+down for shipment appears to be brought by caravans from the Western
+Sudan. This disappearance of a trade which was flourishing enough at one
+time to become the synonym of an extensive portion of the West African
+coast-line, is one of those curious facts of which West Africa affords us
+so many examples. It seems to me that we have one of the most striking
+proofs of the highly developed commercial instinct of the West African
+native, in the circumstance that no sooner has one branch of trade fallen
+off than he replaces it by another. No doubt the initiative is not his
+own, but the motive power is, and the very adaptability which he displays
+in meeting the new demands of commerce affords the clearest indication of
+the progressiveness of his race. Thus in the Ivory Coast; the ivory trade
+has gone, and has been replaced by the oil, kernel, and rubber trade;
+and, of quite recent years, by the mahogany trade.
+
+So far, the Ivory Coast is the most backward of the French West African
+possessions in the shape of public works, although there is a wharf at
+Grand Bassam; but a very big scheme is in contemplation including the
+construction of a harbour and railway, the piercing of the sandbank at
+little Bassam opposite to the well-known “bottomless pit” so dreaded by
+mariners, and the dredging of the Bingerville lagoon. The future of the
+Ivory Coast would appear to be in good hands, so far as a very efficient
+staff of administrators is a guarantee; M. Clozel and M. Maurice
+Delafosse in particular having distinguished themselves of late in
+studying the aboriginal tribes, and in laying the basis of an intelligent
+native policy which, if pursued, will make of that possession a second
+French Guinea. Just now, however, the military element appears to have
+the upper hand, and there has been a regrettable collision between the
+French authorities and the powerful Baoules, which has undone the work
+of years of pacific endeavour, and which might, in the opinion of those
+Frenchmen who know the country best, have been avoided. Archæological
+discoveries of profound interest have been made in the Baoule country,
+pointing to former intercourse with a more advanced people, whom M.
+Delafosse thinks must have been the Egyptians.[217]
+
+[Illustration: MAP SHOWING THE LOCALITY AND NATURE OF HARBOUR IMPROVEMENT
+SCHEME IN THE IVORY COAST]
+
+French Guinea can serve as a model of what a common-sense, commercial,
+sympathetic administration is able to achieve in West Africa; and the
+late Dr. Ballay, its founder and for more than a decade its governor,
+will rank as the best type of Colonial Administrator, a worthy emulator
+of his countryman, le Sieur de Brüe, and of our own Sir John Glover. The
+strides which French Guinea has made since its birth in 1889 are really
+phenomenal. In 1890, Konakry, the capital, was non-existent. To-day it
+numbers 10,000 inhabitants, of whom some 300 are Europeans. The trade
+of French Guinea, which in 1890 only amounted to £300,000, reached in
+1899 and 1900 about £1,000,000. It is one of the most cheaply and yet
+most effectively administered possessions on the coast. Its revenue
+is buoyant, owing largely to the successful collection of a poll-tax,
+and although a railway to Kurussa, on the Niger, is in course of
+construction, the expenditure is well beneath the revenue. A magnificent
+carriage-road 137 kilometres in length has been built from Konakry to
+the foot of the Futa-Jallon plateau. Its import duties are, with the
+exception of one or two articles, lower than in that of its moribund
+neighbour, Sierra Leone. On the other hand, there is an export duty of 7
+per cent. on rubber and gum copal. Its condition as compared with that of
+Sierra Leone can best be set forth in tabular form:
+
+         FRENCH GUINEA IN 1900                 SIERRA LEONE IN 1900
+
+    Total trade             £962,209   Total trade             £921,017
+    Export trade             391,191   Export trade             362,741
+    Expenditure              116,699   Expenditure              156,421
+
+        EXPENDITURE ANALYSED                    EXPENDITURE ANALYSED
+
+    Public works and railway £57,478   Public works and railway £36,084
+    Other expenditure         59,221   Other expenditure        120,337
+
+It remains to be said that last year (1901) the export trade[218] of
+Sierra Leone fell from £362,741 in 1900 to £304,010, reckoning specie,
+and from £317,980 to £265,433, excluding specie, the latter figure
+being the lowest for twenty-one years. At the same time the expenditure
+increased from £156,421 to £173,457, only £91,976 less than the
+purchasing power of the Colony.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+FRENCH AND BRITISH MANAGEMENT IN WEST AFRICA
+
+
+Apart from the belief, which has been dealt with in the previous chapter,
+that France cannot manage her West African possessions successfully,
+another idea appears to be widely entertained. It is said that French
+methods of rule in West Africa are excessively harsh. I cannot find
+any evidence to support this view. The records of all the Powers who
+have possessions in West Africa are tarnished by acts of oppression and
+injustice to the native, but I have seen no proof that in this respect
+France compares unfavourably with either England, Germany, or Portugal.
+On the whole, France’s record is perhaps cleaner than that of most
+other Powers. North of the Bights, the portion of West Africa which has
+engaged our attention hitherto, I should say the balance of evidence is
+decidedly to France’s credit. That is the opinion of Sir Charles Dilke;
+it was the opinion of the late Miss Kingsley, and one or two other
+competent authorities. Speaking in September of last year at a meeting
+of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, an African of the Africans, and a
+distinguished scholar, Dr. Blyden, who has had exceptional facilities for
+judging, and who, withal, holds an official position under the Sierra
+Leone Government, made a striking reference to the subject.
+
+“France,” said Dr. Blyden, “has a peculiar work to do for Africa—a
+work much needed and suited to the genius of the Celtic race.... The
+contribution of the French to the civilisation of Africa evidently
+springs not only from what they have in common with all mankind, but
+from what is special to themselves. France is France. England is
+England. France can do for Africa what England cannot do, and England
+can do for Africa what France cannot do. This all thinking Africans
+recognise, and all gladly co-operate with each nation according to the
+measure in which their systems agree with native ideas and customs
+and traditions. And there seems to be more of conformity in the
+French methods than in the more rigid and unimaginative system of the
+Anglo-Saxon. Whatever there is among the natives of original, racy, or
+romantic interest is not perishing under French administration.”
+
+That is a true saying, and it goes far towards explaining the political
+success of the French in West Africa.
+
+It is surely a circumstance which should impress us that the French have
+been able to successfully apply direct taxation in their possessions
+without bloodshed or disturbance, while in Sierra Leone we have failed so
+disastrously. As direct taxation in West Africa is a problem fraught with
+great danger, one needing the utmost care and discrimination, it seems
+worth while to give more than passing notice to what has already been
+done by the French and ourselves in the matter. A poll-tax was applied in
+French Guinea in 1897. In 1900 it yielded £90,000, and I am informed on
+good authority that the returns for 1901 will reach £140,000, and will
+still further increase, as the taxable radius has not yet been reached.
+It has been peacefully collected. Was this the result of overwhelming
+military strength? Not at all, for although French Guinea is now about
+three times the size of Sierra Leone, the military, or rather the police,
+force of the French Protectorate is just a little over half what it
+is in Sierra Leone. The “show of force” theory has, therefore, been
+conspicuous by its absence. It has been replaced by a plentiful supply of
+imagination, plus the appreciation of certain scientific facts. What, in
+the first place, are the scientific facts? The tax in French Guinea is
+a poll-tax, the tax in Sierra Leone is a property-tax. In the one case
+there was no interference with native land tenure; in the other there
+was indirect interference with native land tenure. Mr. Chamberlain[219]
+himself was “disposed to think that the natives saw in the tax an attempt
+to interfere with their property.” Yet Mr. Chamberlain has maintained
+the tax. Farther on Mr. Chamberlain says, “that the aversion of the
+natives to the payment of the tax is not insuperable may be inferred
+from the fact that a similar tax is levied without difficulty from
+similar races by the French in the neighbouring territory.” There Mr.
+Chamberlain showed that he was not properly informed. The tax was not
+a “similar” tax, and the “races” in French territory are not “similar”
+but dissimilar. What ethnic similarity is there, for instance, between
+the Fulani, the ruling race in a large portion of French Guinea, and the
+Mendi, Timini, Konnos and Sulimas of Sierra Leone? Such confusion is
+extraordinary. The peoples of French Guinea are either Mohammedan, or
+for the most part inured to direct taxation for many centuries past by
+Mohammedan conquest.[220] The peoples of Sierra Leone were independent
+races, who have beaten back every attempt at Mohammedan conquest, and
+among whom a regularly recurring impost is unknown, and contrary to
+all native ideas. An almost identical argument has been made use of in
+regard to the Gambia. We collect a hut-tax in the Gambia; why not in
+Sierra Leone? For the same reason that what may be sound in one place is
+not sound in another. You cannot lump West Africa together and evolve
+identical legislation for the whole! The passion for assimilation is
+fatal to good government in West Africa. The peoples of the Gambia are,
+again, either Mohammedan or have undergone conquest by Mohammedans. The
+case of the Gambia, moreover, is in another sense quite different from
+Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is covered with dense forests. Gambia is a
+small strip of territory on either bank of a river. The villages along
+its shores can be raked by gun-boats. Every part is easily accessible,
+and on the other side of the border the French are in occupation. What
+chance is there of resisting Government demands, even though the tax were
+bitterly opposed, which is not the case for the reasons already given;
+although the Gambia natives are probably no more in love with it than
+we are with our income-tax? Direct taxation is ever unpopular; among
+primitive peoples particularly so. Finally, the natives of French Guinea
+are much richer than those of Sierra Leone. So much for the scientific
+facts. Is it not about time that the Colonial Office took over the
+services of a trained ethnologist, or created independent native councils
+in West Africa in touch with the Administration?
+
+[Illustration: SUSU CHIEF AND STAFF]
+
+Dahomey and Ashanti also offer a parallel in another way. In Dahomey
+the poll-tax was applied for the first time since the Conquest (1892)
+in 1899. It yielded £8200 in 1899 and £22,290 in 1900. There has been
+no trouble, and as in French Guinea, the tax has not prevented a
+steady increase in the export trade, notwithstanding the thousands of
+able-bodied men employed on the railway. In both Dahomey and Ashanti
+the people taxed are Negroes, and were formerly subject to an unusual
+state-form in West Africa, viz. a despotism. They have been conquered,
+and conquest implies a tacit right to levy an impost. But conquest
+involves great hardships on the conquered in West Africa. Villages and
+granaries are destroyed, crops burnt, acres of land laid waste; many of
+those who would be sowing and reaping and gathering produce have been
+killed, and general distress ensues. That is the time for the conqueror
+with his higher culture, and the lofty ideals of the religion he
+professes, to take the conquered by the hand and try to renovate what he
+has shattered, but on better lines; to act, since he chooses to call the
+Negro a child, as a parent, who, after administering castigation, makes
+friends once more with the offender. Put differently, every assistance
+should be given, and due latitude allowed to a tribe which has been so
+unfortunate as to incur the wrath of the superior people, whose reforming
+zeal is nothing if not drastic. The French gave the Dahomeyans seven
+years’ breathing space before they taxed them.[221]
+
+[Illustration: ASHANTI FIELD FORCE AT CAPE COAST _EN ROUTE_ FOR KUMASI]
+
+What has been our action in Ashanti? No sooner has a desolating war been
+ended, a war attended by certain incidents which do not reflect credit
+upon us as a nation; a war which was caused by a series of official
+blunders of the grossest kind, than we clap on direct taxation, and
+in such a form that a premium is put upon future troubles. In fact,
+shortly after this taxation was announced to the beaten chiefs, yet
+another rising was only averted by the prompt despatch of more troops
+to Kumasi.[222] Could anything less imaginative—to put it mildly—be
+devised than this application of a war indemnity nearly thirty years old,
+previous non-payment of which was made the excuse for the arrest and
+deportation of Prempreh and the annexation of the country; and when the
+revival of the claim by the authorities in 1900 is admitted to have been
+one of the contributory causes of the last rising? As Sir William Geary
+pointed out in 1900:
+
+    “To take a metaphor from private property, one cannot foreclose
+    a mortgage, receive the rents and profits of the land, and then
+    beyond that ask for interest on the debt when one has helped
+    oneself to payment. We annexed Ashanti in 1896, and not only
+    have we obtained formal sovereignty, but the matter has turned
+    out a good bargain for us. We are carrying away the natural
+    gold of the country for the benefit of European shareholders.
+    Now we want to tax the natives.”
+
+Is policy of this kind calculated to bring prosperity to British West
+Africa? In 1864 the _Times_ expressed itself as follows with regard to
+the ruler of Ashanti:
+
+    “Instead of harbouring culprits against his crown, instead of
+    disregarding the treaties between himself and us, instead of
+    trying to sap the foundations of his throne, we should strive
+    to cultivate acquaintance with him by the tranquil arts of
+    trade. At the back of his vast dominions, receding to the foot
+    of the Kong mountains, reside natives who owe and yield him
+    obedience. What benefits might be showered on the Protectorate
+    if we would set our heads together to foster and consolidate an
+    intercourse based on amity and on the extension of legitimate
+    traffic!”
+
+Wise words, excellent precepts. Why does not the _Times_ preach them now
+for application in other parts of West Africa, where the Crown Colony
+system has not yet quite succeeded in undoing the work of generations
+of peaceful, commercial efforts? If there be still life left in this
+miserable residue of the once powerful Ashanti nation, no doubt but
+that more trouble arising out of the tax will ensue. It does not seem
+as though the contingency were looked upon as altogether remote even
+in official eyes, and there are some significant passages in the last
+Blue Book on the subject. Happily at present we have an excellent
+resident at Kumasi in the person of Captain Donald Stewart, a man of
+broad sympathies, and it may be that his personal influence will prevail
+against the slumbering discontent which the policy of his chiefs renders
+inevitable in the country, whether it be given open expression to or
+not.[223]
+
+[Illustration: RETURN OF ASHANTI FIELD FORCE]
+
+There is a passage in the evidence of one of the European witnesses
+before Sir David Chalmers, in the course of the inquiry into the hut-tax
+war, which explains better than anything else perhaps the difference
+between the procedure of the French in Guinea and that of the British
+authorities in Sierra Leone. “They are not so particular there. The
+great man Alimami Dowla is supposed to collect the tax, and he brings
+the money to the Governor and says, ‘This is what I have been able to
+collect,’ and the Government say, ‘Thank you.’” That is precisely what
+the French have done all through. They have gone to the chiefs as “big
+friend”; explained to them that they required money for the railway,
+roads, and so on; pointed out the advantages; asked them to contribute;
+presented them with an extremely handsome commission of one-third of the
+moneys collected (in other words, subsidised them) in their respective
+districts, and “winked the other eye,” so to speak, when the moneys
+presented have not equalled the amount due. At the same time the prestige
+of the chiefs has been everywhere upheld; the native courts preserved;
+vexatious European legal formulas kept out of the country; European
+merchants encouraged to come in, and regularly consulted in the work of
+administration; the numbers of officials restricted; economy practised
+in every branch of the service, and military methods tabooed. Result,
+a magnificent success politically, commercially, financially. Compare
+this with what has taken place in Sierra Leone. We are taking away the
+power of the chiefs instead of strengthening it.[224] The hut-tax was
+originally enforced in a hasty, not to say brutal manner. Instant payment
+was demanded. Chiefs were dragged from their villages, treated as felons,
+handcuffed and marched off to gaol under the eyes of their unresisting
+people. The Frontier Police, an ill-disciplined force[225] recruited from
+the dregs of the Protectorate, committed all sorts of abuses, and, to use
+the words of the Royal Commissioner, “oppressive severity” was exercised,
+and this most delicate business was approached in a general spirit of
+“imperious and uncompromising force.” A rising very naturally ensued
+which convulsed the whole Protectorate. Sir David Chalmers’ subsequent
+report, which condemned the hut-tax and recommended its withdrawal, was
+not acted upon; the hut-tax has been maintained, and an expensive civil,
+military and magisterial _régime_ set up, unsuited to the country and
+beyond its power to maintain. Result, the expenditure has risen to about
+60 per cent. of the producing power of the Colony, which is steadily
+decreasing; and the up-keep of the machinery to collect the tax costs
+more than the tax produces. The Colonial Office, which exhausted itself
+in ingenious explanations to disconnect the rising with the hut-tax,
+has recently issued an optimistic statement—on top of many others of a
+similar kind—containing the report of the new Governor’s tour in the
+hinterland.[226] It seems that everything is for the best in the best
+of all possible worlds. The natives are delighted with everything, the
+hut-tax included. The fall in the exports (the true test of prosperity
+of a West African colony), which have been on the downward grade since
+the hut-tax was introduced, and were lower last year than they have been
+for twenty years (the year of the rebellion excepted), is accounted for
+by “want of activity on the part of native producers,” and to the action
+of the French. With regard to the latter, the French have for many years
+levied a tax upon native caravans crossing the frontier, and the rapid
+development and the judicious management of French Guinea have killed the
+transit trade which used to pass _viâ_ Freetown, and is now concentrated
+at Konakry. Yet, in view of French competition, the authorities deem it
+politic to keep up the tax and all the incidental expenses it involves.
+The caravan traffic with the far interior was doomed when the French
+secured the back country; and the revival of the complaint about taxing
+caravans strikes one as a little insincere for several reasons, and
+among them because, although it is natural that the natives of our
+Protectorate adjoining the French possession should be sorry to lose
+the profits they derived from the passage of caravans through their
+districts, and complain accordingly, no evidence has been adduced to
+show that the natives from the remoter hinterlands beyond the frontier,
+which, be it remembered, belong to France, are desirous of travelling
+all the way to Freetown to dispose of their products, when there are
+French factories quite as near where as good prices can be obtained for
+produce. It is curious, too, to contrast these explanations with other
+official assurances given out both in 1899 and 1900, that the country
+would soon recover from the hut-tax war and the export trade regain its
+normal dimensions. French competition is no new thing. To conclude, the
+export trade of Sierra Leone twenty years ago is given at £366,000 for an
+expenditure of £72,000: last year the expenditure was £173,457 including
+the railway expenses, and £154,210 minus the railway expenses. The
+expenditure has, therefore, excluding the railway expenses, increased by
+over 100 per cent. in the face of a decline in the producing power of the
+country. That is the road to financial ruin, and those concerned know it
+well enough; but until the British public makes up its mind to seriously
+tackle these West African questions, the few who say so will, no doubt,
+continue to be looked upon as pessimists, “sentimental theorists,” or
+fools, until the inevitable day of reckoning comes.
+
+
+
+
+PART V
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE CONCESSIONS _RÉGIME_ IN FRENCH CONGO
+
+    “What is important in colonial matters is that the Governments,
+    in their difficult and uncertain, but systematic, march, should
+    have increasingly before them the ideal which they proposed to
+    themselves, and which they never lose sight of in the darkest
+    nights, the star which shines in the heavens, and of which the
+    beams are justice and humanity.”—M. DÉCRAIS, Colonial Minister
+    in the Waldeck-Rousseau Cabinet.
+
+    “We even think that on account of the difficulty, of the
+    impossibility, in which the natives find themselves of making
+    known their feelings and expressing their grievances, the
+    interests of those natives should be the object of special
+    kindness and solicitude....
+
+    “Can we allow these natives to be subjected to the unbridled
+    exploitation, to the economical servitude with which they are
+    threatened? The exclusive right which the Concessionnaires
+    will arrogate to themselves of buying from the natives
+    living upon their concessions at such prices as they, the
+    Concessionnaires, choose to impose, the natural products of
+    the soil, or the harvest which their labour has produced, is
+    but a disguised form of slavery.... In conclusion, we can
+    but say that this Concession _régime_ is antagonistic to the
+    well-being, to the material and moral progress of our natives,
+    and to the responsibilities we have assumed in submitting them
+    to our domination.”—“Memorial” of the “French West African
+    Company”[227] to M. Décrais.
+
+
+By one of those extraordinary contradictions of which French history
+affords so many curious examples, liberty-loving France, with her
+splendid record in West Africa, having proved her capacity to
+successfully manage possessions in West Africa; numbering among her
+officials and merchants connected with West Africa men of the highest
+moral calibre, imbued with humanitarian instincts and earnest advocates
+of a sound native policy; has within the last few years sanctioned the
+institution of a _régime_ of territorial monopolies in the French Congo
+which has already led to deplorable occurrences, and cannot fail to cause
+still greater evils if permitted to continue. To explain all the phases
+of this grave departure from French traditions in West Africa would
+require a great deal more space than is here available. One can only give
+its origin, indicate its main lines and the events which have hitherto
+taken place in connection with it, and briefly discuss how it affects
+the general relationship of Western Europe with Western Africa and the
+interests of British subjects in the maritime zone of the French Congo.
+
+Some three years and a half ago the huge profits earned by certain
+rubber companies, so-called, in the Congo State; the enormous premiums
+at which their shares stood on the Antwerp Stock Exchange; the wild
+speculations which anything to do with Congo rubber gave rise to in
+Belgium; the colossal increase in the yearly output of rubber from the
+Congo State, which from a value of 260,000 francs in 1888 had risen to
+15,850,000 francs in 1898,[228] provoked in France—or, at any rate,
+among some influential Frenchmen, notably in Government circles—a desire
+that similar results should accrue in the French Congo. “Here,” ran the
+argument, “we have an immense territory as rich in forest products,
+notably rubber, as the Congo State, which is doing very little, which
+for years has been a drag upon the metropolis; while the Belgians—these
+new-comers in Africa, these tyros at tropical colonisation—are making
+fortunes every day. Why cannot we imitate them?” The feeling was
+thoroughly natural. Those who entertained it, however, forgot four
+things—three of which may at this stage be referred to—or, if they did
+not forget them, they at all events brushed them aside in the enthusiasm
+of the moment. They forgot the causes which had led to the comparative
+stagnation of French Congo on the one hand and the causes which were
+moulding a state of prosperity in the remaining French Colonies on the
+other. They forgot the political ambitions of the astutest diplomatist in
+Europe—the Sovereign of the Congo State. They forgot _how_ the inflated
+premiums, colossal profits, and the exaggerated production had been and
+were being brought about. If the latter point did present itself to the
+minds of a minority, it was assumed that, under a French administration,
+abuses such as those known to exist in the Congo State were impossible,
+and that results in every sense equal to those obtained in the Congo
+State could be secured in French Congo without them. Swayed by these
+considerations, the French Government and French Colonial public, with
+the exception of a handful of far-seeing and experienced men, sought to
+carry out the new programme without delay.
+
+King Leopold foresaw at once the danger and the opportunity; the danger
+if a sudden influx of French capital into French Congo should lead to the
+construction of a railway from the French coast-line to Brazzaville on
+the Upper Congo, to threaten the monopoly of traffic with the interior
+enjoyed by the Matadi-Stanley Pool railway; the necessity of averting it
+by placing the financial control of the French concessions in Belgian
+hands, whereby the construction of such a line could be delayed _ad
+infinitum_; and the double advantage of (1) fostering the movement in
+France, on account of the increased railway freight the development of
+the movement would bring for the existing Belgian line, to say nothing
+of the increased customs duties on goods and material for the French
+Upper Congo (whose only practical route was, of course, _viâ_ Congo
+State territory), which would accrue to the Congo State for the same
+reason; and (2) of securing for the small but influential Belgian group
+of which he is the supremely able leader a preponderating position in
+the possessions adjoining his own.[229] Gathering his financiers and
+co-partners in that vast Trust—which is called the Independent State
+of the Congo—King Leopold flung himself into the breach, and with such
+good effect that French Congo was in an incredibly short space of time
+partitioned on paper into some forty odd concessions of all shapes and
+dimensions, with nominal French heads, but with Belgians on the board of
+administration, a majority of Belgian shareholders behind, with Belgian
+capital either openly or in disguised form the controlling factor, with
+strings pulled in Belgium, ideas borrowed from Belgium, Belgian methods
+of tropical African development and Belgian methods of rigging the home
+markets writ large all over them.[230] With what consummate skill the
+Sovereign of the Congo State weaved his nets, flung them forth and
+landed his fish, only those who have had a glimpse of what has gone
+on behind the scenes can describe. It would make a curious story, and
+not an altogether savoury one, and perhaps some day it will be fully
+told.[231] The clever manipulating tactics of the king were only equalled
+by the infatuation, the heedlessness, the utter want of reflection which
+characterised the action of the French Government of the day and the
+noisiest section of the French Colonial party. A policy involving the
+most far-reaching consequences was suddenly adopted with, as a French
+writer of distinction has said, “une insouciance, une désinvolture
+presque criminelles.” Seemingly hypnotised, France plunged headlong
+into an abyss whence she is vainly seeking to emerge, and in which she
+has already soiled her hands, and as De Brazza rather nobly puts it,
+“compromised her dignity.”
+
+Meanwhile the French Congo Concessions are in being, and what has
+been the outcome up to the present after more than two years of the
+experiment? The promoters have done excellently well. Floating their
+concessions at absurd premiums on the Antwerp market, and coming on
+the crest of the rubber wave, they were able—not in all cases perhaps,
+but generally—to dispose of their holdings at substantial profits. The
+shareholders who imitated their example showed prescience, for, with the
+exception of two companies, there has not been one single transaction
+this year in the shares of forty-three of these companies which are still
+quoted in the Antwerp financial and Congo organs! Their paper, in fact,
+is unsaleable. Several of the companies have fizzled out. Those who
+have not been allowed to prey on the legitimate barter trade existing
+in the Maritime Zone are in more or less of a moribund condition, and
+after squandering their shareholders’ money have accomplished absolutely
+nothing. But what of the effect upon the country? Free trade in the
+Maritime Zone has disappeared, and with it the revenue it supplied to the
+Administration. The export trade has actually decreased. The finances are
+so gravely compromised that a loan of 10,000,000 francs is spoken of,
+and at one period last year there was not even available in the local
+treasury sufficient cash to pay the salaries of officials. All public
+works and improvements of any kind are, of course, suspended. The local
+Courts are kept busy with endless litigation between Concessionnaire
+Companies who accuse one another of poaching upon their respective
+preserves, the boundaries of none of which have, by the way, ever been
+delimited. There have been two native risings attended with considerable
+loss of life and destruction of property, and chaos reigns supreme. The
+Paris Colonial organs are filled with suggestions, exhortations, threats,
+revilings, but with the solitary exception of one Deputy[232]—M. le
+Comte d’Agoult—and a handful of courageous journalists, such as M. Jean
+Hess, the African explorer, and M. Serge Basset, of _La Revue_, no one
+of note in French Colonial circles has boldly tackled the subject, gone
+to the root of it, or preached the only possible solution. The fact that
+the affair has raised an international problem—or rather two—of great
+delicacy, may have something to do with the unwillingness to come to
+close quarters displayed by the leading organs of the French Press. But
+it is lamentable, in every sense of the word, that France with all her
+generous instincts should be able on this occasion to record but very few
+protesting voices against the fatal reversal of the wise and just native
+policy she has hitherto pursued in the main, and with such conspicuous
+success, in her other West African possessions.
+
+For it is in the relation it bears towards the natives that the
+concession _régime_ in French Congo offers the strongest ground for
+criticism. The saying that “evil communications corrupt good manners”
+was never more applicable than in this case. Once started on the road
+mapped out three years ago, subsequent events became inevitable. It
+would have needed a man of iron—and the warmest friends of the ex-French
+Colonial Minister, who was not the initiator, but the successor to a
+heritage of trouble, would not credit him with such proclivities—to have
+stemmed the tide and refused, even at the risk of resigning, to allow
+his country to be dragged along the path of reaction towards which the
+concession _régime_ infallibly tended. Step by step the French Government
+has found itself impelled to gravitate nearer to the Belgian conception.
+The Concessionnaires found English and German merchants trading
+peacefully with the natives on what they claimed, according to their
+contracts with the French Government, to be their own property. Disputes
+arose, seizures of produce took place, and it became increasingly urgent
+to define the “rights” of the concessionnaires. M. Décrais hung back
+a long time, but goaded by nearly all the Colonial and some of the
+daily newspapers, with constant pressure brought to bear upon him from
+influential quarters, he was fain at last to take the leap. He took it,
+and through the Governor of French Congo issued a decree (March 20,
+1901) as to which one can only say that, if a few years ago it had been
+predicted that a French Minister could have framed such a document, the
+prophecy would have earned the contemptuous unbelief of all Frenchmen, or
+foreigners acquainted with the part played by France in Western Africa.
+
+The decree declared that one idea dominated[233] the entire
+concession policy, viz. that the products of the soil belonged to the
+concessionnaires, who alone had a right to dispose of them, the natives
+not being entitled to sell them to any one but the concessionnaires. To
+tone down the arbitrary nature of this promulgation, mention was made
+of native reserves, where the natives would be free to do what they
+liked. But this apparent modification of the absolutism of the decree
+is entirely illusory for three reasons: (1) the area of the reserves
+was not delimited, and in view of the enormous difficulty and expense
+delimitation would involve, could not hope to be for many years to
+come; (2) a decision of the local courts had ordained that, pending
+delimitation of the reserves, the reserves were legally non-existent, and
+that the whole country was therefore exploitable by the concessionnaires;
+(3) an antecedent ministerial decree had announced that, when the
+reserves were delimited, the areas reserved should not include any land
+producing saleable products.[234] Whatever may have been the difficulties
+with which the French Colonial Minister was beset, the issue of the
+above decree cannot in equity be defended. It virtually handed over the
+population of French Congo to the mercy of European speculators, of
+Belgians grown fat on the misery and the degradation of the natives in
+the Congo State. It left the door open to the grossest abuses, the most
+cynical outrages against humanity. It let loose the tongues and pens
+of all the apostles of force and coercion for Africa. It reduced the
+natives to the level of servants and serfs of the greedy clique which had
+fastened its talons in the country, and it strengthened the position of
+the Congo State in Europe.
+
+Secure in the official recognition of their “rights,” the concessionnaire
+companies’ next move was precisely what might have been expected in view
+of the class of men controlling them. Legitimate commerce having no place
+in their calculations, they at once started a “campaign” for the purpose
+of forcing the French Government to coerce the natives into bringing
+rubber and other forest produce to their factories, on such terms as
+they, the concessionnaires, chose to pay for the labour expended by the
+natives in collecting it. While their subsidised organs daily devoted
+reams to prove that compulsion was essential in dealing with primitive
+peoples, their agents in Africa hastened, as far as possible, to put
+these principles into practice. Arms of precision were smuggled into
+the country, and soon the concessionnaires were attempting on a smaller
+scale to copy the exploits of their countrymen on the other side of the
+Congo River. _Facilis descensus Averni._ The agitation was partly met by
+the application of a hut-tax paid in kind, the produce to be handed in
+by the natives to the Government authorities, who would dispose of it
+to the concessionnaires at a nominal price; thus giving an appearance
+of legality to the transaction, and disguising coercion in the garb of
+administrative requirements. The Government having accomplished nothing
+whatever in the way of bettering the country, improving communication,
+or constructing public works from which the natives might be expected to
+derive some benefit, the hut-tax was naturally resented; its application
+in French Congo being, moreover, scientifically unsound, and only
+feasible of accomplishment by a long course of preparation. Grafted upon
+the action of the concessionnaires, the measure was followed by outbreaks
+in various directions, especially among the warlike Fans of the Ogowe and
+the Upper Sangha people.
+
+This new step on the part of the French Government stirred up for a time
+the opponents of the concessionnaire _régime_ in France. De Brazza sent
+a memorable protest to the _Temps_. Its concluding passage is well worth
+quoting:
+
+    “France has assumed a duty towards the native tribes (of French
+    Congo) who for twenty-seven years have lent their assistance
+    in the work of expansion. These people have received from us
+    the seal of their future liberties.... We must not sacrifice
+    them to the vain hope of immediate results by thoughtless
+    measures of coercion opposed to the generous ideas which our
+    flag personifies. We should be committing a great mistake to
+    discount that result, by enforcing at the present time taxes
+    upon the products of the soil, or by compelling the natives to
+    work in the form of forced labour or military service. It would
+    constitute a great blow to our dignity if such labour and such
+    taxes were converted into a sort of draft-to-order in favour of
+    the concessionnaires.... It is to recall these considerations
+    to men’s minds, and to avoid the moral bankruptcy to which
+    economic and financial disasters may lead us, that I have
+    emerged from the reserve I had imposed upon myself.”[235]
+
+Just then, too, one of the very few genuine French concerns among the
+concessionnaire companies, managed by a Frenchman distinguished for his
+explorations in the country, M. Fondère, wrote publicly to the Colonial
+Minister, abandoning his concession:
+
+    “Experience has convinced us,” he wrote, “that, notwithstanding
+    any modifications of detail which your department might
+    suggest, either in the administrative organisation of the Congo
+    Colony or in the agreement between the Government and the
+    Concessionnaires, the exclusive monopoly of the concessions is
+    a vain epithet. The right to sell his products to whomsoever
+    he may please cannot be denied to the native, because he has
+    always possessed it. Moreover, all stipulations to the contrary
+    notwithstanding, it would be quite illusory to think of taking
+    this right away from the native. That could only be done by
+    force of arms.”
+
+Shortly afterwards, M. Albert Cousin, also a well-known man in French
+Colonial circles, who had previously been a warm defender of the
+concessions _régime_, published a pamphlet to the effect that he had
+changed his mind, and was now convinced the experiment was a mistaken
+one.[236]
+
+These repeated blows staggered for a moment the defenders of the
+Belgian conception in France. The newspaper which had the most largely
+contributed to influence French Colonial opinion even went so far as to
+admit that it could not but be “very much impressed by the new ideas
+which are coming to light.” The ideas are not new. They are as old as the
+hills. They date back from the time when man, evolving from the brute,
+became a law-maker, and decided that certain fixed principles of morality
+should form the basis of social order.
+
+That temporary hesitation offered a great opportunity for French
+statesmanship, but no one came forward to enforce the lesson. And so the
+powerful influences which had been at work from the first set themselves
+to destroy the “impression” created. They partially succeeded, but they
+could not destroy it altogether, and I rather fancy it is becoming more
+pronounced and will eventually carry the day. One factor, at any rate, is
+likely to assist its growth not a little—the extravagant demands of the
+concessionnaires and the violent attacks on the French Government on the
+part of the Belgian organs devoted to the interests of their compatriots
+in French Congo. The institution of the hut-tax was merely a sop. It
+staved off the clamour for a time, but in the nature of things could not
+last for long. To feed the army of concessionnaires with the proceeds
+of a hut-tax an army of native levies is required. That is what the
+concessionnaires claim must be organised, and once more the same strings
+are being pulled, the same arguments put forward, the same machinery set
+in motion. The French Government must do what the Congo State has done.
+It must raise 15,000 or 20,000 men, arm them with weapons of precision
+and turn them loose upon the population in order to enforce a tribute
+on the yield of which the concessionnaires shall not only live but run
+their shares up to high premiums, present respectable dividends to their
+Belgian holders, and generally make money at the expense of the natives
+of the French Congo, using the French Government as a sort of decoy-duck
+the while. I doubt if it will work. I fancy King Leopold and his friends
+are going rather too far. But one thing at least is certain. Either the
+concessionnaires, who know nothing of trade and are not concerned with
+mere matter-of-fact commercial considerations, who have never looked
+upon commerce as an element in their “business,” will themselves be
+compelled to throw up the sponge; or they will compel in one shape or
+another the French Government to give them physical means to establish
+slavery in the French Congo, as it has been established in the Congo
+State. To suppose the latter is almost an impossibility, notwithstanding
+all that has happened, and it is perhaps not displaying too great an
+optimism to hope that the concession _régime_ in French Congo may perish
+from its own internal corruption. Meanwhile it remains to be seen how
+that _régime_ has affected and continues to affect British interests,
+and the part it plays in the international situation created by the
+proceedings of the Congo State.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+INTERNATIONAL INTERESTS AND MONOPOLY
+
+    “As to the ground on which we contend for the rights we have in
+    the interior of Africa, they have really been our own guiding
+    principles throughout. _It is not territory, it is freedom
+    of trade_, and on that ground we are strong and shall do our
+    very utmost.”—Extract from a speech by LORD SALISBURY to a
+    deputation of Chambers of Commerce, 1898.
+
+    Speaking at Manchester in 1884, Sir H. M. Stanley prophesied,
+    as a result of the creation of the Congo State, an export
+    of British cotton goods to the Congo State of £26,000,000
+    annually. According to the same speaker, one firm on the Congo
+    River alone imported, in 1879, British goods to the value
+    of £185,000. After seventeen years’ existence, the _total_
+    imports of British goods to the Congo State is far below that
+    figure—viz. £133,200 in 1901!
+
+    The importance of British trade interests in French West
+    Africa may be estimated from the fact that in 1900 the French
+    possessions absorbed British goods to the value of £709,900,
+    and sent £534,727 of produce to British ports.
+
+
+In the _cahier de charges_ or agreements between the French Government
+and the Concessionnaire Companies the latter were held to respect the
+“acquired rights of third parties,” and the “general rights created by
+the Berlin Act.” Who were the “third parties”? What were their “acquired
+rights?” What were the “general rights created by the Berlin Act”?
+
+When in the early part of the nineteenth century the European nations
+put a stop to the export slave trade, Great Britain, having led the way
+in securing this reform, entered into treaties with most of the chiefs
+and head-men along the West Coast, giving some of them subsidies and, by
+means of consular and naval visitations, encouraging them to give their
+attention to the gathering of their forest products for sale to Europeans
+in exchange for the merchandise of Europe. In this way the trade in
+palm-oil was stimulated in the Niger Delta and Windward Coast; whilst in
+Gaboon it took the shape of barwood, ebony and ivory, and in the River
+Congo palm-oil and ivory. At that time there was no European Government
+established on the African coast between the Gold Coast and Ambriz. The
+Europeans who settled along the coast traded from their vessels. After
+the introduction of steam, the European traders (chiefly British) traded
+in hulks in the Niger Delta, and built houses and stores at various
+points along the whole coast-line down to Ambriz. Small sailing vessels
+plied between these trading places and the terminus of the ocean steamers
+(then Fernando Po, or Cameroons), and sailing vessels from Europe sailed
+regularly to and fro, bringing their goods and taking home their cargoes
+of vegetable and animal products. Soon after the establishment of steam
+the French Government made a treaty with the chiefs of the Gaboon River,
+by which ground was ceded for a coaling station for the French men-of-war
+then plying on the African coast to put down the foreign slave trade.
+Shortly afterwards, an American citizen established in Fernan Vaz
+discovered a vine, of which the sap, when exposed to the atmosphere, was
+found to yield india rubber, and in course of time this new industry was
+fairly started and gradually spread over the adjoining territory. It was
+a slow process, but in a few years the gathering of rubber became general
+in that part of the coast, and in Gaboon the French naval officers saw
+that there was a trade to be taxed, and forthwith a Custom House was
+built and duties placed on imports.
+
+When British merchants first established themselves in Gaboon the
+political authority of the French Government was confined to the Gaboon
+River estuary, and the up-river trade was carried on at our merchants’
+personal risk. In order to induce the natives to collect rubber, European
+traders had perforce to let the natives have goods on credit, as those
+natives near the coast had to go far into the interior to buy from other
+natives; who, in their turn, had to be given credit wherewith to buy from
+natives still farther inland, and induce them to seek the vines and make
+the rubber. In this way the credit system, as it exists to-day, was
+created.
+
+In the pursuit of this rubber trade, fostered by British merchants,
+the natives of Gaboon, crossing their country to the South, struck the
+Ogowe River, which gave them easy access to a wide field from which to
+collect produce. In course of time the European traders followed the
+natives across country, and meeting the river,[237] lost no time in
+tracing its course to the sea and at once establishing sea communication
+between Gaboon and the Ogowe. Their example was imitated by the French
+Government, and in due course possession was taken by France of the Ogowe
+and Fernan Vaz; but when at Berlin the Governments of Europe settled
+who were to become the owners of the Congo and the adjoining maritime
+territories, France had, in point of fact, no political influence south
+of Fernan Vaz. This expansion of Gaboon was initiated by British and
+German enterprise, French white traders coming in after the pioneer
+work was accomplished. When 2° 30´ of South latitude was fixed as the
+northern boundary of the free-trade zone, it was expected that that line
+would include within it the trade of Sette Camma, the trade of which
+was British and German entirely. The Chambers of Commerce of Liverpool
+and Manchester set forth these facts at the time: before the treaty was
+made, and when urging the principle of free trade within the zone fixed
+by treaty, no idea was in the mind either of the traders, the Chambers
+of Commerce, or the representatives of the various Governments concerned
+in the making of the Berlin Treaty, other than that the freedom of
+trade therein referred to applied to the only known trade in existence,
+viz. the collection and sale by the natives of the vegetable and other
+products of their country in exchange for European merchandise. Any
+legislation, therefore, of which the effect is to alienate the rights of
+the natives to collect the produce of their country, and to dispose of
+those products freely to whomsoever they wish, is a direct violation of
+the principles of equitable treatment towards the natives which animated
+the Conference and the rights of the signatory Powers of that Conference.
+
+It is then perfectly clear (1) that the “third parties” mentioned in
+the _cahier de charges_ were the European merchants who had created the
+existing trade of the French Congo, the taxes upon which supplied the
+local administration with funds for purposes of revenue; (2) that the
+“acquired rights” of those merchants consisted in the right to continue
+their trade, the freedom of which was guaranteed under the Berlin Act;
+(3) that the “general rights created by the Berlin Act” were, on the one
+part, the rights of the natives (“whose moral and material well-being”
+the contracting Powers to the Berlin Act bound themselves to “care for”)
+to their land and the produce thereof; and, on the other part, the
+rights of each of the signatory Powers to ensure that the principles of
+the Berlin Act were not violated by any one of the parties to that Act.
+The way in which the rights of the natives are “cared for” under the
+concessions _régime_ was dealt with in the last chapter. It remains to be
+said to what usage the “acquired rights” of the merchants trading in the
+country have been subjected.
+
+Two of the most important firms trading in the French Congo at the time
+of the issue of the Decree of Concessions (March 1899) were British.[238]
+They were among the very first to open up the country to trade, their
+representatives had always been law-abiding citizens under the French
+flag; they had ever worked harmoniously with the French officers, who
+from time to time had sought their assistance in developing this or
+that district, had asked them to send their native traders into such and
+such a region, and generally encouraged them in every way to promote
+and extend the area of their trading operations. In the course of over
+a quarter of a century’s trade in the country the British firms had
+contributed large sums to the local revenue, and had cheerfully paid
+the enormous differential customs tariffs levied upon British goods,
+the taxes, the licences, the duties of all sorts affecting the various
+branches of their businesses prescribed by the law of the land. Their
+standing was, of course, well known to the French Government, and in a
+secret letter of instructions[239] communicated to the concessionnaires
+by the French Colonial Minister, the former were required to pledge
+themselves “to leave entire latitude for two years to the existing
+foreign firms for all the commercial undertakings which they may perform
+in the territory conceded” to them; and further, that they should
+propose to the said foreign firms at the end of the two years, and in
+the event of difficulties arising with the latter, to buy up their
+establishments. The pledge was duly given. But it was not carried out.
+The French Government, finding itself incapable of compelling obedience,
+allowed the matter to slide, and was brought by successive stages in
+the development of affairs to the issue of the Decree of March 26, 1901
+(mentioned in the previous chapter), which declared, as has already been
+stated, that the products of the soil—that is to say, the only medium
+of trade in the country—belonged exclusively to the concessionnaires,
+and that the natives were not free to dispose of them to any one but
+the concessionnaires. The “acquired rights of third parties,” and the
+rights of the natives, had gone by the board; the rights of England as a
+signatory Power of the Berlin Act had been infringed; and the Act itself
+had been violated in one of its most essential articles, viz. Article V.,
+which says that “no Power which exercises, or shall exercise, sovereign
+rights in the above-mentioned regions shall be allowed to grant therein
+a monopoly or favour of any kind in matters of trade.”
+
+To describe the series of outrages[240] perpetrated by the agents of the
+Belgian groups, masquerading as French patriots, upon our merchants which
+took place during the two years that the Concessionnaire Companies had
+bound themselves to allow “entire latitude” to the firms trading in the
+country; the protests of our merchants, who were never informed by the
+French authorities that their _locus standi_ had become modified; who
+continued on the one hand to pay customs dues on their imports, licences
+for the factories and native traders, while forcibly prevented, under the
+eyes of the same authorities and with their tacit assent, from disposing
+of their goods to natives against produce; the expostulations of Sir
+Edmund Monson, our Ambassador in Paris; the promises of M. Décrais which
+were never fulfilled; the actions at law brought by our merchants at
+great expense in the Congo to test the legality of the concessionnaires’
+proceedings; the deputation of nine Chambers of Commerce to Lord
+Lansdowne; the upholding of the concessionnaires’ claim by the local
+courts, whose judgments as _Le Temps_ (which has pleaded, together with
+one or two other French papers,[241] for justice to our merchants) has
+pointed out, was based not upon law, but upon the Decree of March 1901,
+which the judges could not go beyond; the persecution of our merchants
+by the concessionnaires for purchasing produce from their concessions on
+the strength of the said judgment; the infliction of heavy fines upon
+our merchants; the entire stoppage of their trade; the seizure of their
+produce at African ports and even at a French port;[242] the evacuation
+of our merchants which is now proceeding; the renewed representations
+of British Chambers to the Foreign Office; above all, the unaccountable
+lethargy of the British Government,[243] and, with one or two honourable
+exceptions,[244] the indifference of the British Press—to adequately
+describe these things would require a couple of chapters at least.
+
+The position to-day is this, that from the greater part of the Ogowe
+Basin, which alone is unaffected by the Berlin and Brussels Acts, being
+outside the Conventional Basin of the Congo, our merchants have been
+expelled, without a penny compensation. In the Conventional Basin of
+the Congo, where—as in the Ogowe—our merchants have been established
+for upwards of twenty years; where their rights to trade freely with
+the natives are solemnly guaranteed by International Treaties, British
+subjects are being expelled, not only without compensation but with
+ignominy and insult, after suffering heavy losses; the trade which they
+brought into being ruined, the trading stations they have built deserted,
+themselves arbitrarily removed from regions where they have laboured for
+so long.[245]
+
+It is a shameful, a discreditable episode. But if it be true that
+out of evil good may come, there is still some hope that out of the
+treatment—treatment which to those who know all the details is beyond
+the reach of Parliamentary language to characterise—meted out to British
+merchants in the French Congo may come the liberation of the peoples of
+the Congo State from the Belgian yoke, and an international understanding
+binding upon the Powers whereby a rational, common-sense, and just
+native policy may be mutually agreed upon, and the vast region of the
+Congo Basin thrown open to the legitimate commerce of all nations. The
+movement against monopoly based upon force in West Africa; against the
+evil which King Leopold has sown; against the follies as well as the
+horrors which that evil has engendered, is growing apace. The expulsion
+of British subjects from French Congo may yet serve as the lever whereby
+the edifice of fraud and greed and cruelty reared by Africa’s self-styled
+“regenerator” may be overthrown. And the reason is this.
+
+The British Government has for years been pressed to inquire into
+the doings of the Congo States upon humanitarian grounds. The German
+Government, the Governments of the United States and of France have
+been similarly approached. None of them have taken definite steps in
+the direction desired. The chief reasons in the case of England, France
+and Germany are probably three. First, international rivalries in the
+partition of Africa and the political ambitions which those rivalries
+have begotten. By a combination of circumstances of which King Leopold
+took full advantage, the Sovereign of the Congo State has been able
+to intrigue first with France against England (1892-94), with England
+against France (1894), with France against England (1897-99). When
+the expedition of Major Marchand—who would never have reached Fashoda
+but for the reinforcements in men, ammunition and stores despatched to
+him over the Congo Railway, through Congo State territory—was seen to
+be a political failure, King Leopold turned fawning upon England, and
+attempted to gain our consent to his appropriation of the Bahr-el-Ghazal.
+With his usual astuteness he endeavoured to strengthen his diplomacy
+at the Court of St. James by securing, meanwhile, a _fait accompli_ in
+Africa. In this he failed, mainly through journalistic enterprise in
+exposing his carefully laid plans (that also, by the way, would make an
+interesting little story). After the Fashoda episode King Leopold was
+again pro-British for a short time, until he became once more France’s
+good friend, and plunged the French Congo into chaos. In the interval
+of acting honest broker to England and France alternately, he has tried
+to play Germany off against England in sundry matters, such as the
+Trans-African railway scheme. So much for international rivalries on the
+Western Central African field, in which the Sovereign of the Congo State
+has held most of the trumps. To these must, of course, be added other
+rivalries on a wider field amongst the Powers in question, which tended
+still farther to paralyse all useful, disinterested and combined action
+for humanitarian ends in the Congo. The second reason is dynastic. King
+Leopold is connected with the Royal Families of England and Germany.
+Only those who are in Court secrets know the exact extent to which
+the Sovereign of the Congo State has profited by that, to him, happy
+circumstance. It has, undeniably, been considerable. The third reason is
+the self-imposed halo of sanctity with which the public press has been
+gulled for years by the happy knack of attributing abuses of a more than
+usually flagrant character to individual wrongdoing of agents—a plea used
+again and again with never-failing results. To these reasons—there are
+others, no doubt, and two of them are briefly touched upon in the next
+chapter—are mainly due the failure of the Powers to fulfil their duties
+under the Berlin Act _upon humanitarian grounds_.
+
+But now an altogether different aspect of the Congo problem has sprung
+up. So far the Stokes affair[246] has alone provided what might be termed
+a _material_ cause of complaint against the Congo State. The effect
+of this outrage was modified by renewed international rivalries which
+occurred shortly afterwards, and even the subsequent appointment of Major
+Lothaire as Managing Director in Africa for one of the “Companies” in
+which the Congo State holds 50 per cent. of the shares, and of which King
+Leopold appoints the agents, failed to exercise the influence which,
+but for the international rivalries aforesaid, it would otherwise have
+wielded. But the horizon has cleared of late. The scramble for Africa is
+over. The Powers are beginning to think seriously of the immense problems
+which beset them in Tropical Western Africa. And it is precisely at this
+turning-point, as it were, in European policy in Western Africa that the
+material side of the question has risen. England and Germany have both
+in their respective ways been sharply confronted with the Nemesis of
+their past indifference to the repeated violation of the Berlin Act by
+the Congo State. Germany has seen her ivory trade in German East Africa
+disappear, her protected natives driven out of Congo State territory,
+forbidden to purchase ivory or produce of any kind from the natives on
+the Congo side of the German Congo State frontier, because by the laws
+of the Congo State every product of the forest, whether vegetable or
+animal—when either is of intrinsic value—belongs not to the native owner
+of that forest, whose ownership the State does not recognise, but to the
+State itself. England has seen her merchants expelled from the French
+Congo by an extension of the system of territorial monopolies involving
+absolute rights over the products of the soil, inaugurated by the Congo
+State in 1892. The Belgian conception has thrived upon the Powers’ _non
+possumus_. The African cancer has attacked both banks of the Congo, and
+wherever spreads the fell disease, liberty, legitimate commerce, free
+trade, alike for white man and black, disappear.
+
+The Belgian conception of development in Tropical Western Africa is
+observed a little late in the day to have another side to it. It is not
+now merely an institution for earning dividends and reducing the African
+population. It stands forth as a menace to all legitimate European
+interests in West Africa. What England and Germany could not agree to
+do when humanitarian considerations alone were in question, they can no
+longer ignore with safety to their interests in Africa. The tentacles of
+the Belgian octopus are flung wider and wider, French Congo, Fernando Po,
+the Muni Territory, Dahomey, the Ivory Coast and South West Abyssinia
+are all alike either threatened, or victims to the insidious embrace
+which breeds death and devastation to the natives of Africa.[247] The
+treatment of our merchants in French Congo has given a fresh impetus, and
+an added motive, to the demand of public opinion that the Congo State
+shall be called to the bar of international inquiry; for if the expulsion
+of British subjects from a region solemnly declared internationally free
+commercial land, necessitates specific action on the part of the British
+Government in the form of a request for arbitration, which is the line I
+have reason to believe our Government has taken, there remains the larger
+question behind—the question of the violation of the Berlin Act by the
+Congo State, originator of the new African slavery. The Upas-tree has
+thrown up a new sucker, and although the fresh growth may be removed,
+no permanent good will ensue unless the tree itself be rooted up and
+destroyed. The whole scheme, the _raison d’être_, the entire future of
+European action in Tropical Western Africa is involved in this question.
+If the Governments are still slow in realising it, the people are not.
+
+The well-informed press of England and of Germany is unanimous in
+calling upon the British and German Governments to act in combination
+for the suppression of the monopolistic _régime_ in West Africa, and
+its fountain-head the Congo State. The German Colonial Society, with
+its 32,000 members, has held two great meetings for this purpose, and
+has passed resolutions of the most emphatic kind, and at the same
+time is using its considerable influence to ensure that in the two
+Cameroons concessions engineered at the same time as the French Congo
+concessions and by the same means, trade shall be unrestricted and the
+native free to dispose of his products, to whomsoever he will.[248]
+In that respect, Germany is trying her best to undo an initial error,
+committed under false advice, and the full consequences of which are
+now understood. In England, we are witnessing a happy alliance of
+genuine philanthropy, of scientific knowledge, and of commerce united
+in a common aim, testifying to the fact that there never has been a
+question of African politics where morality and practicability are so
+closely entwined,[249] and if the British Press as a whole still lags
+behind, it is only fair to remember that England has but just emerged
+from a great war which has absorbed for three years the energies of
+the country. Indeed, when all the circumstances are considered, we
+should perhaps be thankful for the amount of attention which the Press
+has given to the subject, while maintaining the view that, in the
+specific matter of the treatment of our merchants in French Congo, it
+has displayed singular lack of foresight. In the United States signs
+are not wanting that the special responsibility incurred by America,
+which first recognised the International _status_ of the International
+African Association—subsequently the Congo State—is beginning, now
+that the policy of the State is better known, to weigh with thoughtful
+Americans, who for many reasons ought not to disinterest themselves
+from West African affairs; and President Roosevelt has been appealed
+to, to co-operate with other of the signatory Powers of the Berlin Act
+to bring about a new Conference. It is to be hoped that the appeal will
+be heard. America’s position is such that she can act in this matter
+without a suspicion of selfish motive, and the importance of her moral
+support at this juncture cannot be over-estimated. In France, it may
+safely be asserted that the _élite_ of the French official element in
+West Africa is entirely opposed to the monopolistic conception,[250]
+that the most powerful French merchant firms are profoundly and
+anxiously antagonistic, and that with few exceptions the best-informed
+French writers on West African affairs and French local explorers (Mr.
+Chevalier, for instance) are dead against it. How, then, can we account
+for what has occurred? Very easily, I think. A grave mistake has been
+committed. It is recognised, not always publicly, on nearly all sides
+in France. But the French Government hesitates to admit it, and the
+incident of the British merchants intensifies the difficulty. Every
+French Government dreads the parrot-cry of being too friendly to the
+English, and no one knows better than Lord Lansdowne how that permanent
+feature in French politics hampers French statesmen. The influence behind
+the concessionnaires is still strong. They have still the majority of
+the French Colonial Press on their side—for reasons which need not be
+too closely inquired into; and King Leopold’s personal influence in
+Government circles (which he takes every opportunity of strengthening,
+witness, for instance, the despatch of a special envoy of welcome to
+President Loubet on his return from Russia), is still conspicuous,
+as every diplomatist in Europe knows. The truth is that the French
+Government is marking time. The next few months will be crucial ones in
+the history of the concession experiment. The concessionnaires will make
+a supreme effort to justify their existence, and to force the Government
+to raise a large standing army in the Congo to coerce the natives into
+collecting rubber. If they fail, the Government may begin to gently
+remind them that they have fulfilled none of the terms of the _cahiers de
+charge_, and if England and Germany can succeed in coming to a definite
+understanding between themselves and the United States, France may be
+only too glad to fall back upon a joint Conference as the best way out
+of the _impasse_ into which her so-called friends, the Belgians, have
+plunged her.
+
+It is possible that this forecast errs on the side of optimism, and, in
+any case, it is but too obvious that the monopolists are very strong
+and have great wealth and influence at their back. Meanwhile all those
+to whom the continuation and growth of the Belgian conception in Africa
+appears as a virulent disease spreading wherever it can obtain a
+foothold, and to be fought without pause or rest, can best be fulfilling
+what they conceive to be their duty, by throwing more and more light upon
+the proceedings of the Congo State.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+THE HISTORY OF THE CONGO STATE
+
+    “At the present time the body called the International
+    Association—however startling it may appear to you—is
+    invulnerable and unassailable. All the armies in the world
+    could not reach it. It is impalpable, intangible as air. I call
+    it Benevolence, Charity, Philanthropy—the Spirit of Peace,
+    good-will to all men—Progress. It is here amongst you to-night
+    ... It eludes your armies, it mocks your best efforts; at a
+    whisper it has disappeared and you cannot recall it.... The
+    founders of the International Association have been called
+    dreamers.... Men understand, or think they do, why a George
+    Peabody should invest hundreds of thousands in model lodgings,
+    or a Josiah Mason in an Institute.... They can understand also
+    why an entire nation spent £20,000,000 to free the slaves in
+    the West Indies.... Though they understand the satisfaction
+    of a sentiment when applied to England, they are slow to
+    understand that it may be a sentiment that induced King Leopold
+    II. to father the International Association. He is a dreamer
+    like his _confrères_ in the work, because the sentiment is
+    applied to the neglected millions of the Dark Continent. They
+    cannot appreciate rightly, _because there are no dividends
+    attaching to it_, this restless, ardent, vivifying, and
+    expansive sentiment which seeks to extend civilising influences
+    among the dark races, and to brighten up with the glow of
+    civilisation the dark places of sad-browed Africa.”—Sir H. M.
+    STANLEY at the London Chamber of Commerce, September 19, 1884.
+
+    “Tous les pouvoirs émanent du Souverain qui les exerce par
+    lui-même ou par ses délégués. Il consulte s’il le juge bon le
+    Conseil Supérieur siégeant à Bruxelles. Il prend en personne
+    les mesures les plus importantes.... Le Souverain manifeste sa
+    volonté sous la forme de décrets contresignés par le Secrétaire
+    d’Etat....”—M. A. J. WAUTERS, “L’Etat Indépendant du Congo,”
+    chap. xxxii., “Pouvoir législatif,” p. 433.
+
+
+Legends die hard. The legend which attributes to King Leopold of Belgium
+and the Congo State a philanthropic motive in African affairs is still
+alive among us, although not quite to the extent that it used to be. It
+would have died long ago but for two causes, the misstatements indulged
+in by two or three well-known Englishmen and the apparent failure of the
+British Press, as a whole, to comprehend the _fons et origo mali_ which
+is raising up such terrible future complications for Europe in Central
+Africa. Upon occasion one is tempted to think—and the supposition
+is strengthened by such articles as that which the _Times_ recently
+devoted to the Congo annexation debate in the Belgian Chamber—that the
+curious omission to come to close quarters with the subject proceeds
+not so much from inability to see things as they really are, as from an
+unwillingness to criticise the Sovereign of the Congo State himself.
+Personalities are held to be bad form, especially where Royalty is
+concerned. If that be, indeed, the real explanation of the whitewashing
+of the Congo State which finds favour in many quarters, there is nothing
+to prevent the process from going on indefinitely. I maintain that it
+is utterly impossible to arrive at the truth, if the king’s personal
+responsibility in the maladministration of the Congo State is to be
+perpetually shelved. Why should it be? The administrative _régime_ of the
+State, as M. Cattier has truly said, is an “absolute despotism.” No one
+who is acquainted with that _régime_ believes for a moment that a Van
+Eetvelde, a Droogmans, a Liebrechts or a Cuvelier exist for any purpose
+than that of carrying out the king’s instructions and superintending
+the routine work which those instructions entail. King Leopold is sole
+master, and must bear the responsibility for the _sequelæ_ of measures
+which he himself has initiated and, through his agents, caused to be
+applied. The king has openly and repeatedly claimed for himself this
+position before the world. He has posed, and continues to pose, as the
+regenerator of the African. He has put it on record, in a letter to
+his agents, that “his only programme is the work of moral and material
+regeneration.” He has written of the “results achieved” by the Congo
+State as being due “to the concentration of all my efforts in one field
+of action.” He has, throughout, loudly insisted upon the purity and
+unselfishness of his intentions. Adverse comment has been dismissed by
+him with a loftiness of tone, a simulated consciousness of high purpose,
+a dignified picturesqueness of expression from which it is impossible
+to withhold a meed of admiration, as in the case of a play repugnant to
+one’s sentiments but yet so excellently rendered that objection to the
+theme cannot blind one to the art of the performers. “My aim throughout
+life has been to find the truth and make the truth known to others. I
+have often been misunderstood and misrepresented, but we must not be
+discouraged; let us ever go forward in the path of duty, striving to let
+the light shine forth.” It cannot be a subject of complaint on the part
+of his Majesty or his Majesty’s friends if, under these circumstances, we
+take the Sovereign of the Congo State at his word; if we recognise that
+in the management of the affairs of the Congo State he has adopted to the
+uttermost the proud assertion of Louis XIV.: “_L’Etat: c’est moi_”; if,
+making due note that his declared policy has been the regeneration of the
+African Negro—a policy in the execution of which he shuns not publicity
+but only desires light and truth—we judge his acts and the consequences
+of those acts from the standpoint he himself has laid down.
+
+It is essential for our purpose to give an historical retrospect of the
+events which preceded the General Act of Berlin in 1885.
+
+On September 12, 1876, King Leopold held a conference in Brussels to
+consider the best means which could be devised in order to open up
+Central Africa to European civilisation. The “barbarism” of Africa
+had already begun to perturb his Majesty, who was careful to place on
+record the absolute disinterestedness of his intentions. Addressing the
+assembled scientists and explorers,[251] King Leopold spoke thus: “Is it
+necessary for me to say that in inviting you to Brussels I have not been
+guided by egotism? No, gentlemen, if Belgium is small, Belgium is happy
+and content with her lot, ... but I should be pleased to think that this
+civilising movement had been inaugurated from Brussels.” The outcome of
+this conference was an “International Association for the exploration and
+civilisation of Central Africa.” Its professed objects were exploration,
+together with the establishment of sundry centres where explorers of all
+nationalities might refit. Committees for the collection of funds were
+to be established in all the countries represented,[252] and an Executive
+Committee appointed in Brussels to manage the funds. King Leopold, who
+from the commencement was pursuing his own ends—as he clearly showed
+later—saw to it that the Belgian Committee should be in the forefront of
+the subscribers, and to such good purpose that ere long the Association
+came to be looked upon as a Belgian Organisation.
+
+The association first of all directed its efforts towards the East
+Coast of Africa; but when Stanley arrived home in January 1878, after
+having discovered the course of the Congo, the necessity of a change of
+policy became obvious. The king speedily secured Stanley’s services,
+a “Committee of Studies” for the Upper Congo was formed, and Colonel
+Strauch was despatched to the Congo as a representative of both the
+association and the committee of studies. Meanwhile King Leopold’s
+ambitions were slowly maturing, and the theory of an African State in
+which he would be the representative head was already shaping itself
+in his Majesty’s mind. In a letter which he wrote to Stanley, Colonel
+Strauch suggested the formation “of an independent confederacy of free
+negroes, the king, to whom the conception and the creation of such a
+confederacy would be due, to be president thereof.” “Our enterprise,”
+continued Colonel Strauch, “does not tend to the creation of a Belgian
+Colony, but to the establishment of a powerful _negro kingdom_.” This
+idea appears to have been sedulously fostered by Colonel Strauch among
+the European traders established in the Lower Congo, with results which
+afterwards became apparent. Whether it was put forward as a blind or
+not it is difficult to say. Anyhow, Stanley knocked it on the head.
+About this time France and Portugal began to evince uneasiness at the
+somewhat exclusive complexion which the association and the committee
+were beginning to assume, and there ensued a long intrigue in which
+the principal actors were Stanley and De Brazza. De Brazza forestalled
+Stanley on the right bank of the Congo, and Stanley checkmated De
+Brazza on the left bank above Stanley Pool. Portugal, whose explorers
+discovered the Congo’s mouth in 1484,[253] whose treaties with the
+natives undoubtedly possessed greater validity than those concluded by
+the association’s agents, and who still retained commercial interests
+in the region, now became thoroughly alarmed, and endeavoured, with the
+assistance of Great Britain, to make good her claims. On February 26,
+1884, a Convention was signed between Great Britain and Portugal, the
+practical effect of which would have been to put a stop to the expansion
+of the Association in the interior. The Convention was attacked at home
+and abroad; abroad, from various motives, including the fear that Great
+Britain’s political influence on the Congo would become paramount; at
+home, because, by the terms of the Convention, the right of Portugal to
+impose a moderate import tariff was recognised, and it was feared that
+this recognition might lead later on to the application of differential
+tariffs to which Portugal was wedded, and because the British Chambers
+of Commerce and the British Press were deluded as to the real nature of
+the International Association, which represented itself as devoted to
+free-trade principles. The Convention was opposed by European merchants
+in the Congo for the same reasons, backed by the belief that the aims
+of the Association tended towards the maintenance and strengthening of
+native rule, which the community of mercantile West African interests
+well knows to be the best guarantee of the development of legitimate
+trade.
+
+The Convention was by mutual consent abandoned. Its abandonment was
+preceded by a remarkable event, viz. the recognition by the United
+States of the Association[254] as a friendly State. The king, aided by
+Stanley, who was still at that time, I believe, an American subject, had
+played his cards cleverly with General Henry S. Sandford (subsequently
+one of the two American representatives at the Berlin Conference), and
+the declaration sent by the former to the United States Government, in
+which he stated that “the International Association of the Congo hereby
+declares that by treaties with the legitimate sovereigns in the basins of
+the Congo and of the Niadi-Kwilu, and in adjacent territories upon the
+Atlantic, there has been ceded to it territory for the use and benefit of
+Free States established and being established,” appears to have exercised
+a considerable influence. The “Free States” appealed to American
+sentiment.[255] Needless to say, the one thing that has not been created
+in any shape or form in the Congo is freedom either for native States,
+or native institutions, or European trade,[256] and how General Sandford
+could have been deceived to the extent of penning the above despatch,
+in view of the emphatic manner in which Stanley had rejected Colonel
+Strauch’s suggestion in 1878 (which presumably General Sandford had in
+his mind, although six years had passed since it was made), it is hard to
+understand. The American recognition of the new status of the association
+was followed by Bismarck’s suggestion of a conference of the Powers, in
+order to set at rest the rivalries which had arisen in the Congo Basin.
+The conference first met in November 1884, and subsequently in February
+1885. Largely influenced by the decision of the United States, the Powers
+authorised their representatives to follow the lead of the American
+Government, and on August 1, 1885, King Leopold had the inexpressible
+satisfaction of notifying the Powers that the association would be
+henceforth known as the Congo Free State, and himself as the Sovereign
+of that State. In this manner was the evolution of King Leopold from a
+pure philanthropist to the ruler of a million square miles of territory
+in Central Africa accomplished. The king, argue his admirers, had come
+to see that patriotism was a duty greater even than philanthropy. The
+practical had outweighed the ideal. Very well; but as we study the next
+stage in this royal metamorphosis, let those who follow us remember
+the memorable words spoken in 1876 before the assembled scientists and
+explorers in Brussels: “Is it necessary for me to say that, in inviting
+you to Brussels, I have not been guided by egotism? No, gentlemen; if
+Belgium is small, Belgium is happy and content with her lot.”
+
+The Berlin Conference laid it down that no import dues should be
+established in the mouth of the Congo for twenty years. But in 1890 King
+Leopold, alleging the heavy expenses to which he had been put by the
+campaign against the Arabs in the Upper Congo, applied for permission to
+levy import duties. It was the first disillusionment; and the British
+Chambers of Commerce began to wonder whether their opposition to the
+Anglo-Portuguese Convention had not been mistaken. The king’s request was
+granted (the Powers merely reserving to themselves the right to revert to
+the original arrangement in fifteen years), but not without the bitter
+opposition of the Dutch, who had very important commercial interests
+in the Congo, backed by the British Chambers of Commerce and all the
+traders in the Congo, irrespective of nationality. A representative
+gathering was held in London on November 4, 1900, presided over by Sir
+Albert Rollit, to protest against the imposition of import duties and to
+denounce the hypocrisy which attributed to philanthropic motives the
+desire on the part of the Congo State so to impose them. The speakers at
+the meeting drew attention to the strange anomaly revealed by the sight
+of a monarch who, having spent certain sums with alleged (and loudly
+advertised) philanthropic motives, now came forward to claim repayment
+of those sums, just like an ordinary business man, but a business man
+who, having acquired a vast estate under false pretences, demanded from
+the victims the wherewithal to pay for its management! They quoted with
+telling effect Stanley’s speech at Manchester on October 21, 1884, given
+on behalf of the association and against the Anglo-Portuguese Convention,
+in which he declared that “the £500,000 which it (the association) has
+given away to the Congo, it gave freely; the thousands of pounds which
+it may give annually it gives without any hope of return, further _than
+a sentimental satisfaction_.” They were able to show that—even then—King
+Leopold, notwithstanding his formal assurances to the commercial world
+that the Congo State would never directly or indirectly itself trade
+within its dominions, was buying, or rather stealing, ivory from the
+natives in the Upper Congo and retaining the proceeds of the sale on the
+European market. They proved that, profiting by the silence of the Berlin
+Treaty on the subject of export duties, the Congo State had already
+imposed taxes amounting to 17½ per cent. on ivory, 13 per cent. on rubber
+and 5 per cent. on palm-kernels, palm-oil, and ground-nuts, the total
+taxation amounting to no less than 33 per cent. of the value of the whole
+of the trade. Finally, they had no difficulty in demonstrating that, with
+all his professed wish to stamp out the slave-raiding carried on by the
+half-caste Arabs in the Upper Congo,[257] his Majesty was himself tacitly
+encouraging the slave trade by receiving tribute from conquered chiefs in
+the shape of slaves, who were promptly enrolled as soldiers in the State
+army.[258] The sincerity of King Leopold’s solicitude for the natives of
+Africa was in other respects appearing in its true colours, _vide_ the
+letter of Colonel Williams, a British officer in King Leopold’s employ,
+who, in disgust at the outrages which were taking place on the Congo,
+denounced them to the king. This letter, from which I give the following
+extracts, was read at the conference by Mr. Philipps, representing the
+Manchester Chamber of Commerce. It ran thus:
+
+    “Your Majesty’s Government has been and is now guilty of
+    waging unjust and cruel wars against natives, with the hope of
+    securing slaves and women to minister to the behests of the
+    officers of your Government. In such slave-hunting raids one
+    village is armed by the State against the other, and the force
+    thus secured is incorporated with the regular troops. I have no
+    adequate terms with which to depict to your Majesty the brutal
+    acts of your soldiers upon such raids as these. The soldiers
+    who open the combat are usually the bloodthirsty cannibalistic
+    Bangalas, who give no quarter to the aged grandmother or the
+    nursing child at the breast of its mother. There are instances
+    in which they have brought the heads of their victims to their
+    white officers on the expeditionary steamers and afterwards
+    eaten the bodies of the slain children.”[259]
+
+The history of King Leopold’s action in Central Africa between 1876 and
+1890 may therefore be summed up as follows. First stage: Inauguration
+of a “movement” for the “exploration and civilisation of Africa” from
+motives (so stated) of pure philanthropy, devoid of any shade of personal
+egotism or ambition on the part of Belgium. The expenditure of a certain
+sum of money for this (alleged) intent. The acquisition of a certificate
+of high moral purpose. Second stage: The “movement” takes the form of a
+State, possibly an “independent confederacy of free negroes,” with the
+king as president. This idea is abandoned, and for it is substituted the
+theory of an “Independent State” administered directly by the king and
+his representatives. The theory takes root, and by the Act of Berlin is
+converted into a _fait accompli_. According to this Act, the king becomes
+sovereign of the “Congo Independent State,” and undertakes that the State
+shall grant no monopoly or privilege in matters of trade, shall watch
+over the welfare of the natives and shall not impose any import duties.
+Formal assurances are also given to the commercial world that the State
+will not trade on its own account, directly or indirectly. Third stage:
+The State promptly starts trading for ivory in the Upper Congo, and
+wages war against the natives by means of a cannibal army, raised from
+slaves captured in war and paid by the vanquished as tribute. Its agents
+begin to be accused of shocking treatment of natives. Fourth stage: The
+king asks for permission to impose import duties, pleading the expenses
+which he is incurring in putting down slave-raiding, and the Brussels
+Conference grants the request.
+
+It may, I think, be fairly argued that the “sentimental satisfaction”
+which in 1884, according to Sir H. M. Stanley, was all that the king
+required as a reward for his out-of-pocket expenses, had assumed
+a singularly practical shape in 1890. From a philanthropist to an
+ivory-trader is a long step.
+
+No sooner had the Sovereign of the Congo State obtained the acquiescence
+of the Powers in the imposition of import duties, which, it is almost
+unnecessary to say, enormously strengthened the international position
+of the State, than the plans which his Majesty had conceived for the
+development of what was rapidly becoming tantamount to a Belgian
+possession, manifested themselves. What were those plans and what were
+their _leit motif_? So far as the plans are concerned, I will come to
+them later. But their _leit motif_ may be briefly stated now. To those
+who have studied the personality of King Leopold, acceptance of the
+philanthropic claim put forward by that monarch is simply impossible at
+any stage of his African undertaking. In any case, the philanthropic
+claim weakened with every year that passed after 1876. The revelations at
+the London meeting of November 4, 1890, definitely exploded it. Whoever
+attributed philanthropy to the Sovereign of the Congo State after that
+meeting was foolishly credulous, although he might still be honest.
+Whoever, being acquainted with the edicts of 1891 and 1892, from the time
+those edicts were thoroughly known in Europe, that is to say, towards
+the middle of 1892, has endorsed the philanthropic claim must have been
+guilty of gross deceit. I would go even farther than this, and say that
+such persons have been guilty of conniving and inducing the public to
+connive at a crime which has been steadily growing ever since, in the
+extent and heinousness of its criminality; a crime for which Europe will
+yet pay dearly.
+
+King Leopold found himself in 1885 possessed of an enormous territory, in
+the acquirement of which he had expended a certain sum as an investment.
+Not being a philanthropist; but, on the contrary, a very shrewd man of
+business, his next thought was how to get his capital back—with interest.
+By throwing open the Congo to legitimate commerce; by encouraging and
+facilitating the trade of all nations as he solemnly undertook to do;
+by pursuing a common-sense policy towards the natives, the Sovereign of
+the Congo State might have recovered the original capital he had sunk on
+the Congo, and even have realised a fair percentage upon it. At the same
+time he would have laid the foundations of a peaceful and commercially
+prosperous colony _for Belgium_, a colony with vast resources, a
+magnificent river system and unlimited future possibilities. That would
+have been true patriotism, and the ends attained might have justified
+the not very honourable means employed. King Leopold preferred to adopt
+another course, which has led him from illegality to violence, and from
+violence to barbarism. The king’s intention all through was to recoup
+himself for his expenditure at the earliest possible moment. So much for
+the _leit motif_.
+
+The measures adopted by his Majesty to bring about this desired result
+were as follows: Five months after the termination of the Berlin
+Conference, King Leopold issued a decree (July 1885), whereby the State
+asserted rights of proprietorship over all vacant lands throughout the
+Congo territory. It was intended that the term “vacant lands” should
+apply in the broadest sense to lands not actually occupied by the natives
+at the time the decree was issued. By successive decrees, promulgated
+in 1886, 1887 and 1888, the king reduced the rights of the natives in
+their land to the narrowest limits, with the result that the whole of
+the odd 1,000,000 square miles assigned to the Congo State, except such
+infinitesimal proportions thereof as were covered by native villages
+or native farms, became _terres domaniales_. On October 17, 1889, the
+king also issued a decree ordering merchants to limit their commercial
+operations in rubber to bartering with the natives. This decree was
+interesting merely as a forewarning of what came later, because at that
+time the rubber trade was very small. In July 1890, the same year as
+the Brussels Conference, the Congo State went a step farther. A decree
+issued in that month confirmed all that was advanced in November of the
+same year by the speakers at the London Conference, held to protest
+against the imposition of import dues by the State. By its terms King
+Leopold asserted that the State was entitled to trade on its own
+account in ivory—the first open violation of his pledges. Moreover, the
+decree imposed sundry extra taxes upon all ivory bought by merchants
+from the natives; which, since the State had become itself a trading
+concern, constituted an equally direct violation of the Berlin Act, by
+establishing differential treatment in matters of trade. Such were the
+plans King Leopold made, preparatory to obtaining from the Powers the
+power to impose import duties.[260] Everything was ready for the great
+_coup_, which should also inaugurate the fifth stage of his Majesty’s
+African policy.
+
+The Brussels Conference met. The Powers with inconceivable fatuity
+allowed themselves to be completely hoodwinked, and within a year the
+greatest injury perpetrated upon the unfortunate natives of Africa
+since the Portuguese in the fifteenth century conceived the idea
+of expatriating them for labour purposes had been committed, and
+committed, too, by a monarch who had not ceased for fifteen years to
+pose as their self-appointed regenerator! On September 21, 1891, King
+Leopold drafted in secret a decree which he caused to be forwarded to
+the Commissioners of the State in the Ubanghi-Welle and Aruwimi-Welle
+districts, and to the chiefs of the military expeditions operating in the
+Upper Ubanghi district. This decree never having been published in the
+official Bulletin of the State, its exact terms can only be a matter of
+conjecture; but we know that it instructed the officials to whom it was
+addressed “to take urgent and necessary measures to preserve the fruits
+of the Domain to the State, especially ivory and rubber.” By “fruits of
+the Domain,” King Leopold meant the products of the soil throughout the
+“vacant lands” which he had attributed to himself, as already explained,
+by the decree of 1885. The king’s instructions were immediately followed,
+and three circulars, dated respectively Bangala, December 15, 1891,
+Basankusu, May 8, 1892, and Yakoma, February 14, 1892, were issued by
+the officials in question. Circular No. 1 forbade the natives to hunt
+elephants unless they brought the tusks to the State’s officers. Circular
+No. 2 forbade the natives to collect rubber unless they brought it to
+the State’s officers. Circular No. 3 forbade the natives to collect
+either ivory or rubber unless they brought the articles to the State’s
+officers, and added that “merchants purchasing such articles from the
+natives, whose right to collect them the State only recognised provided
+that they were brought to it, would be looked upon as receivers of stolen
+goods and denounced to the judicial authorities.”
+
+Thus did the Sovereign of the Congo State avail himself of the additional
+prestige conferred upon him by the Brussels Conference. He did not
+obtain his own way entirely, because the years which had elapsed since
+the Berlin Conference had witnessed the creation of a powerful group
+of Belgian trading companies, presided over by one Colonel Thys, who
+afterwards brought the construction of the railway which unites the Lower
+to the Upper Congo to a successful termination, and who is now probably
+the largest land-owner in Africa. These companies were doing a large
+trade in rubber and ivory with the natives. They were well organised,
+and the man at their head was both capable and fearless. The companies
+invoked the Act of Berlin, protested against its gross infringement by
+the State, dwelt largely upon the sacredness of free trade and native
+rights, pleaded for Belgium and the world at large; and, finding these
+considerations insufficient, violently attacked the king himself with
+the avowed intention of forcing him to abdicate his “sovereignty” on the
+Congo. It is useless to detail the process of an agitation which, if it
+did nothing else, showed up in lurid colours how much the patriotism of
+the King of the Belgians was subordinated to the egotism of the Sovereign
+of the Congo State. The upshot of it was that the king squared the
+colonel, and the commercial companies of the Rue Bréderode group, as they
+are familiarly designated, were induced to keep silence by the grant of a
+trading monopoly over a very large area where they would be free to carry
+on their business unmolested. His resolute adversary being thus disposed
+of, the king forthwith issued a decree, dated October 1892, by which he
+defined the limits of his _terres domaniales_, and crowned the policy
+he had ever steadily pursued by creating for himself in Central Africa
+a vast preserve, a _Domaine Privé_, from which he might draw unlimited
+resources with a view to his own personal enrichment. The extent of this
+preserve cannot cover less than 800,000 square miles.[261] The summit of
+King Leopold’s ambition had been attained.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE _DOMAINE PRIVÉ_
+
+    “Our only programme, I am anxious to repeat, is the work of
+    moral and material regeneration.”—Extract from a published
+    letter of his Majesty King LEOPOLD II., King of the Belgians,
+    Sovereign of the Congo Free State.
+
+
+It is to be regretted that writers who, from time to time, call attention
+to the terrible maladministration prevailing in the Congo State do not,
+as a rule, strive to bring its _causa causans_ clearly before the public.
+The main issue becomes too often imbedded in a mass of surplus detail,
+and the bewildered individual searching for light gropes about in despair
+with an eternal query on his lips—“Why?” Why these atrocities which have
+been attested by dozens of honourable men[262]—atrocities which the Congo
+State Administration has long ceased to deny, and now merely attempts to
+minimise; atrocities of which every mail from the Congo brings additional
+proof?[263] Why this callous ferocity which appears at first sight to
+have in it naught but incoherence and downright stupidity, which seems
+so monstrous as to be almost incredible, and yet is vouched for, not
+only by travellers and missionaries who have witnessed its effects, not
+only by those who are in a position to guarantee the authenticity of
+information received from persons unwilling to allow their names to
+appear through fear of jeopardising their means of livelihood, but by
+the actual perpetrators, who, not without reason—although this excuse
+cannot shield them from execration—throw the responsibility upon the
+system whose servants they have been? Where is the underlying motive of
+it all? The answer to the query is, the _Domaine Privé_. When you have
+learnt what the _Domaine Privé_ is, what it means, what it involves,
+what it necessitates, what it renders inevitable, the story is told and
+everything is explained.
+
+In the first place, let these main facts be borne well in mind. The vast
+territories of the _Domaine Privé_ have for eleven years been absolutely
+closed to legitimate private enterprise. Trade, which in Central Africa
+means the exchange of European merchandise for raw products, does not
+exist therein. The native living within these territories has been
+deprived by Royal Decree of his rights as a land-owner. Property held
+for centuries by well-defined native laws, vested in particular families
+and tribes, has been appropriated without consulting the interested
+parties, let alone compensating them. With the deprivation of his land
+the native has been dispossessed of the fruits thereof; the rubber
+growing so luxuriously in his forests he may (by decree) only gather
+for the State—we will see presently how the “may” becomes “must”; the
+ivory stacked about his villages is no longer his, but another’s; the
+elephants which roam about his country and damage his plantations he can
+incur the physical peril of destroying, but may not reap the reward to
+which he is thereby entitled, for the tusks of the slain beast do not,
+according to Royal Decree, belong to him. Since he cannot dispose of his
+produce, which is his wealth and also his currency; since he has lost his
+rights in his own land; since he cannot even hunt the wild beast which
+provides him with the wherewithal to make horns for war and the chase,
+armlets and anklets for his wives, ornaments for his habitation, he is
+no longer a free agent, but has become _de facto_ a serf. In theory,
+then, the decrees of September 1891 and October 1892 made of the native
+throughout the _Domaine Privé_ a serf. In theory a serf he remained
+for a little while. But as the grip of Africa’s regenerator tightened
+upon the _Domaine Privé_, as the drilled and officered army, armed with
+repeating-rifles, gradually grew and grew until it was larger than the
+native forces kept up by any of the great Powers of Europe on African
+soil,[264] as the radius of the rubber taxes was extended, as portions
+of the country began to be farmed out to so-called “companies,” whose
+agents were also officials of the king; the native of the _Domaine Privé_
+became a serf not in theory only but in fact, ground down, exploited,
+forced to collect rubber at the bayonet’s point, compelled to pay onerous
+tribute to men whose salaries depend upon the produce returns from their
+respective stations—the punishment for disobedience, slothfulness,
+or inability to comply with demands ever growing in extortion, being
+anything from mutilation to death, accompanied by the destruction of
+villages and crops.
+
+The _Domaine Privé_ is “worked” in two ways. The country is vaguely
+divided into districts, and the business of the _Commissaires_ of
+districts, and their agents and sub-agents, is to collect _impôts de
+nature_, the taxes in kind, which the king levies. There is no limit to
+this taxation. The _Commissaires_ are told to “devote all their energies
+to the harvesting of rubber,” but at the same time to proceed “_as
+far as possible_ by persuasion rather than force.” The purport of the
+instructions maybe briefly summed up thus: “Obtain all the rubber and
+ivory you can; your future advancement depends upon your energy.”[265]
+Of course, this _régime_ in a country like Africa, where the native is
+not obliged to “work” in order to live, would be so much beating of the
+air, if force were not used to give it practical effect. King Leopold
+understood that well enough, and, to use the expression of a French
+Colonial writer of repute—M. Pierre Mille—“the basis of the king’s
+economic policy has been the formation of an army sufficiently strong to
+force the natives to pay the rubber and ivory tax.” A large army, chiefly
+recruited from the Bangalas and Batetlas—both cannibal tribes—was raised,
+and when not engaged in rebelling against its officers, it has proved
+only too well its value.
+
+Side by side with the enforcement of the _impôts de nature_, King Leopold
+bethought him of another scheme whereby to increase his revenue, and, at
+the same time, to throw dust in the eyes of European public opinion, by
+professing to sanction private enterprise in the _Domaine Privé_. His
+Majesty took to farming out portions of his domain to certain financiers
+with whom it suited him to keep on good terms. “Companies” were formed,
+in which the State retained a half interest. These companies are supposed
+to obtain the rubber and ivory they ship home in such large quantities
+by barter; but as more often than not the king’s officials and the
+companies’ agents are the same persons, and as the companies have the
+assistance of the _Force Publique_ (or permission to raise their own
+forces) to facilitate their commercial operations,[266] we may judge of
+the amount of legitimate barter trade which is carried on. There are six
+of these companies[267] in existence. The first group of five consists
+of the _Société Anversoise du Commerce au Congo, the Abir, the Compagnie
+du Lomami, the Comptoir Commercial Congolais, and the Société Générale
+Africaine_. The State holds half the shares of the _Abir_ and half the
+shares of the _Société Anversoise_. It has no shares in the _Comptoir
+Congolais_, but receives 50 per cent. of the profits. Its arrangement
+with the _Compagnie du Lomami_ is, I believe, on the same lines as
+that with the _Comptoir Commercial Congolais_; and with the _Société
+Générale Africaine_ on the same lines as the _Abir_ and _Anversoise_.
+The _Société_, or rather _Comité Spécial du Katanga_, is also a _Domaine
+Privé_ company, but under a somewhat different form. One-third of the
+profits of the latter institution go to the Thys group of companies and
+two-thirds to the State. The principal officials of the _Comité Spécial
+du Katanga_—the sixth _Domaine Privé_ company—are Messrs. Droogmans
+(president and Secrétaire-Général), Arnold, De Keyser, and Lombard. All
+these men are highly-placed officials of the State. Droogmans is the
+Minister of Finance, Arnold is director of the Domaine, director of
+Agriculture, and of “Central book-keeping”; De Keyser is a director of
+the Finance Department, and Lombard is a director of the Department of
+the Interior.
+
+The _Société Anversoise du Commerce au Congo_ being a typical
+representative, we may examine its condition. It was formed in August
+1892 under Belgian law, but reconstructed in January 1898 under Congo
+law—quite a unique jurisprudence, of which it may be said _summum jus
+summa injuria_—with a capital of 1,700,000 francs divided into 3400
+shares of 500 francs each. King Leopold has conferred upon this company
+some 12,000 square miles situated in the Mongalla district. Within
+that large area, of course, no one has the right to enter; in that
+particular, the Mongalla district resembles every other portion of the
+Congo _Free_ State above Leopoldville, in the sense of being a monopoly
+within a monopoly. The administrative seat of the _Anversoise_ is 104
+Rempart des Béguines, Antwerp; its principal headquarters in Africa are
+at Mobeka. Its president is M. A. de Browne de Tiège, nominated under
+the constitution of the company by the king himself. M. de Browne de
+Tiège is the king’s principal financial adviser in Congo affairs, and
+has several times lent moneys to the State. He has a seat in the House.
+The administrators are Baron Goffinet,[268] Ed. Bunge, and C. de Browne
+de Tiège; the “Commissaire” is Count Emile le Grelle. The original
+shareholders are: the Congo State, 1700 shares; A. de Browne de Tiège,
+1100 shares; Bunge & Co., 100 shares; E. P. Grisar, 130 shares; Deyman
+& Druart, 100 shares—which accounts for 3130 out of the 3400. No one
+with even a superficial knowledge of Belgian society need be told of the
+relations between the king and Baron Goffinet, Count le Grelle and E. P.
+Grisar. The net profits for the four years 1897-1900 have been: 1897,
+120,697 francs; 1898, 3,968,832 francs; 1899, 3,083,976; 1900, 84,333, or
+say a profit in four years of 7,275,838 francs. The “State’s” holdings
+being 50 per cent., its share in the profits would be proportionate. At
+this point it may be well to remark that the inspired utterances which
+from time to time appear in the British Press, dated from Brussels, to
+the effect that the Sovereign of the Congo State does not hold a single
+share in these companies, constitute, of course, a polite fiction. In all
+matters affecting the _Domaine Privé_ the State is the King. The _Domaine
+Privé_, let it be reaffirmed once again, is the king’s property and his
+alone. The shares of the _Société Anversoise_ have stood as high as
+13,730 francs (March 1900), which for a 500-franc share is sufficiently
+alluring. At that figure, which can be easily verified by the sceptical,
+his Majesty’s 1700 shares were worth over 23,000,000 francs, or say
+£933,000. During the last two years, outbreaks in the Mongalla district
+have been so numerous that the profits of the company have fallen
+somewhat.
+
+The performances of this particular offshoot of King Leopold’s _Domaine
+Privé_ have been worthy of the regenerating nature of the Congo State
+rule. In 1900, one or two of its agents confessed to killing, by order,
+150 natives, cutting off 60 hands, crucifying women and children, and
+impaling the sexual remains of slaughtered males on the stockade of the
+villages whose inhabitants were slow in gathering rubber! “_Les scandales
+de la Mongalla_” led to stormy debates in the Belgian Chamber on July 16
+and 17 of last year. It may not be out of place to recall their nature.
+
+    “July 17.—M. VANDERVELDE: We are not anti-colonial in
+    principle.... But we are adversaries of a capitalist colonial
+    policy which entails exploitation, theft, and assassination....
+    You dare not, in the name of Christian morality, defend the
+    exploitation of the _Domaine Privé_.... Rubber and ivory
+    represent 93 per cent. of the exports.... The _Domaine Privé_
+    produces much more than the budgetary returns. How are these
+    extraordinary results obtained?... The Congo State has
+    introduced forced labour, tribute, paid in kind, and a twelve
+    years’ military service.... We protest against this disguised
+    form of slavery. (Applause.) The greatest names in England
+    and Germany have condemned this system. The premiums given
+    to Congolese agents have been repudiated by the honest ones
+    amongst them. (M. DE BROWNE DE TIÈGE interrupts.) M. de Browne
+    de Tiège, who is interested in Congo affairs, must be admirably
+    posted in the Mongalla lawsuit, which revealed acts of cruelty
+    in his very own district.
+
+    “M. DE BROWNE DE TIÈGE: It is false.
+
+    “M. MAROILLE: No doubt; like the stories of the severed hands.
+
+    “M. LORAND: It is so true that, as a result of what I have
+    stated here, the particular officer whom I challenged to deny
+    the facts has written giving me information, in which he admits
+    that these ‘war trophies’ were brought in. That is Congo
+    civilisation! On all sides war, massacres, crimes continue
+    there. How can you possibly defend these things?
+
+    “M. FURNEMONT: On the coat-of-arms of the city of Antwerp
+    figure cut hands. M. de Browne, who inhabits Antwerp, no doubt
+    considers the emblem very appropriate....
+
+    “M. DE SMET DE NAEYER (Belgian Premier): The exploitation of
+    the _Domaine Privé_ is conformable with jurisprudence....
+    People criticise tribute paid in kind (_prestations de
+    nature_). Do they not exist to a certain extent in Belgium? Why
+    suspect the Congo State of cruelty?
+
+    “M. LORAND: We are entitled to do so. Remember the 1300 severed
+    hands.
+
+    “M. DE SMET DE NAEYER: Faults have certainly been committed,
+    but the State is applying itself to their disappearance. The
+    disinterestedness of the creators of the Congo State will find
+    its reward in the gratitude of the country....
+
+    “July 18.—M. LORAND: Your colonial policy is analogous to
+    the crimes mentioned in Article 125 of the Penal Code; it is
+    a policy of devastation, pillage, and assassination. [The
+    speaker (I quote from the Parliamentary report of the Belgian
+    papers of that date) then read some correspondence published
+    in the Antwerp newspaper _La Métropole_, in which a series of
+    executions, murders, and expeditions against the Bundjas are
+    mentioned.] ‘Are we,’ he continues, ‘to have another edition of
+    the severed hands incident?’
+
+    “M. DE BROWNE DE TIÈGE: That is not the question.
+
+    “M. LORAND: Indeed. But it happens precisely to be the
+    question. (M. DE BROWNE DE TIÈGE interrupts.)
+
+    “M. VANDERVELDE: Your interest, M. de Browne, is so direct
+    a one in this matter that you might refrain from any
+    participation in this debate.”
+
+The cutting-off of hands item is a constantly recurring charge. I have
+in my possession at the present moment a photograph from the Upper Congo
+of three natives, a woman and two boys; the woman and one of the boys
+have their right hands severed at the wrist, the other boy has both
+hands severed. The correspondent who sent it me—and whom I know to be an
+honourable man—saw the victims himself, and was satisfied that soldiers
+of the State were the culprits. I fully believe him, but the photograph,
+of course, does not prove it.[269]
+
+[Illustration: THE VICTIM OF A RUBBER RAID
+
+A LIVING ILLUSTRATION OF THE “MAIN COUPÉES” DEBATES IN THE BELGIAN
+CHAMBER. THE BOY HERE PHOTOGRAPHED IS NOW CARED FOR BY A BRITISH
+MISSIONARY IN THE UPPER CONGO]
+
+In November last, an American ex-agent of the _Société Anversoise_, Mr.
+Canisuis, who served for some time under the amiable ex-Major Lothaire,
+who, as already stated, was appointed Director in Africa of this company
+_after_ the murder of Stokes, in a Press interview said: “Last year I
+was on a rubber expedition with Major Lothaire, and during the six weeks
+it lasted 900 natives were killed and scores of villages were burnt.”
+
+According to this gentleman, the natives receive the equivalent of one
+penny per pound of rubber, paid in merchandise valued at 100 per cent.
+above cost price. We knew that before. As things go in the Congo State,
+that particular rate of pay is even generous. But you cannot get rubber
+in Africa at even the munificent sum of one penny per pound, and sell
+it in Europe from 3s. to 4s. per pound, without those gently persuasive
+methods which find favour in quarters where the “regenerating” instinct
+is properly developed!
+
+I trust I shall not be unduly troubling my readers if I pass another
+of King Leopold’s _Domaine Privé_ companies under review. It is not my
+fault that the whitewash has been laid on so thickly, and the process
+of scraping is bound to take some little time—and, from the author’s
+point of view, no little trouble. What company could be better singled
+out than the _Abir_, the most powerfully equipped of all—the “Queen” of
+Congo companies as it has been called? Originally the Anglo-Belgian India
+Rubber Company, founded in August 1892, and in which Colonel North was at
+one time largely interested, it was, like the _Anversoise_, reconstructed
+under “Congo law” in 1898 with a capital of 1,000,000 francs, divided
+into 2000 shares without designation of value, “giving right of 1/2000
+of the _avoir social_.” King Leopold has conferred upon this company
+the monopoly of exploitation in the Lopori and Maringa districts of the
+_Domaine Privé_. The administrative seat of the _Abir_ is 48 Rempart
+Klipdorp, Antwerp; its headquarters in Africa are at Bassankusu. The
+President is M. A. van den Nest; administrators, A. Mols and Count H.
+van de Burgh; _Commissaires_, Jules Stappers and F. Reiss; Director, Ch.
+de Wael; Director in Africa, Ch. Sterckmans. I am under the impression
+that the British interests in the company ceased when it ceased to be
+a company in the ordinary acceptation of the term, viz. in 1898, as
+aforesaid. At any rate, I can find none but Belgian shareholders in the
+documents I have been able to obtain. First and foremost comes the Congo
+State with its 50 per cent., viz. 1000 shares, the inevitable M. A. de
+Browne de Tiège being _mandataire_ for the State; then M. A. de Browne
+de Tiège has 60 shares in his own name, and M. C. de Browne de Tiège 50,
+while our old friend the _Société Anversoise_ has 150 shares represented
+by M. de Browne de Tiège, President, and M. Bunge, Administrator; Bunge
+& Co. (whom we have seen hold 100 shares in the _Anversoise_) have 50
+shares; other shareholders are Alexis Mols, Charles de Wael, F. Reiss,
+&c.[270] I have used the word _clique_ to describe the handful of persons
+who are running the Congo State (and as much more of Africa as they can
+lay hands on) with the king as Managing Director. It is an appropriate
+term, as the particulars given for these two “Companies” show. I may add
+that M. A. van den Nest, President of the _Abir_, is the original holder
+of 120 shares in the _Comptoir Commercial Congolais_, of which company M.
+Alexis Mols is President, while Messrs. Charles de Wael and F. Reiss are
+also holders, the one to the extent of 100, the other to the extent of 60
+shares.[271] Baron Goffinet’s name crops up again in the _Lomami_,[272]
+and so it goes on.[273] These men are the king’s bodyguard. I know
+nothing of them personally. They may in private life be the most
+blameless of men, but the extraordinary thing is that Europe should be
+content to allow 1,000,000 square miles of African territory to be run
+by this _clique_ with its royal head, entirely for their own ends, and
+to fill their own pockets! Why, in the name of common sense and common
+decency, should hundreds, if not thousands, of natives of Africa be slain
+annually on account of this _clique_? It would be grotesque, were it not
+so horrible; so monstrous as to seem more like a nightmare than a reality.
+
+But to return to the _Abir_. Its net profits in 1897 were 1,247,455
+francs; in 1898, 2,482,697 francs; in 1899, 2,692,063 francs. The figures
+for 1900 I am unable to give, I regret to say. In 1901 the net working
+profits (_bénéfices nets d’exploitation_) were 2,455,182 francs, and
+the “profit and loss account” was closed with 2,614,370 to the good.
+A dividend[274] of 900 francs was declared on each share, and “the
+State” being the possessor of 1000 shares, it follows that its august
+Sovereign raked in the nice little sum of 900,000 francs, or say £36,000,
+for one year’s working of this eminently satisfactory “subsidiary” of
+the _Domaine Privé_. In four years the _Abir’s_ net profits amounted,
+therefore, to 8,877,397 francs, nearly nine times as much as its total
+capital! In June 1899 the shares stood at 17,900 francs per share, and
+the total value on the Antwerp Stock Exchange of this concern, whose
+capital is one million, was 35,800,000 francs! But since that date the
+shares have been up to over 25,000 francs per share! In June of this
+year they had fallen to a little over 11,000 francs per share. For a
+considerable time past they have been quoted _in tenths_; that is to
+say, one-tenth shares are bought and sold, and give rise to a great
+deal of speculation on the Bourse. Imagine the fortune which a holder
+of 1000 _full_ shares has had the opportunity of making during the last
+few years! Those 1000 shares, at 25,000 francs per share, were worth a
+million sterling! What it is to be a royal rubber merchant in the Congo!
+
+It will have been noticed that the shares of the _Abir_ have dropped.
+The fact is that there have been “indiscretions,” and several Belgian
+newspapers published in October of last year some unpleasant details with
+regard to the circumstances under which these enormous stocks of rubber
+find their way to Europe. Amongst other revelations published—all of
+which purported to come from “a most honourable and esteemed agent” of
+the _Abir_—were the following: (1) In September 1897, the whole of the
+Upper Bolombo country was devastated (“_mis à feu et à sang_”) by the
+Dikila factory to compel the natives, with whom contact had not before
+been established, to make rubber. (2) “On Aug. 24, 1900, I met at Boyela
+two young women, one of whom was _enceinte_, with their right hands cut
+off. They told me they belonged to the village of Bossombo, and that the
+soldiers of the white man of Boyela had cut off their hands, because
+their master did not produce enough rubber!” These statements appear to
+have had the effect of depreciating the market value of the shares. But,
+really, the “bulls” might have been prepared for them. Possibly, they had
+not read the evidence given a year before by M. de Lamothe, ex-Governor
+of French Congo, before the Commission of Colonial Concessions held in
+Paris. M. de Lamothe, who had just returned from five months’ sojourn in
+the Upper Congo, remarked in the course of his deposition that:
+
+    “The Belgians have recently had insurrections in their
+    territory. It is but right to add, however, that they sometimes
+    make use of proceedings towards the natives that Frenchmen
+    would never use.... The _Abir_, for instance, possesses a
+    considerable territory and has even police rights (_sic_)
+    over the natives. From that point of view the rights which
+    its charter confers upon it are exaggerated. _Its agents have
+    applied this so well that they have succeeded in inducing
+    30,000 natives to leave their territory and take refuge on the
+    French bank of the Congo._”
+
+Is it necessary to plunge yet deeper into this garbage of human
+villany and greed? The entire system is based upon terrorism. No man
+in his senses can really believe otherwise. A volume might be filled
+with misdeeds which since the days of Cortès and Pizarro have never
+been equalled, much less surpassed. The habitual _modus operandi_ in
+the Mongalla territory was tersely put by one of the agents of the
+_Anversoise_:
+
+    “When natives bring rubber to a factory they are received by
+    the agent surrounded by soldiers. The baskets are weighed.
+    If they do not contain the 5 kilos. required the native
+    receives 100 blows with a _chicotte_.[275] Those whose
+    baskets attain the correct weight receive a piece of cloth,
+    or some other object. If a certain village contains, say, 100
+    male inhabitants (a census is always taken of the village
+    before operations begin) and only fifty come to the factory
+    with rubber, they are retained as hostages, and a force is
+    despatched to shoot (_sic_) the fifty recalcitrant natives and
+    burn their village.”
+
+There are some districts which do not produce rubber: such a district,
+for instance, as the Bangala country proper, where hardly any rubber
+grows. Let it not be imagined that the people of that district are the
+gainers thereby. They are not subject, it is true, to either the rubber
+tribute or the rubber-collecting operations of the _Domaine Privé_
+companies. But their lot is little better for all that. The Bangala
+country is one of the great recruiting centres of the State for its
+army.[276] The Bangalas are cannibals, and good fighters. It is also
+a victualling centre for the State posts. A great deal of information
+has been reaching me from this district of late. It may be usefully
+epitomised. First, as to the recruiting. The method adopted is this: A
+general order is sent from Boma to the Commissaires of Districts to the
+effect that so many recruits must be sent down. Each Commissaire then
+sets to work to obtain recruits. There is no system in the demands. Towns
+are dropped on according to the whim of the Commissaire. A particular
+village is summoned to supply a certain number of young men. The summons
+is rarely communicated by a white officer: almost invariably by native
+soldiers. The summons once made, it has to be obeyed, or the usual
+punishment is meted out. Nevertheless there has, upon occasion, been
+active opposition to this forced recruiting. There is always passive
+opposition. Both men and women object and complain very bitterly, but
+they have to submit. Mothers, wives, and relatives have been seen crying
+and protesting against their children, husbands, and relatives being sent
+away as recruits, for very few ever return; which is not astonishing,
+seeing that they serve twelve years. Secondly, as to the victualling-tax.
+Every month, and sometimes every fortnight, goats, fowls, palm-oil, eggs,
+and cassava bread have to be supplied to the State troops. The burden is
+increasingly heavy, because since it was first assessed the population
+has very much decreased. When accused of extortion the State replies
+that it pays for its produce. It does pay, at about one-twentieth of
+the market value. The natives have not infrequently to purchase produce
+themselves, in order to meet the demands of the State, which they are
+compelled to dispose of to the State soldiers at a much lower price than
+they have paid themselves:
+
+    “Every two or three miles a sentry, with a subordinate or two,
+    and two or three servants from the locality, are stationed. It
+    is part of the sentry’s duty to see that the tax is taken up
+    regularly, and if he does not do so he is severely reprimanded
+    by his chief. Now a keen-witted soldier will see to it that
+    he is not reprimanded, and an unprincipled soldier will do
+    anything to the people to wring the tax out of them, rather
+    than run the risk of being a marked man in the Commissaire’s
+    book.”
+
+The oppression and misery which ensue can be imagined. The result of this
+double pressure for men and foodstuffs has been, naturally, to bring
+about a great decrease in the population. A correspondent who knows the
+Bangala country well, tells me that between 1890 and 1895 there was no
+perceptible decrease in the population. The taxes were first levied in
+the latter year, and in five years (1895-1900) there has been a reduction
+of one-half of the population. This appalling ratio of reduction is
+partly to be accounted for by the fact that sleeping sickness is endemic
+in the country, and that the withdrawal of the strongest and most virile
+elements of the population to serve in the army is naturally followed
+by a decline in the birth-rate. Those that are left have “the heart
+wrung out of them” by the food-tax. The people along the river are
+fast dying out, and the State “is forcing the backwood folks to start
+towns on the river the better to exploit them.” In one relatively small
+area my correspondent says, “Since 1890, one town half a mile long has
+disappeared; another, a quarter of a mile long, has also gone; and up a
+creek where there were 1500 people, there are scarcely 400 now.”
+
+So long as Europe tolerates the _Domaine Privé_, so long will these
+things be—just as long as the regenerator of Africa and his friends can
+make money out of their philanthropic undertaking and can count upon
+dishonest, interested, or infatuated friends in Europe to throw dust in
+the eyes of the public.
+
+There is one other feature of this unsavoury business which must be gone
+into before we can close the chapter on the _native_ aspect of Congo
+State rule. The Congo State invariably attempts to wriggle out of the
+responsibility for these horrors, by attributing their perpetration
+to the “excesses” of individual agents; and M. Jules Houdret, the
+Consul-General of the Congo State for England, had the effrontery the
+other day to point to the punishment of some of the _Anversoise’s_
+people as affording a justification for the State’s claim to be what
+it professes, viz. solicitous of the welfare of the natives! It is
+a barefaced attempt to bamboozle public opinion, as impudent as the
+proposal made by the representatives of the Congo State at the Mansion
+House meeting last May to “inquire” into specific acts of cruelty
+brought forward. We know what these “punishments” mean. Occasionally,
+with a grand flourish of trumpets, the State announces that an agent
+has been punished. The announcement generally follows each fresh crop
+of revelations. One or two sub-agents are, for the time being, made
+scapegoats, and everything goes on as before. How could it be otherwise
+when the SYSTEM ITSELF is what it has been shown to be? The time has
+gone by when the public can be deceived by these sophistries, by these
+perpetual and frivolous excuses and denials.
+
+The edicts of the Congo State administration, coupled with certain
+material facts as to which there can be no dispute, show the main
+factors, if one may say so, of the system of African tropical
+development, which it has instituted, to be these:
+
+(1) Alienation of native ownership in land.
+
+(2) Monopoly over the products of the soil.
+
+(3) Natives forbidden to collect those products for any one but the
+State, or the subsidiary trusts (_Domaine Privé_ companies, if that
+appellation be preferred) created by the State, and in whose profits the
+State shares, generally to the extent of 50 per cent.
+
+(4) Natives compelled to bring in rubber and ivory, and also recruits for
+the native army (and for labour in the cocoa and coffee plantations), to
+the State as tribute, and to supply the subsidiary trusts with rubber and
+ivory.
+
+(5) The existence of a regular army of fifteen thousand[277] men armed
+with Albini rifles, and an unnamed number of irregulars to enforce the
+rubber and ivory tribute and to “facilitate the operations” of the
+subsidiary trusts.
+
+(6) White officials in receipt of instructions to devote all their
+energies to the exploitation of rubber and ivory; in plain words, to
+get as much rubber and ivory out of their respective districts as they
+possibly can.
+
+(7) The financial existence of the State dependent upon the rubber and
+ivory tribute, and upon the profits it derives from its share in the
+subsidiary trusts.
+
+When on the one side you have the factors already enumerated, and on
+the other a primitive and—in the face of coercion backed by rifles
+of precision—helpless population, common sense asserts that gross
+oppression, violence, and every form of tyranny and outrage must be the
+infallible outcome of such a system; and it is that _system_ which the
+Powers are morally bound to put a stop to, seeing that it is they who are
+morally responsible for its existence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+THE “TRADE” OF THE CONGO STATE
+
+
+It is a little surprising to find that M. Cattier, the Belgian
+Imperialist, whose masterly indictment of King Leopold’s administration
+does him infinite honour, should attempt to defend, not the outcome of
+the system of the _Domaine Privé_ in the shape of compulsory military
+service for twelve years, forced labour in Government plantations, &c.,
+all of which he condemns, but the legality of the system itself. He
+states his case as follows. Article V. of the Berlin Act, which forbade
+monopoly and privilege in the Congo Basin in matters of trade, was meant
+to apply internationally, and the Congo State was thereby bound not to
+grant commercial advantages to the subjects of any one nation which it
+denied to the subjects of another nation. M. Cattier says:
+
+    “The Government of the Congo State could not, therefore, adopt
+    any legislative measure, nor establish any _régime_ conceding
+    international monopolies or privileges.... All facilities
+    granted to its subjects in trade matters should be legally
+    extended to the subjects of other nations.... But this does
+    not prevent the Congo State from establishing the commercial
+    _régime_ which it thinks advisable, and no objection can be
+    raised against its legislative action, when the measures
+    adopted apply, under the same conditions and in the same
+    manner, to the subjects of other nationalities, including the
+    Congo nationality.”
+
+It follows, therefore, according to M. Cattier, that in attributing to
+himself all vacant lands in the Congo Basin, from which action arose the
+_Domaine Privé_, and in farming out portions of the _Domaine Privé_ to
+his financial friends, upon whom he has conferred an absolute monopoly of
+exploitation in the regions affected, the Sovereign of the Congo State
+has not violated the Act of Berlin; although M. Cattier admits that by
+so doing he has committed “a violation of the rights of the natives.”
+
+This curious theory of M. Cattier’s has been dismissed by Dr. Anton
+(_Professeur agrégé à l’Université d’Iéna_) as a legal quibble, in which
+opinion I entirely concur. M. Cattier’s views are mutually destructive.
+Admitting, for the sake of argument merely, that the interpretation he
+gives to Art. V. of the Berlin Act is, from the strictly legal aspect
+of the matter, accurate; once M. Cattier attempts to put his case in
+language that laymen, unversed in legal subtleties, can understand, it
+breaks down hopelessly. For what does M. Cattier tell us in the passage
+above? “No objection can be raised against its (the State’s) legislative
+action when the measures adopted apply under the same conditions and
+in the same manner to the subjects of all nationalities, including the
+Congo nationality.” But the measures adopted do not apply equally to
+all nationalities! Three-fourths of the Congo State is the State’s—that
+is, the king’s—private property, and is closed to the trade of all
+nationalities, except the Belgian and “Congo nationality;” not in theory
+but in fact. Can an Englishman, or a German, or a Chinaman if you like,
+import European merchandise in the territory, for example, acquired by
+the _Société Anversoise_, and barter that merchandise against the raw
+products of the soil, on a basis of a legitimate commercial transaction?
+Of course they may not. Was not an Austrian arrested—on Lake Moëro, and
+on, it appears, a British steamer—only a few months ago for trading with
+the natives in the Katanga region, although he actually had a permit to
+trade from the Katanga Company, given to him prior to the arrangement
+arrived at by the Congo State and the Katanga Company to work those
+territories on joint account? And arrested, too, in such a way that
+his removal from this world was a matter of moral certainty—handed
+over to the merciful treatment of King Leopold’s cannibal soldiery,
+to be transported 2000 miles away; he a white man and unarmed![278]
+What pitiful sophistries are these which attempt the squaring of the
+Congo circle! The Congo State, which undertook not to trade directly or
+indirectly in its dominions, has become not only the largest “exploiter”
+within it, but in the major portion thereof the exclusive “exploiter.”
+The king has translated Article V. of the Berlin Act, which reads that
+“no Power which exercises or shall exercise sovereign rights in the
+above-mentioned regions, shall be allowed to grant therein a monopoly or
+favour of any kind in matters of trade,” by conferring upon himself an
+absolute monopoly, which has made of him the biggest ivory and rubber
+merchant in the world. In this capacity he can export his produce under
+special conditions, free of dues, which come out of one of his Majesty’s
+pockets to go in at the other. All this is diametrically opposed to the
+provisions of the Berlin Act.
+
+My object is principally to prove that King Leopold’s intervention in
+the Dark Continent has from first to last been due to selfish motives,
+and has resulted in the most appalling consequences; whether we confine
+ourselves to the past and present merely, or whether we look into the
+future. I must crave forgiveness for having dwelt so largely upon matters
+of trade. It was, however, necessary, because the king’s native policy is
+the inevitable sequel of his commercial policy. I must, indeed, revert
+again to this aspect of the question in order to refute once and for
+all the untruths so sedulously fostered, that the Congo State is in a
+nourishing condition and that independent trade is flourishing within
+it; and in refuting it to show—which is more important—that, were it not
+for the ivory and rubber which the natives of King Leopold’s preserve
+are forced to produce at the cost of constant warfare, massacres, and
+atrocities innumerable, the export returns, and consequently the whole
+trade of the Congo State, would be practically _nil_, or so small as to
+be unworthy of attention. This can best be done by giving facts and
+figures which all the ingenious theorising in the world cannot overcome.
+
+The following table shows the relative proportion of the rubber and ivory
+exports from the Congo to the total exports:
+
+                                TABLE I
+
+                                         Total of       Total of
+    Year.    Rubber.       Ivory.     both Exports.    all Exports.
+
+             Francs.       Francs.       Francs.         Francs.
+    1898    15,850,987    4,319,260     20,170,247     22,163,481
+    1899    28,100,917    5,834,620     33,935,537     36,067,959
+    1900    39,874,005    5,253,300     45,627,305     47,377,401
+    1901    43,965,950    3,964,600     47,930,550     50,488,394
+
+If the rubber and ivory exports are deducted from the total exports, it
+will be seen that—apart from these two products—the exports only amounted
+in 1898 to 1,993,234 francs, in 1889 to 2,132,422 francs, in 1900 to
+1,750,096 francs, and in 1901 to 2,557,844 francs, about 97 per cent. of
+which was represented in each year by kernels and palm-oil shipped almost
+exclusively from the Lower Congo[279] to Rotterdam, by the Dutch House
+_Die Nieuwe Afrikaansche Handels Vennootschap_.
+
+The next table provides statistics of the rubber and ivory shipped home
+by the Congo State, as shipper, being the proceeds of the taxes—_impôts
+de nature_—levied upon the natives of the _Domaine Privé_. As will be
+observed, the Congo State is at pains to conceal the real proceeds. Ever
+since 1893, when the actual returns exceeded the estimates by one-half,
+the State has never published the former. The correct figures may,
+however, approximately be arrived at by comparing the estimates with the
+rubber and ivory disposed of by the State, as vendor, on the Antwerp
+market. The enormous difference during these last few years between the
+estimates _and the produce actually sold by the State_, possesses a
+significance which will not be lost upon my readers. Into whose pocket
+does the surplus go? But need we ask the question?
+
+                                 TABLE II
+
+          VALUE OF PRODUCE (IVORY AND RUBBER) DERIVED FROM THE
+        “DOMAINE PRIVÉ” IN THE SHAPE OF TAXES (IMPÔTS DE NATURE).
+
+                                                    Produce (ivory and
+                                                     rubber) from the
+    Year.  Published returns.  Actual returns.    _Domaine Privé_, sold
+                                                   on the Antwerp market
+                                                   by the State’s brokers.
+
+                Francs.          Francs.                 Francs.
+    1893        237,057          347,396              Unobtainable.
+    1894        300,000    }                             _Ibid._
+    1895      1,250,000    }                           5,500,000
+    1896      1,200,000    }    Withheld               6,000,000
+    1897      3,500,000    }   from public             8,500,000
+    1898      6,700,000    }    knowledge.             9,000,000
+    1899     10,000,000    }                          19,130,000
+    1900     10,500,000    }                          14,991,300[280]
+
+It will thus be seen that, out of a total rubber and ivory export from
+the Congo State in 1898 amounting to 20,170,247 francs (see Table I.),
+the _Domaine Privé_ taxes produced 9,000,000 francs, or close upon
+one-half; and that out of a total rubber and ivory export in 1899,
+amounting to 33,935,537 francs, the _Domaine Privé_ taxes produced
+19,130,000 francs, or not far short of two-thirds. The illustration is
+in itself sufficient to destroy the theory of commercial prosperity so
+assiduously propagated by King Leopold and his friends, in order to
+deceive public opinion. Such “prosperity” entails the death of many human
+beings. What could, indeed, be more eloquent of the true condition of
+affairs! The total exports from the Congo State in 1899 are found (see
+Table I.) to amount to 36,067,959 francs, of which 33,935,537 francs are
+represented by rubber and ivory, in which the Congo State’s share as
+tax-gatherer is no less than 19,130,000 francs. The Congo State asserts
+that it does not trade. It merely imposes taxes which every “civilised”
+Power (Heaven save the mark!) has the right to do; yet it incorporates
+in its so-called trade figures the yield of its taxes! What becomes,
+then, of this flourishing trade we hear so much about? On the evidence
+produced, it sinks for 1889 to 16,937,959 francs (36,067,959 minus
+19,130,000) instead of 36,067,959 francs, which the world is invited
+to believe. In reality it does not amount to anything like 16,937,959
+francs, for the simple reason that there is no “trade” at all in the
+Congo State north of Leopoldville; and that, if we extract from the
+remaining figures the exports from the Lower Congo, where genuine trade,
+sadly hampered by taxation, alone exists, the balance is represented by
+the shipments of the _Domaine Privé_ subsidiary monopolies in which the
+Congo State benefits to the extent of 50 per cent.; and by the shipments
+of the Thys Trust, which is a monopoly within a monopoly, although
+conducted, it is but right to add, on different lines. Such is the
+“trade” of the Congo State, the most gigantic fraud which ever came into
+being to work misery upon mankind.
+
+It would be unjust not to recognise that all this sordid history
+has aroused loathing and distress in the hearts of many honourable
+Belgians—not confined to the Party which opposes Colonial policy for
+Belgium—mainly, as I believe, on the ground that King Leopold, in the
+course of his illegalities and intrigues, will end by compromising
+the neutrality of his country. It would be as equally unjust not to
+express admiration for the indomitable energy displayed by Colonel
+Thys in constructing the railway to Leopoldville, as to include in the
+condemnation of King Leopold’s POLICY in Africa all the Belgians who
+have been employed at one time or another in the State service. Sir
+Harry Johnston has recently lent the weight of his name in favour of the
+Congo State, in respect to the “very small portion” of the State which
+he has visited. Sir Harry Johnston might have added that the rubber laws
+are not in full operation in the “very small portion” of the country
+he visited, and that the Belgian officers with whom he came in contact
+have not been employed in that degrading business, their duties in that
+particular region being confined to strengthening the obscure political
+aims which King Leopold is pursuing in the Nile Valley. For a description
+of the state of affairs prevailing south of the “very small portion”
+of the Congo State alluded to, Mr. Grogan’s volume, and Mr. Robert
+Codrington’s recently published “Travel and Trade Routes in Northern
+Rhodesia and adjacent Parts of East Central Africa,”[281] together with
+the revelations attending the treatment meted out to the late Mr. Rabinek
+by the officials of the State, may be consulted with advantage. It would
+be an insult to Sir Harry Johnston—who has himself condemned the system
+of territorial concessions—to suggest that he desires in any way to
+bolster up the Congo State; but it is certainly a thousand pities that
+he has committed himself, even partially, to statements which, however
+accurate in themselves, cannot fail to exercise an unfortunate influence,
+without making himself acquainted with the general system under which
+the Congo State is run. When the nature of that system is understood, it
+becomes an outrage upon common sense and common decency to write one word
+in extenuation of the system, or of the man who has originated it.
+
+M. Cattier, to whose work I have several times alluded, represents the
+type of Belgian who, convinced of the necessity of a colonial programme
+for Belgium, has sufficient perspicacity to realise, and sufficient
+courage to assert, that the policy of King Leopold in the Congo State
+carries within it the germs of death. How true this is, the reader must
+judge for himself; but it is at least significant that among a section
+of French Colonial writers who think they see in the recent abandonment
+of M. Beernaert’s Annexation Bill, at the king’s dictation, the final
+postponement by Belgium and the consequent assertion—at some future
+date—of France’s right of pre-emption, are beginning to ask themselves
+whether the king’s ultimate aim is not to continue for some years longer
+his “ruinous exploitation” of the Congo State; and then, when uprisings
+have reached such a scale that the king’s cannibal army, however large it
+may by that time have become, is powerless to cope with them; and when
+whole tracts of the richest and most easily accessible rubber districts
+have been irretrievably impaired, to offer the squeezed lemon, for a
+consideration, to his Gallic neighbours. If the pernicious _régime_
+which King Leopold has inaugurated in Africa were confined to the Congo
+State, it would still be sufficient, one might have thought, to stir the
+conscience of Europe, if not for the sake of her own dignity outraged in
+the violation of solemn obligations, if not for the sake of humanity,
+then for the sake of the future relations of black man and white man in
+Central Africa. But, as we have seen, the _régime_ is spreading, and with
+every year that passes it threatens more acutely all legitimate European
+enterprise in Africa.[282]
+
+This accursed _Domaine Privé_, and all the evils it has brought with it,
+cannot last for ever. Like all such “negations of God” it will perish.
+But what will remain behind for Europe, when the Congo State has passed
+away, to deal with? A vast region, peopled by fierce Bantu races, with an
+undying hatred of the white implanted in their breasts; a great army of
+cannibal levies, drilled in the science of forest warfare, perfected in
+the usage of modern weapons of destruction[283]—savages whose one lesson
+learned from contact with European “civilisation” has been improvement
+in the art of killing their neighbours; disciplined in the science of
+slaughter; eager to seize upon the first opportunity which presents
+itself of turning their weapons against their temporary masters; rendered
+more desperate, more dangerous, more debased than before the advent of
+King Leopold’s rubber collectors, who, by way of regeneration, have
+grafted upon the native’s failings, born of ignorance, the worst vices
+of the Africanised civilisation of modern Europe—cupidity, hypocrisy,
+cruelty, and lust.
+
+In their own most obvious interests, for the sake of humanity and right,
+in the name of enlightened statesmanship and political common sense,
+the Powers cannot allow the disease introduced into West and Central
+Africa by King Leopold of Belgium to be farther extended. Nor do their
+responsibilities end there. The source of the disease must be dealt with.
+The canker must be rooted out and cast upon the dunghill. The Congo State
+must be called to account for its crimes against civilisation; for its
+outrages upon humanity; for the unparalleled and irreparable mischief it
+has committed.
+
+And what a warning lies here for the Western nations! The Congo State is
+the living embodiment of the evil counsels, so lavishly, so thoughtlessly
+given in connection with native policy in West Africa. In the Congo
+State we see what these counsels lead to when put into practice. All
+this talk about the puerility of preserving land tenure, the futility of
+maintaining native institutions, the efficacy of punitive expeditions,
+the necessity of teaching the native “the dignity of labour,” the cry for
+territorial concessions, the advocacy of monopoly, and all legislative
+acts framed in accordance with these views, or with some of them, tend to
+produce in greater or less degree a state of affairs in Western Africa
+similar to that which prevails on the Congo. In the case of the Powers,
+the motives may be of the very best, the intentions honest and sincere;
+but if once the thin end of the wedge be driven home; if once legislation
+be passed or acts sanctioned which are founded upon a repudiation of
+the inherent right of the native to his land and the fruits thereof; if
+once it be officially admitted that it is legitimate to force the native
+to give under compulsion that which is purchasable on fair terms, we
+are committed to a policy of reaction of which no man can prophesy the
+consequences or the end. To those conceptions Tropical Africa opposes her
+vastness, her climate, and the prolific nature of her peoples. They can
+be tried; apparent success may attend them for a time; lasting success
+they will never secure. Tropical Africa _cannot permanently be held
+down by force_, and in attempting to do so by placing modern engines
+of destruction in the hands of Africans, Europe will be but digging the
+grave of her ambitions on African soil.
+
+But Europe can achieve a great work in Tropical Africa for good,
+and benefit her own peoples in doing so. To divorce the two is
+impossible. Evil wrought in Tropical Africa will have its aftermath
+in Europe. The European has need of the Negro, and the Negro of the
+European. In occupying the country of the Negro, Europe has assumed
+a great responsibility. It is well, perhaps, European statesmen
+should occasionally be reminded, that for Europe to forget the moral
+responsibility in pursuing the material ends is to invite a certain
+Nemesis. These pages cannot be more fittingly closed than by recalling
+the words of a wise and good woman, who understood the nature and
+immensity of the problem:
+
+“Not only do the negroes not die off in the face of white civilisation
+in Africa, but they have increased in America, whereto they were taken
+by the slave trade. This fact urges on us the belief that these negroes
+are a great world race—a race not passing off the stage of affairs, but
+one that has an immense amount of history before it. The moulding of
+that history is in the hands of the European, whose superior activity
+and superior power in arts and crafts give the mastery; but all that
+this mastery gives is the power to make the future of the negro and
+the European prosperous, or to make it one of disaster to both alike.
+Whatever we do in Africa to-day, a thousand years hence there will be
+Africans to thrive or suffer for it.”[284]
+
+                                                                  E. D. M.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX
+
+
+
+
+SIERRA LEONE
+
+EXPENDITURE, LOANS, EXPORT TRADE, RAILWAY
+
+
+          Expenditure   Export Trade
+           1897-1902.    1897-1902.[285]
+
+    1897  £112,000       £361,747
+    1898   121,000        267,156
+    1899   145,000        307,929
+    1900   156,000        317,980
+    1901   173,457[286]   265,433
+    1902   177,882[287]
+
+
+RAILWAY
+
+          Railway Expenditure
+              1899-1902.
+         (Included in total
+             expenditure.)
+
+    1899       £10,493
+    1900        23,320
+    1901        19,642
+    1902        23,606[288]
+
+
+LOANS FOR RAILWAY
+
+    Amounts advanced to end 1900  £307,539
+    Loan authorised                631,000
+
+First section, 32 miles, formally opened May 1st, 1899.
+
+Second section, 23¼ miles, “taken over by the open line,” end 1900.
+
+Third section, 80½ miles, in course of construction.
+
+According to the statement forwarded by the Local Traders’ Association of
+Freetown to Sir A. King-Harman in 1901, the third section of the railway
+(to Bo) will entail an annual charge on the Colony of £11,000, plus a
+further sum of £6000 for “increased cost of administering and operating.”
+
+
+FOR MILITARY PURPOSES
+
+Annual charge of £6000 for eight years from 1899 on account of the sums
+advanced by the Imperial Treasury for the Hut-tax war.
+
+
+THE PROTECTORATE
+
+                      Expenditure 1898-1902.    Revenue 1898-1901.
+                Civil.     Military.      Total.
+
+    1898       £10,455      £20,634      £31,089     £7,754
+    1899        14,124       25,672       39,796     21,943
+    1900        17,000       23,499[289]  40,499     33,468
+    1901        25,767[290]  23,707[291]  49,474     38,347
+    1902[292]   24,807       24,911       49,718
+
+
+
+
+GOLD COAST
+
+EXPENDITURE, LOANS, EXPORT TRADE, RAILWAY
+
+
+      Expenditure       Liabilities incurred    Export trade
+       1897-1900            1897-1902.           1897-1900.
+    (Inclusive.)[293]      (Incomplete.)      (Inclusive.)[294]
+
+    1897     £406,370    1897    £ nil.
+    1898      377,976    1898      265,000    1897     £857,793
+    1899      309,656    1899      100,000    1898      992,998
+    1900      272,303    1900      928,300    1899    1,111,738
+                         1902    1,035,000    1900      885,446
+
+    Total  £1,366,305    Total  £2,328,300    Total  £3,847,975
+
+Expenditure, £1,366,305; Liabilities incurred (incomplete), £2,328,300
+Export trade, £3,847,975.
+
+The Gold Coast Report for 1901 has not yet been published. According
+to the statement made this year before the Legislative Council of the
+Colony by Sir Matthew Nathan, the Imperial Government advanced £400,000
+on account of the last Ashanti expedition, but whether this sum includes
+the £202,300 advanced for the same purpose in 1900 is not clear. Assuming
+that it does, the liabilities incurred by the Colony from 1897 to 1902
+inclusive will amount: (1) Loans by Imperial Government, £1,491,000; (2)
+Gold Coast Government Loan, £1,035,000; Total, £2,328,300.
+
+The Ashanti Blue Book (1901) estimated the total cost of administrating
+Ashanti at about £60,000 per annum. According to Sir Matthew Nathan’s
+statement referred to above, the expenditure in 1902 may be set down at
+£107,148. Assuming these figures to be correct, the total expenditure in
+Ashanti from 1897 to 1902 (reckoning an expenditure of £60,000 in 1901)
+works out at the very large figure of £319,385, entirely exclusive of
+grants-in-aid (assuming the £202,300 in 1900 to be incorporated in the
+£400,000 advance), amounting to £695,000. Up to and including 1900, the
+revenue of Ashanti was £3406. In the Ashanti Blue Book already mentioned,
+the annual revenue for Ashanti is estimated at £14,600, less 10 per cent.
+to the Chiefs (_i.e._ less £1460). Assuming this amount to have been
+collected in 1901 and 1902, the total revenue for Ashanti from 1897 to
+1902 inclusive amounted to £29,686, against an expenditure of £319,385,
+and grants-in-aid to the amount of £695,000.
+
+These figures should be borne in mind when examining the following
+tables, which do not go farther than 1900, that is to say, as far as the
+last issued Colonial Office Report.
+
+
+EXPENDITURE, GRANTS-IN-AID, AND REVENUE OF THE NORTHERN TERRITORIES AND
+ASHANTI
+
+1897-1900 inclusive
+
+
+TOTALS
+
+                            Expenditure.   Grants-in-Aid.  Revenue.
+
+    Northern Territories     £213,338        £195,000       £7,736
+    Ashanti                   175,450[295]    202,300        3,406
+
+
+DETAILED
+
+
+NORTHERN TERRITORIES
+
+             Expenditure.   Grants-in-Aid.     Revenue.
+
+    1897-98  £121,022       1898   £45,000  1897        Nil.
+    1899       54,875       1899   100,000  1898         ”
+    1900       37,441[296]  1900    50,000  1899         ”
+                                            1900[297]  £7,736
+
+
+ASHANTI
+
+         Expenditure.    Expenditure.        Revenue.       Grants-in-Aid.
+          Ordinary.     Extraordinary.
+
+    1897   £13,723    1897  £151,614[298]   1897   Nil.
+    1898     4,304    1898       603        1898    ”
+    1899     2,608    1899        20        1899    ”
+    1900     2,578    1900  Not given.      1900  £3,406   1900  £202,300
+
+
+RAILWAY
+
+Position December 31st, 1901: Completed, say, 45 miles;[299] sum
+expended, £389,869.[300]
+
+Loans from the Imperial Treasury: 1898, £220,000 (Railway
+Ordinance);[301] 1900, £676,000 (“certain public works, railway
+construction,” etc.)[302]
+
+Future: Officially expected to reach Obuassi end 1902.
+
+Gold Coast Loan: 1902, £1,035,000, “to defray cost of constructing a
+railway 169¼ miles from Sekondi to Kumasi.”
+
+
+
+
+LAGOS
+
+EXPENDITURE, LOANS, EXPORT TRADE, RAILWAY
+
+
+    EXPENDITURE, 1891-1902-03            LIABILITIES INCURRED
+
+    1891             £66,388          “The amount of the debt of the
+    1892              86,513        Colony on 31st March 1901 was
+    1893             101,251        £972,902. This debt has been
+    1894             124,829        incurred solely for the building
+    1895             144,483        of the railway from Lagos to
+    1896             168,444        Ibadan, the tramway from Lagos
+    1897             182,668        to Iddo, the Abbeokuta branch of
+    1898             203,802        the railway, and the bridges from
+    1899             223,289        Lagos Island to the mainland.
+    1900-1901        187,124          “The Legislature has sanctioned
+    1901-1902        231,597[303]   the borrowing of £1,053,700 for
+    1902-1903        240,718        these purposes.”[304]
+                                      It is recognised that the above
+                                    amount will not be sufficient to
+                                    defray the entire cost.
+
+
+EXPORT TRADE
+
+(These figures include the export of specie.)
+
+    1891          —
+    1892          —
+    1893      £836,295
+    1894       821,682
+    1895       985,595
+    1896       975,263
+    1897       810,975
+    1898       882,329
+    1899       915,934
+    1900-1901  831,257[305]
+
+Owing to the intelligent way in which the Report for 1900-1901 is
+prepared, it is possible to separate the specie from the total exports
+for the years 1896-1900, 1901, as given in that Report. The total
+exports, less specie, for the above-mentioned period were as follows:
+
+
+EXPORT, LESS SPECIE
+
+    1896      £906,393
+    1897       740,179
+    1898       821,112
+    1899       834,358
+    1900-1901  705,237
+
+There are special reasons to account for the heavy fall in 1900-1901.
+Nevertheless, a glance at the expenditure and export columns cannot fail
+to accentuate the fact that the growth in expenditure is incommensurate
+with the increase in the purchasing power of the Colony. The financial
+future of Lagos now depends entirely on the railway. When the entire sum
+authorised has been expended, which will be this year, I believe, and
+other expenses are added thereto, it is estimated that the railway will
+have cost about £9000 to £10,000 per mile. In this connection the Dahomey
+figures should be consulted.
+
+The notes in the expenditure column include, of course, moneys expended
+on public works. The growth in expenditure and the relation it bears to
+the producing capacity of the country would, perhaps, appear even more
+clearly if the expenditure totals were given, minus the expenditure on
+public works. It has not been possible to satisfactorily separate them in
+every case; but, as a simple illustration, 1893 and 1900 may be compared.
+
+          Ordinary expenditure.   Export trade.
+    1893        £75,207             £836,295
+    1900        131,742              831,257
+
+It will thus be seen that whereas, within the period given—eight
+years—ordinary expenditure has nearly doubled, the producing power of
+the country is found, at the close of the eighth year, to be stationary.
+It may be argued, and justly, that the area of the Protectorate has been
+extended since 1893. But the point is, _the way these dependencies are
+managed_. Is not the management carried out upon altogether too elaborate
+and expensive a scale? Does this increase in ordinary expenditure
+correspond with an increase in the production, that is to say, in the
+prosperity of the colony and the people of the colony? If it does not,
+no special knowledge of political economy is required to predict that,
+if the system be not modified in the future, the steadily increasing
+expenditure will, before very long, act as a positive deterrent upon the
+producing power of the country. In fact, there is sufficient evidence
+to justify the fear that in some instances this stage has already been
+reached.
+
+
+
+
+COMPARATIVE TABLES OF IMPORT DUTIES IN VOGUE IN LAGOS AND DAHOMEY
+
+
+                               DAHOMEY.              LAGOS.   In favour of
+
+  Tobacco (manufactured)       2⅙d. per lb.        8d. per lb.    Dahomey.
+      ”  (unmanufactured)      2⅙d. ”              4d. ”             ”
+  Gunpowder                    2⅙d. ”              6d. ”             ”
+  Trade guns                   1s. 7⅕d. each       2s. 6d. each      ”
+  Kerosene                     0⅜d. per gallon     2d. per gallon    ”
+  Salt rock                    11s. 4½d. per ton   20s. per ton      ”
+   ”   sea                     4s. 10½d.  ”        20s.    ”         ”
+  Lead                         ⅑d. per lb.         1d. per lb.       ”
+  Coal                         Free of duty        Pays duty 10%     ”
+  Fresh fruit and seeds             ”              Pay     ”         ”
+  Tools of all kinds
+    (_i.e._ mechanical,
+    agricultural, etc.)             ”         [306]Pay     ”         ”
+  Furniture                         ”         [307]Pays    ”         ”
+
+
+SILKS, VELVETS, COTTONS AND PRINTS
+
+In Dahomey these articles pay duty on their weight; in Lagos the tax is
+an _ad valorem_ one. How these different duties work out in practice can
+only be ascertained by giving specific instances. The following examples
+are taken from actual shipments:
+
+                                 DAHOMEY.        LAGOS.
+                                 50 c. per    10 per cent.
+                                   kilo.      _ad valorem._  In favour of
+                                 £ s. d.        £ s. d.
+  Silk shipment of £50 value—
+  38 kilos weight                0 15 3         5  0  0       Dahomey.
+  Velvet shipment of £90 value
+    —384½ kilos                  7 13 9         7  0  0       Lagos.
+  Cottons shipment of £52 value
+    —659 kilos                  13  3 7         5  4  0         ”
+  Prints shipment of £100 value
+    —979 kilos                  19 12 0        10  0  0         ”
+
+
+SPIRITS
+
+                               DAHOMEY.            LAGOS.    In favour of
+  Brandy, rum, &c., 18/20
+    under proof, equals 46°
+    Tralles, at 1f. 20c. per
+    hectolitre per degree
+    plus 5c. for bottles     2s. 1d. per gallon  3s. per gallon  Dahomey.
+  Gin 0° to 20° Tralles      1s. 9½d.   ”          ”                ”
+  Gin 20° to 50°   ”         2s. 8⅖d.   ”          ”                ”
+  Gin 57° proof (Sykes)      3s. 1d.    ”          ”              Lagos.
+  Alcohol:
+  68 over-proof—96° Tralles  4s. 2¼d.            5s. 0¼d.        Dahomey.
+  60     ”     —91°    ”     4s.                 4s. 9⅗d.           ”
+
+
+
+
+THE DAHOMEY RAILWAY
+
+LENGTH—ESTIMATED COST—FINANCE—PRESENT POSITION—GENERAL REMARKS
+
+
+KOTONU-TCHARU (TCHAOUROU)
+
+Length, 605 kilometres, or 377 miles, in two sections. First section,
+Kotonu-Acheribe (Atcheribe). Second section, Acheribe-Tcharu.
+
+Length of first section, 186 kilometres, or say 115 miles. Estimated cost
+of first section, 63,000 francs per kilometre. Estimated total cost of
+first section, 11,718,000 francs.
+
+In English figures[308]—Total estimated cost of first section, 115 miles
+long, £468,740, or say £4076 per mile.
+
+It is intended to subsequently carry on this line from Tcharu to Karimama
+on the Niger.
+
+
+RESULTS AS FAR AS AT PRESENT KNOWN
+
+Actual work commenced May 1, 1900. In March 1902, 82 kilometres, or
+say 51 miles, of embankment, earthworks and “ouvrages d’art” complete,
+were handed over to the Concessionnaire, who is called upon to provide
+and lay down sleepers and rails, provide rolling-stock, &c. Fifty more
+kilometres, or say 32 miles, similarly complete, were ready at the date
+mentioned to be handed over to the Concessionnaire. The Colony, which
+has itself undertaken the work, has thus prepared in less than two years
+132 kilometres, or say 82 miles of line. The chief difficulties met with
+have been in crossing the swamps between Kotonu and Godomey, the marshy
+streams of Whydah and the Pahu lagoon, where the earthworks are 26 feet
+high. To fill up a depression of 16 feet in the centre of the lagoon
+40,000 cubic metres of sand and earth were required. A distance of 12
+kilometres between Wagbo (Ouagbo) and Taffo required 75,000 cubic metres
+of embankment. In the crossing of the Lama 2500 workmen were continuously
+employed for five months in placing 80,000 cubic metres of gravel. All
+the labour was found in the Colony. The number of natives continuously
+employed has varied from 3500 to 5000, _entirely recruited through the
+Chiefs_. There has been no trouble with the workmen, and no police force
+has been employed on the works. The export trade of the Colony has not
+suffered during the process, notwithstanding the withdrawal of so large
+a quantity of labour from the farms; but, indeed, has increased,[309] a
+tribute to the wisdom of leaving the _recruiting entirely in the hands of
+the Chiefs_.
+
+
+FINANCE
+
+The Colony undertakes the cutting embankment, earthworks, &c., everything
+but the laying of the rails, sleepers, the providing of the same,
+rolling-stock, stations and so forth.
+
+It has undertaken to advance for five years _out of its own local
+resources_ a sum of one million francs, say £40,000 annually. For 1901
+the Colony undertook to provide £60,000, instead of £40,000.
+
+
+GENERAL REMARKS
+
+The French accurately claim that their railway will carry them much
+farther inland for a given distance covered than the Lagos railway with
+the big curve eastward which it takes from Abbeokuta; whereas they
+are pushing their line almost due north, and at their present rate of
+progress, in comparison with the time taken over the British line, their
+iron horse will have penetrated very much farther into the interior than
+Ilorin, long before the British line creeps up to that place. Upon this
+premise they base a number of conclusions, the first and foremost of
+which is that the French line will thus be able to capture the inland
+traffic which finds its way into the Lagos hinterland from the Niger,
+along the Nikki road (the French have a “post” at Nikki, which is a great
+centre for the caravan traffic), and to drain the western portion of
+Sokoto, to the detriment naturally of Lagos and Northern Nigeria. Well,
+in Northern Nigeria we do not seem to care much about trade, the military
+and political policy being more showy, albeit a nice little bill will
+have to be met presently, for the showy policy cannot be indulged in in
+West Africa without having to pay the piper some day. But in the case of
+Lagos it is a different affair, and the French argument is worth looking
+into. There can be no doubt that if the Concessionnaire of the Dahomey
+line lays his rails and provides his rolling-stock at the same ratio of
+speed as the Colony has performed its share of the work, the contention
+that the French rail-head will in a couple of years be carried deeper
+into the interior is correct. That the Concessionnaire will do so is,
+of course, an assumption. He has been engaged in quarrelling with his
+contractors for a considerable time, but now it appears he is seriously
+setting to work; at least, that is the information I get from Lagos. It
+is equally true that the French line, when it has reached its terminus
+at the 377th mile, will plunge into a network of trade roads, branching
+eastwards to Lagos and westwards to Togo, and will have an excellent
+chance of diverting the flow of the internal commerce from both those
+Colonies. To that extent Lagos will probably be a loser, because the
+African is very conservative and will cling to his old trade routes
+rather than abandon them for new ones, and naturally the French railway
+will benefit him. But the French, perhaps, forget that the Lagos line,
+as far as Ibadan, at any rate—as far, that is to say, as it goes at
+present—does not rely upon inland traffic for its existence. It will
+be fed locally by the increased production which will accrue along its
+line of march by the conversion of thousands of carriers of produce,
+into cultivators and reapers of produce. Between Ibadan and Ilorin, it
+cannot hope to do much anyhow. Beyond Ilorin again, increased local
+production will feed it, Nupe being a rich and well-populated country. If
+the British line remains stationary at Ibadan for many years, however,
+the danger from its French competitor, supposing the latter to follow a
+progressive construction, would certainly become more acute. Here, again,
+the question of finance comes in, and the French Colony is decidedly
+better off. What greater contrast could, indeed, be imagined?—Lagos
+in debt to the tune of over a million, burdened for all time with an
+annual drain of £50,000, while Dahomey is not in debt to the extent of
+one penny, and cheerfully advances £60,000 in one year to the works of
+construction out of its surplus funds! As for the _cost_ of construction,
+if the French estimates hold good, or anywhere near it, the French line
+will be built at about half the cost of its British competitor.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Since the above remarks were written news has been received that 65
+kilometres of the railway were opened to traffic in September, and that
+rail-head is expected to reach Abomey in January next.
+
+
+
+
+FRENCH GUINEA RAILWAY
+
+LENGTH. ESTIMATED COST. FINANCE. PRESENT POSITION
+
+
+KONAKRY-KURUSSA _viâ_ TIMBO
+
+Length, 550 kilometres, or 342 miles.
+
+Highest estimated cost of line, 80,000 francs per kilometre.
+
+Highest estimated total cost, 44,000,000 francs.
+
+First section, Konakry-Kandia, 150 kilometres, or say 92 miles.
+
+In English figures: Total estimated cost of line, 342 miles long,
+£1,700,000; or say, roughly, about £5140 per mile.
+
+
+RESULTS UP TO DATE, ACCORDING TO THE REPORT OF THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF
+FRENCH WEST AFRICA IN JUNE LAST
+
+The earthworks have reached Kandia at the 149th kilometre (say 92nd
+mile).
+
+With the exception of two places, between the 27th and 44th kilometre,
+and between the 90th and 107th kilometre, the earthworks and embankment,
+&c. are finished and in good condition. One steel bridge thirty-three
+yards long is already fixed up, and two others are in process of being
+so. The 34 kilometres which remain are being proceeded with rapidly.
+Seventeen hundred workmen are continuously engaged thereon. Rails and
+sleepers are being regularly landed at Konakry. The first locomotive
+has arrived. By October the rolling-stock complete for the first 150
+kilometres, say 92 miles, will have arrived in the Colony.
+
+
+FINANCE
+
+For the first section the Colony borrowed from the “Caisse des
+Retraites,” on its own guarantee, eight million francs (£320,000), at 4
+10% in August 1899; and four million francs (£160,000) at 4% from the
+“Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations” in March 1901. The first loan is
+to be paid back in forty annual payments, and the second in twenty-five
+annual payments, the two annuities together amounting to 430,000 francs,
+or say £17,200.
+
+These loans will be further supplemented by drafts upon the Colony’s
+local funds.
+
+
+
+
+WEST AFRICAN MAHOGANY TRADE
+
+
+IMPORTS OF WEST AFRICAN MAHOGANY INTO EUROPEAN PORTS IN THE YEARS
+1898-1901
+
+    1898        40,167 tons
+    1899        48,902  ”
+    1900        55,959  ”
+    1901        44,582  ”
+
+
+DESTINATION OF IMPORTS IN 1901
+
+    Liverpool   29,312 tons
+    London       6,998  ”
+    Glasgow        278  ”
+    Germany      4,735  ”
+    France       3,259  ”
+
+
+IMPORTS, IN SUPERFICIAL FEET, OF WEST AFRICAN MAHOGANY INTO LIVERPOOL FOR
+THE PAST 13 YEARS
+
+    Sup. ft.  1889      68,000
+       ”      1890     259,000
+       ”      1891   1,600,000
+       ”      1892   3,000,000
+       ”      1893   4,984,000
+       ”      1894   4,700,000
+       ”      1895   3,400,000
+       ”      1896   5,098,000
+       ”      1897   8,134,000
+       ”      1898  10,519,000
+       ”      1899  13,508,000
+       ”      1900  14,034,000
+       ”      1901  11,652,000
+
+
+IMPORT, CONSUMPTION AND STOCK OF WEST AFRICAN MAHOGANY INTO LIVERPOOL
+1898-1901
+
+                 1898.          1899.          1900.          1901.
+
+  IMPORT      10,519,000 ft. 13,508,000 ft. 14,034,000 ft. 11,652,000 ft.
+  CONSUMPTION 10,571,000  ”  13,496,000  ”  13,764,000  ”  11,978,000  ”
+  STOCK          633,000  ”     645,000  ”     915,000  ”     589,000  ”
+
+
+IMPORTS OF WEST AFRICAN MAHOGANY INTO LIVERPOOL FOR THE FIRST SIX MONTHS
+OF 1901 AND 1902 RESPECTIVELY
+
+                                              LOGS
+
+                              January.     February.     March.
+                             1901. 1902.  1901. 1902.  1901. 1902.
+  Lagos                      1558   799    767   184    386   120
+  Benin                       202   599     62   376     69    —
+  Sapeli                       65    49     44    44     58    —
+  Other West African Ports   2373   626    505  1130    264   198
+
+                               April.        May.         June.
+                             1901. 1902.  1901. 1902.  1901. 1902.
+  Lagos                       311    42    210    43     72   114
+  Benin                       121   181     56    66     77    —
+  Sapeli                       87    89     36    42     77    —
+  Other West African Ports    604   617    206   502    320   114
+
+
+
+
+THE GOLD COAST MINING INDUSTRY
+
+
+Having but casually referred to the Gold Coast mining industry, it has
+been suggested to me that a few remarks might be contributed to the
+subject in an Appendix. I am somewhat reluctant to write anything on the
+point, because I know absolutely nothing about mining; and the opinions
+I have formed, such as they are, are the outcome (1) of conversations
+with a number of men who are more or less experts, and have formed their
+views of the prospects of the Gold Coast mining industry from personal
+investigation on the spot; (2) the perusal of a quantity of reports by
+Companies which are operating and prospecting ... and by Companies which
+are doing nothing at all but squander their shareholders’ money; (3)
+historical research and study of the past performances of the Gold Coast
+as a gold producer. Beyond that I have no knowledge whatever; nothing but
+opinions, which perhaps the reader will kindly bear in mind when perusing
+the following notes.
+
+There is not the slightest doubt that gold exists in considerable
+quantities in West Africa. The earliest records we have of any trade at
+all being done on the West Coast of Africa is a trade in gold dust. The
+external trade of West Africa dates back to the period when the Negroes
+beheld the Carthaginian galleys bearing down upon their shores. The
+internal gold trade of West Africa is probably even more remote—but there
+we enter the domain of conjecture.
+
+There is not the slightest doubt that the Portuguese, Dutch, English,
+French, and so on, obtained enormous quantities of gold from the Gold
+Coast.
+
+For many years the gold _trade_ in the Gold Coast has practically been a
+thing of the past. The gold _trade_, as a trade, is long since dead.
+
+At the beginning of last century the great gold store—which had been
+accumulating for ages—of the Coast peoples of the Gold Coast became
+exhausted. At that period the Ashantis, farther inland, still retained
+large quantities of gold ostentatiously displayed. James, Bowdich,
+Dupuis, Hutton, and Hutcheson bear witness to that. With the gradual
+undermining of the Ashanti Kingdom this store also disappeared.
+
+Coming to more recent times, we find that the geological formation known
+as “banket” was discovered in 1878 in the Takwa district by a French
+traveller called Bonnat. That seems to have been the basis of the future
+modern mining industry in the Gold Coast, replacing the extinct trade.
+
+Many years of disappointment and failure followed Bonnat’s discovery,
+due in a very large measure to the absence of transport facilities and
+to mortality. However, some of the mines which had come into existence
+subsequent to the discovery refused to be discouraged, and went on
+working, more or less half-heartedly, notably in the Wassau and Takwa
+districts.
+
+In January 1900 the scene changed, as though by a magician’s wand.
+The man who waved it was a Mr. Stanley Clay, an engineer reputed of
+considerable ability, in the employ of the Consolidated Goldfields of
+South Africa, which Corporation had been approached by the men who owned
+the Wassau and Takwa mines. This gentleman reported in effect that the
+banket formation of the district he had been despatched to examine was
+so like the banket formation of the Rand as to be hardly distinguishable
+from the latter. Although some years previous to that report the Ashanti
+Goldfields Corporation, Limited—the parent, so to speak, of the Ashanti
+mines—had come into existence, I believe I am correct in stating that the
+remarkable “boom” in Gold Coast mining undertakings practically dates
+from the favourable report above alluded to.
+
+Be that as it may, the last two years have witnessed the extraordinary
+movement with which every one is familiar. According to “Wallach’s West
+African Manual” for June 1901, 321 companies had at that time been
+created, with a total nominal share capital of £25,567,170. “The issued
+share capital will amount to approximately £15,750,000, if all is fully
+paid up.”[310]
+
+This is truly colossal. But all is not gold that glitters. The boom,
+prematurely, and to a large extent, dishonestly engineered, collapsed.
+Deep distrust has taken the place of sanguine anticipations, and public
+confidence, greatly shaken, is apt to rush to the opposite extreme. The
+Gold Coast mining industry has many enemies and many unwise friends. The
+“boom” was, of course, thoroughly unjustified. The public lost their
+heads completely. Company after company was formed, a large proportion
+of which hardly knew where their territory lay, let alone whether it
+contained any gold. But the public did not care twopence so long as it
+was a Gold Coast venture, and a great many rascals have done excellently
+well out of the British investor. Finally, this constant flotation of
+companies got to be in the nature of a scandal; and the Governor of the
+Gold Coast, in a courageous speech, which has remained famous, before the
+local Chamber of Commerce, and for which Sir Matthew Nathan deserves the
+greatest possible credit, denounced the abuses which the movement was
+giving rise to. Mr. Chamberlain promptly endorsed the Governor’s views,
+and caused a public statement to be made which fell like a bombshell on
+the market-riggers. Flotation of new companies after that was an almost
+impossible task, and the market received a staggering blow from which it
+has not yet recovered. There is pretty certain to be renewed activity at
+some not very distant day. Let us hope that the next time it will rest on
+something more tangible than fairy tales.
+
+That gold exists in the Gold Coast is demonstrated beyond a shadow of
+doubt. That it can be worked at a profit has yet to be satisfactorily
+proved, even in the case of the properties which are, or will be, in
+close proximity to the railway now in course of construction. For the
+purposes of illustration the Gold Coast may be divided into three
+portions. First, where gold exists in such quantities—other conditions
+being favourable—that it is reasonable to believe the mines, if
+economically and wisely administered, will become dividend-producing.
+Secondly, where gold exists, but not in sufficient quantities—the
+conditions of mining in West Africa being what they are—to enable the
+mines ever to become dividend-paying. Thirdly; where no gold exists at
+all.
+
+Now when it is borne in mind that options have been acquired by
+individuals pretty well all over the country, and companies have been
+formed to work those options, it will be easily understood that shares of
+a considerable number of existing companies are not worth the paper upon
+which they are inscribed. In my opinion, if Mr. Wallach’s “321” companies
+were divided by six, the residue would be an optimistic prophecy as to
+the number of Gold Coast mining companies existing ten years hence.
+This number would be amply sufficient to allow of the Gold Coast to
+become, what I believe it will become, a gold-producing region of very
+considerable value. Personally, I am as equally convinced that some of
+the mines will become good dividend-payers, as I am that the majority are
+rubbish. The two main difficulties which the mining industry in the Gold
+Coast have to face are climate and transport.
+
+The first is a very real difficulty, and the public would do well to
+treat with the utmost scepticism reports emanating from directors of
+Gold Coast companies, especially those whose properties are situate near
+the coast; who pooh-pooh the danger of the climate. If Major Ross’s
+indefatigable efforts are backed up by the authorities and the mining
+companies, we shall see a better state of things before many years are
+past. But that the climate will always be an adverse element to contend
+against is positively certain. Those who say the contrary are not dealing
+honestly with the public.
+
+Many people imagine that transport difficulties will vanish when this
+crawling single line to Kumasi has been completed. Let those who are
+inclined to that belief study one of the excellent maps of the Gold Coast
+mines now available, and see how many of the properties, out of the total
+of companies floated, approximate sufficiently to the line to feel its
+usefulness. Before transport difficulties can be said to be overcome, the
+Gold Coast must be a network of railways. That may come, but the time is
+not yet by a long, a very long way.
+
+The alleged labour difficulty I have dealt with elsewhere. It is largely
+fictitious, as the most reputable companies and the most experienced
+Europeans will bear witness. The boot, the stick; abuse; inadequate pay;
+dishonest dealing—so long as these incentives to labour exist on the
+Gold Coast, and they exist to-day, so long will certain people endeavour
+to make the British public believe that labour is improcurable in West
+Africa save by measures of coercion, or by Asiatic emigration, or by
+draining the other West African colonies of their able-bodied men. Decent
+wages; just treatment; tactful dealing; a high type of representative—the
+mining companies which supply these have not, and will not have,
+occasion to complain. The Administration might play a useful part in
+imitating the French policy of obtaining labour for the Guinea Railway,
+viz. through the Chiefs, and through them alone, and refuse to allow
+authorised or unauthorised recruiting agents.
+
+From the point of view of the investing public, those who contemplate
+putting any money into the Gold Coast mines should carefully weigh
+the difficulties mentioned against the counterbalancing reasons for
+optimism in the facts (1) that some undoubted experts, and some men of
+undoubted integrity and ability who have a reputation to lose, have
+staked that reputation upon the existence of “paying” gold in the Gold
+Coast; (2) that a powerful corporation has undertaken a heavy liability
+in guaranteeing a certain sum for a number of years to the Gold Coast
+Railway; (3) that a very large sum of money has been sunk in the
+country for the purpose of mining enterprise; (4) that the past history
+of the Gold Coast is all in its favour. Finally, the investor should
+discriminate carefully between the companies and “groups” which are
+justifying, or honestly seeking to justify, their existence and those
+that are not.
+
+
+
+
+APPROXIMATE AREA AND POPULATION OF THE BRITISH WEST AFRICAN POSSESSIONS
+
+
+    GAMBIA.          Population, 14,260.
+
+    SIERRA LEONE.    Colony, 4000 square miles; population, 136,000.
+                     Protectorate, 30,000 square miles; population,
+                       750,000.
+
+    GOLD COAST.      Gold Coast Proper, 40,000 square miles; population,
+                       1,500,000.
+                     Ashanti proper. Neither area nor population known.
+                     Northern territories, 38,000 square miles[311];
+                       population, 317,964 (C.O. Report, July 1902).
+
+    LAGOS.           Colony, 3460 square miles         } Population,[312]
+                     Protectorate, 25,450 square miles }   1,500,000.
+
+    NIGERIA.         500,000 square miles; population, 25 to 30
+                       millions.[313]
+
+
+
+
+THE RABINEK CASE
+
+(See Chapter xxxii.)
+
+
+On October 27th, Sir Charles Dilke, having asked the Under-Secretary
+for Foreign Affairs if he could say whether, in the Rabinek case, the
+prisoner was taken by the Congolese authorities from a British ship
+in British waters, and, if so, what course his Majesty’s Government
+proposed to adopt, Lord Cranborne, in a printed answer, said: “It is at
+present uncertain whether Mr. Rabinek was actually on board a British
+vessel when arrested, or whether the ship was at the time in British
+waters. Inquiries are, however, being made, and on receipt of definite
+information his Majesty’s Government will be in a position to consider
+what action should be taken in the matter.”
+
+Since the above question by Sir Charles Dilke, the doubt as to the
+actual place of Mr. Rabinek’s arrest has been removed. The Congo State
+authorities can no longer evade the point. Here is a copy of the
+_Procès-verbal d’arrestation_, showing conclusively that Mr. Rabinek was
+arrested _on board a British vessel_.
+
+                   PROCÈS-VERBAL D’ARRESTATION.
+
+    Le soussigné, Saroléa, Louis, Sous-Lieutenant de la Force
+    Publique, commandant la colonne mobile du Tanganyka, stationnée
+    à Mpueto, officier de police judiciaire, a procédé le 15 Mai
+    1901, à 3 heures de l’après-midi, à l’arrestation du sieur
+    Rabinek en exécution du mandat d’arrêt délivré le 17 Décembre,
+    1900, à charge du dit Rabinek par le tribunal territorial
+    d’Albertville. _Le prénommé se trouvait à bord du steamer
+    anglais “Scotia,” ancré dans le port de Mpueto._ Le Sieur
+    Rabinek a été remis à M. Chargois ff du représentant du Comité
+    Spécial du Katanga à Mpueto.
+
+                                      Fait à Mpueto, le 15 Mai 1901.
+
+                                     (L.S.) Lieutenant Commandant la
+                                     Colonne mobile du Tanganyka.
+
+                                                     (Sig.) SAROLÉA.
+
+The British Government has now a copy of the above.
+
+
+
+
+FOOTNOTES
+
+
+[1] _Journal of the African Society_, October 1901.
+
+[2] Among the principal exceptions may be mentioned gum arabic from
+Senegal, pepper, spices, &c., from the Guinea Coast.
+
+[3] The totals here given do not, of course, include foreign and Colonial
+merchandise shipped to British West Africa from British ports.
+
+[4] The total volume of trade—British and foreign and coastwise—in each
+of the West African Colonies in the five years 1896-1900, including
+specie, has been as follows:
+
+    Gambia                                              £1,797,916
+    Sierra Leone                                         4,646,503
+    Gold Coast                                          10,393,850
+    Lagos                                                8,853,461
+    Niger Coast Protectorate (and for 1900, “Nigeria”)   8,183,288
+                                                       -----------
+                                          Gross total  £42,728,479
+
+The trade of the former territories of the Niger Company, from 1896 to
+1899 inclusive, is not reckoned in this total, no public figures being
+available.
+
+[5] The totals given are, of course, exclusive of foreign and Colonial
+merchandise shipped to these foreign possessions from British ports.
+
+[6] Due to exceptional imports of coal and telegraph apparatus.
+
+[7] German imports, like British imports, are largely for re-exportation
+to other European and American ports.
+
+[8] The chief town in Borgu on which the Lugard and Decœur expeditions
+were directing their efforts.
+
+[9] _Journal of the African Society_, January 1902.
+
+[10] This document is published _in extenso_ in the annual report of the
+Liverpool Chamber of Commerce for 1901.
+
+[11] The Foreign Office lost us the Cameroons, the French Congo littoral,
+Futa-Jallon, and heaven knows what besides. In doing so it showed itself
+the indifferent servant of an indifferent public.
+
+[12] See, more particularly, Appendices and the chapter on the Finances
+of Nigeria.
+
+[13] “By the end of April 1900,” says the report for Southern Nigeria for
+1900, “twenty proclamations were passed.” I should be afraid to say how
+many have been passed since.
+
+[14] The activity of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine has been
+phenomenal, and the useful work performed by it is internationally
+recognised. To the splendid enterprise of Sir Alfred Jones, its initiator
+and President, is due the astonishingly strong financial position which
+the School has attained—entirely the outcome of private benevolence.
+
+[15] In the remarkable speech he made at the Lagos Literary Institute—the
+most able and statesmanlike oration ever delivered by a British official
+in West Africa—Sir William MacGregor said in reference to the extension
+of the Lagos Railway: “It would require probably not much greater
+expenditure than would a number of military campaigns, it would save many
+valuable lives to open up the country in that way, and it would leave a
+permanent valuable asset. In this the locomotive would be preferable to
+the Maxim.”
+
+[16] That admirable German Institution, the _Kolonial Wirtschaftliches
+Komitee_ (Agricultural Committee) might also be imitated with advantage
+by our Government. Attached to the German Colonial Society, the
+Agricultural Committee devotes its exclusive attention to a study of the
+economic resources of the German possessions, giving special notice to
+cocoa, rubber, gutta-percha, cotton, &c. Experts have been despatched
+by the Committee to the South Seas to study gutta-percha, to the States
+for cotton, to Central and South America for cocoa, &c. The Committee
+is really composed of a trained body of agricultural and botanical
+specialists working in the joint interests of the Government and the
+merchants.
+
+[17] M. Empain has lately been granted by King Leopold a huge concession
+in the Aruwimi region of the Congo State in connection with the promotion
+of a railway to the Great Lakes.
+
+[18] The London Chamber being mainly—although not exclusively—concerned
+with Gold Coast trade and mining developments.
+
+[19] It was entirely owing to the assistance of the African Association’s
+agents that the people of the Niger Delta were induced to accept British
+protection and consular jurisdiction. By the merchants’ good offices,
+Consuls Johnston and Hewett were enabled to ascend the rivers to places
+where they would not have dared to enter unaccompanied by representatives
+of the merchants.
+
+[20] Chairman of the African Section.
+
+[21] Report of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, 1900.
+
+[22] Messrs. Shelford’s estimate is £7000 per mile. But this cannot be
+reconciled with the amount expended. It leaves out of account the cost of
+bridges between Lagos Island and the mainland, which are part and parcel
+of the railway scheme. In March of this year the Colony had already
+expended its loan of £1,053,700, which works out at £8430 per mile. But
+although the railway has reached its present terminus it is not yet
+properly finished. Speaking in March, Sir W. MacGregor foreshadowed a
+further expenditure of £60,000, and added, “the probability is, however,
+that this will not be sufficient.” On the same occasion the Governor,
+reviewing the state of the Colony, said that one of the two “principal
+causes of anxiety” was “the difficulty experienced in getting the railway
+into working order.”
+
+[23] French Guinea borrowed £480,000 at the rate of 4.10 per cent. and 4
+per cent. respectively.
+
+[24] 14_s._ 8_d._ per head of the whole population of the territory.
+
+[25] Another incident of the kind is referred to by Sir W. MacGregor in
+one of his speeches before the Legislative Council. Plans were sent home
+for a steam-hopper or tramway to remove refuse. The plans were rejected
+by the “consulting engineers.” The Governor sarcastically remarked: “It
+is doubtful that any remedy that would cost less than £100,000 will ever
+be approved by the engineers.”
+
+[26] The same belief was entertained, curiously enough, by the
+inhabitants of the Niger Basin itself even in Clapperton’s day, as
+witness Sultan Bello’s map, drawn for Clapperton at the latter’s request,
+referred to farther on.
+
+[27] Lyon subsequently gained Timbuctoo from Murzuk, being the second
+European to visit the mysterious city. It has always remained an open
+question whether Horneman did not actually cross the Desert and reach
+the Chad. Denham, indeed, believed that he did so, but no trace of the
+unfortunate German has ever been discovered from the time he left Murzuk,
+nearly a quarter of a century before Denham arrived there himself.
+
+[28] Caffre—_i.e._ unbeliever.
+
+[29] For instance, the Bahr-el-Ghazal, Bahr-el-Asrek, Bahr-el-Abiad, &c.,
+all rivers.
+
+[30] Some authors consider the Hausas to be a branch of the Mandingo
+race. According to this theory, the Mandingoes are the parent stock,
+and the Hausas, Songhays, Bambarras, &c., are all offshoots of the
+same great family. Although there would appear to be a certain basis
+of probability—especially as regards the Bambarras—in the plea of a
+common Mandingo origin, our historical and ethnological knowledge of the
+different races of West Africa, which is still in the embryonic stage,
+precludes anything in the nature of a positive assertion.
+
+[31] Subsequent to the final overthrow of the Berbers, under Kuseila, by
+the Arabs in 688 A.D.
+
+[32] “Historical Account of the Kingdom of Tek-roor.” By Sultan Mohammed
+Bello of Hoosa. Denham & Clapperton. Vol. ii., Appendix xiii.
+
+[33] “Hausaland.” By the Rev. Charles Robinson. P. 179.
+
+[34] The _Hausa bokoy_, or seven States, as distinct from the _Banza
+bokoy_ or Bastard States, representing the seven other provinces where
+the Hausa language had partly spread.
+
+[35] “A Mission to Central Africa.” By James Richardson. 1850-51.
+
+[36] “L’Annamite mère des langues.” Le Colonel Frey. 1892.
+
+[37] Lieutenant-Colonel Monteil’s estimate, 1891.
+
+[38] For hours you may wander about noting industrial scenes like these,
+showing to what a length their advance in civilisation has increased
+the wants of the people, and produced a necessary division of labour
+into weavers, dyers, blacksmiths, brass-workers, saddle-makers, tailors,
+builders, horse-boys, agricultural labourers, domestic servants,
+shoe-makers, shopkeepers, traders, and others.—Joseph Thompson, in _Good
+Words_, 1886.
+
+[39] Leo Africanus tells us that Gober “had a good trade and considerable
+industry, especially in leather-work” (beginning of sixteenth century).
+
+[40] Since the above was written, Mr. Consul Jago’s report (No. 578)
+on the “Trade and economic state of the vilayet of Tripoli during the
+past forty years” has been published by the Foreign Office. It is a most
+interesting document. The Consul gives a table of the value of Tripoli’s
+trade with the Central Sudan States (Sokoto, Bornu, Wadai) for the period
+1862-1901 as follows: 1862-71, £318,000; 1872-81, £1,846,300; 1882-91,
+£1,283,000; 1892-1901, £1,141,700; annual average, £114,725.
+
+[41] Consul Jago appears to favour this view. I venture to suggest that
+the paragraphs (pp. 7 and 8) in which he refers to the point are open to
+criticism. Take, for instance, the cost of transport. Notwithstanding
+that, at first sight, the assertion may appear strange, I believe that,
+if any one cares to take the trouble to work out the cost of transport of
+a ton of European merchandise from London to Kuka (1) _viâ_ Tripoli and
+by caravan across the desert, (2) _viâ_ Burutu, the Niger and overland,
+the former route will be found the cheaper of the two. Things do not
+always appear to be what they are in Africa. If France can come to a
+working understanding with the Senussis, the caravan trade will revive.
+
+[42] According to Lieutenant-Colonel Pilcher, who commanded the West
+African Frontier Force in 1898, the Hausa is more quarrelsome than the
+Yoruba or Nupe, gets into trouble more often, and is not so quick at
+picking up drill or musketry (Colonial Office Report, No. 260, West
+African Frontier Force, June 1899). Other officers eulogise the Hausas,
+and among military men they are, I think, believed to be superior
+fighters to either the West Indian or Mendi Negro, while about equalling
+the Yoruba. The Negro seems to fight more fiercely and recklessly when he
+has Islam to fall back upon.
+
+[43] “Géographie Universelle,” livre xii. p. 587. 1887.
+
+[44] “The Colonisation of Africa,” p. 282. 1899.
+
+[45] “Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa.”
+
+[46] “The Language of Bornu.”
+
+[47] “Magana Hausa.” By J. F. Schön, D.D., F.R.G.S.
+
+[48] “Hausaland; or, Fifteen Hundred Miles through the Central Sudan.”
+1897.
+
+[49] “Specimens of Hausa Literature.” “A Hausa Grammar.” “A Hausa-English
+Dictionary.” “The Gospel of St. John in Hausa.”
+
+[50] Full details are supplied in Canon Robinson’s book.
+
+[51] Apart from the question whether the Hausas can claim to have
+“attempted the production of a literature” any more than the Fulani or
+Kanuri, there remains the fact—which goes to confute Canon Robinson’s
+somewhat sweeping generalisation—that the language of the Tuareg—the
+Tamashek—has been reduced to literature in _Tamashek characters_, and
+that both sexes among the Tuareg are regularly instructed therein.
+
+[52] “Kanuri Proverbs and Kanuri-English Vocabulary.” By the Rev. S.
+N. Koelle. On page 9 of the introduction to his book, Koelle speaks
+of the system of orthography followed by him as that of Professor
+Lepsius, of Berlin, in the pamphlet entitled “Standard Alphabet for
+Reducing _Unwritten Languages_ and Foreign Graphic Systems to a Uniform
+Orthography in European Letters.”
+
+[53] Baikie gives nine Hausa dialects, viz.: “Katshena, the purest and
+best; (2) Kano; (3) Gober; (4) Daure; (5) Zamfara; (6) Zuzu; (7) Biranta
+Goboz; (8) Kabi; (9) Shira, or Shura.”—“Narrative of an Exploring Voyage
+up the Rivers Kwora and Binue.” By William Balfour Baikie. 1856.
+
+[54] It is found in French Guinea, north of Sierra Leone, but is not
+there the staple product, rubber taking its place.
+
+[55] Southern Nigeria, or rather the Niger Delta, is commonly known as
+“the rivers.”
+
+[56] The figures for 1900 include the whole of Nigeria—that is, the
+former Niger Company’s territories in the Lower Niger, and the Niger
+Coast Protectorate, now incorporated into Southern Nigeria.
+
+[57] _Idem._
+
+[58] Germany has a protective tax on kernel or other foreign crushed
+oil, which enables her to keep the home market to herself, and she
+has made a profitable use of the cake for feeding cattle, whilst our
+farmers—largely, I understand, through the operation of the tenant-right
+conditions of tenure, or perhaps through mere prejudice—refuse to use it
+to any extent.
+
+[59] In Senegal and the Gambia the ground-nut industry, which is also
+essentially a native industry, takes its place, the number of palm-trees
+in those possessions being very scanty—not worth mentioning, in fact.
+
+[60] It is also used for lubricating mixtures for the axles of railway
+carriages.
+
+[61] Giving out trust is not invariably confined to the European. Native
+chiefs have been known to give trust to Europeans up to 1000 cases of
+palm-oil, in days, too, when palm-oil was worth £15 per puncheon. This
+would represent a credit of £15,000.
+
+[62] In point of fact, palm-oil from the Congo district is the richest in
+stearine.
+
+[63] The first West African kernels were imported in 1860 by Mr. A.
+Mackenzie Smith and the late Mr. Charles Lane, of Liverpool. The Old
+Calabar district led the way in Southern Nigeria. The trade was begun
+there in a small way in 1864. Benin was the next place in Southern
+Nigeria to follow suit, and by 1867 the trade was fairly large. By 1880
+the trade had spread to the other rivers, New Calabar, Bonny, Brass, and
+Opobo.
+
+[64] The average crushing of the African Oil Mills is, I believe, about
+600 tons weekly.
+
+[65] The exception is the machine erected at the Brass River in 1877 (by
+the Count de Cardi, I believe) and used to this day by the firm which has
+the principal trade of this district. It can produce, I believe, forty or
+fifty bags of clean kernels per day of ten hours. It would require 600 or
+700 pairs of hands to give this result in the same time.
+
+[66] I am given to understand that efforts to use hand-crushing machines
+are being made by a merchant firm in French Guinea.
+
+[67] An interesting account of this most valuable experiment is given by
+M. Pierre Mille in the _Journal of the African Society_ for October 1901.
+
+[68] Various types of hand-ploughs are now being experimented with
+in Senegal for the purpose of quickening production.—See _Journal
+d’Agriculture Tropicale_, September 1901.
+
+[69] Many people, on the other hand, will consider the somewhat elaborate
+judicial machinery set up in Northern Nigeria as distinctly premature.
+The administration of English law in West African Protectorates (see
+p. 16, Northern Nigeria Report), even when modified by native law
+and custom, is a feature of the Crown Colony system which has little
+to recommend it. Dr. Ballay’s plan in French Guinea was infinitely
+preferable. In all matters affecting the relations of natives with
+natives Ballay insisted that native law should be the basis. He declined
+to introduce all the technicalities of European law among a people whose
+own laws are founded upon just principles, and, given security in their
+application, work effectively and well.
+
+[70] August 1, 1891. It was first called Consular Jurisdiction.
+
+[71] Sir Ralph Moor has since declared that Southern Nigeria is in
+“a very sound financial position.” The test of sound finance must be
+different in West Africa from any other part of the world.
+
+[72] Colonial Office Report, No. 315.
+
+[73] In that year Southern Nigeria spent £30,196 on military expenses
+and £8236 only on the “Aborigines” department. Under “Political
+and Administrative” expenses, £20,327 was absorbed; under “Marine
+Department,” £32,531; £24,654 only was spared for public works, but
+“Prisons” necessitated £7200, against £1171 under “Botanical” and £1147
+under “Sanitary”!
+
+[74] In 1890 the value of exports from the Delta was estimated at over
+£1,300,000.
+
+[75] The Nupe campaign was undertaken after great provocation, and is
+understood to have been carried out with the approval, tacit or avowed,
+of the Emir of Sokoto, who had reason to complain of the Emir of Nupe’s
+conduct.
+
+[76] Similarly Nupe refused to have anything to do with Herr von
+Puttkamer in 1889 without consulting the Company, although the German (or
+his interpreter) passed himself off as the “Queen of England’s messenger.”
+
+[77] Northern Nigeria.
+
+[78] “The Foundation of British East Africa.”
+
+[79] Colonial Report, No. 346, page 11, par. 2.
+
+[80] Lord John Russell’s Instructions to Captain Henry Dundas Trotter,
+Commander William Allen, Commander Bird Allen, and William Cook, Esquire,
+Commissioners for making and concluding agreements with the Chief Rulers
+of the Western Coast of Africa for the suppression of the traffic in
+slaves and the establishment of a lawful commerce, 1840.
+
+[81] The absence of any wish to “act otherwise” on the part of the native
+is invariably assumed in Europe, and but too often by Europeans in
+Africa. In this connection the following passage from Clapperton (when
+travelling in Nigeria) is worth noting: “It was with feelings of the
+highest satisfaction that I listened to some of the most respectable of
+the merchants, when they declared that; were any other system of trading
+adopted, they would gladly embrace it in preference to dealing in slaves.”
+
+[82] Archibald Constable & Co. 1898.
+
+[83] Not to be confounded with the King of Benin who massacred
+Consul-General Phillips.
+
+[84] Referring to domestic slavery in the Northern Territories of the
+Gold Coast, the late Lieut.-Colonel Northcott, C.B., whose death was a
+sad blow to the Empire and to West Africa particularly, in his report
+on those territories (Report on the Northern Territories of the Gold
+Coast—published by the Intelligence Division of the War Office in 1899),
+says: “The every-day life of slaves differs in no respect from that
+of the free men. Ground is allotted to them, on which they are free
+to work for their own benefit, the rule generally being that they may
+take two days out of every five for work on their own account. With the
+accumulated results of this labour they are at liberty to purchase their
+freedom. The price demanded is not excessive, and ranges from £2 to £5,
+according to locality; but so lightly does the yoke of slavery bear
+that only a comparatively small proportion seek their emancipation by
+this means. Slaves may marry, and are encouraged to do so, the children
+becoming the property of the master. The apparent hardship of liability
+to sale is in reality not oppressive. The march to the new owner’s place
+of abode is free from any suggestion of cruelty or force; the slave
+partakes of his master’s food and shares his lodging, and he is certain
+of kind treatment on arriving at his destination.”
+
+[85] This is pidgeon-English, the Hausa for ivory tusk (_i.e._ piece of
+ivory) being _hakorin_, or _hauwin giwa_.
+
+[86] Named in honour of Park, who is supposed to be the first European to
+have noticed it.
+
+[87] And Lagos again since the opening of the railway.
+
+[88] Up to the present, however, shipments of this prepared latex have
+met with scant success.
+
+[89] In the “Report of the Sierra Leone Company” (London: James Phillips,
+printer, 1794) the following passage occurs, which most probably refers
+to the _Pendatesma butyracæ_. “Butter and tallow tree. This is common in
+low lands about Freetown; it abounds with a juice resembling gambodge
+in taint and durability, which exudes after the least laceration, and
+becomes more coagulated, viscous, and of a darker colour. The wood of
+this tree is firm, and seems adapted to various economical purposes. The
+fruit is nearly oval, about twice the size of a man’s fist; the rind is
+thick, pulpy, and of a pleasant acid; in the inside are found from five
+to nine seeds of the size of the walnut, containing an oleaginous matter,
+extracted by the natives and used with their rice and other food.” A
+gentleman of my acquaintance who knows this tree, tells me he has seen it
+growing in Sierra Leone, so that there seems no reason why experiments
+similar to those undertaken in French Guinea should not be made in our
+colony, which adjoins that French possession.
+
+[90] Known as “piassava” in the trade. Large quantities are imported from
+Liberia. It is used in brush-making.
+
+[91] Benni seeds crushed yield a fine edible oil.
+
+[92] On the right bank of the Binue: in the Mitchi or (Munshi) country.
+
+[93] Stone potash used to be a monopoly of the Igarras, who sold it to
+the down-river tribes, but the Niger Company has taken the monopoly from
+the Igarras of late years and disposes of it at Lagos, realising, it is
+said, considerable profit—from 2 to 300 per cent.
+
+[94] He will sometimes cut the vine down and chop it into pieces of about
+one foot in length the more readily to extract the sap.
+
+[95] Or even 20 per cent.
+
+[96] There are many other ways of preparing rubber: this is one of them.
+
+[97] “A Short Account of the Invasion of Hausa by the Phulas.” By
+Bashima, a Hausa-Fulani, in the “Magana Hausa” (J. F. Schön. 1815).
+
+[98] About 1840.
+
+[99] And by no one so well as Joseph Thompson, “Mungo Park and the Niger.”
+
+[100] “Othman established the severest punishment upon whoever committed
+the slightest violation of the law.”—“Travels of Sheik Mohammed of Tunis”
+(Bayle St. John. London: 1854).
+
+[101] One of the numerous designations of the Fulani.
+
+[102] “Journal of a Second Expedition into the Interior of Africa,” &c.
+1829.
+
+[103] Under the old Hausa _régime_ the inhabitants of the Northern
+Hausa States paid direct taxes to the Kings. According to the curious
+and interesting records of Assid-el-Haji-Abd-Salam Shabiny, a Tunisian
+merchant, the Sultan of Hausa imposed a tax of 2 per cent. on all
+products of the land. The people also paid a land tax, and certain duties
+were exacted on all goods sold in the market-place (“Relation d’un voyage
+à Timbuctoo vers l’année 1787”).
+
+[104] A missionary has recently admitted that “To the Hausa what is in
+the Koran is of God, and what is not in the Koran is not worth knowing.”
+
+[105] To-day, _Guinée française_.
+
+[106] This is explained by the unwillingness of the Fulani to allow
+unions between their women-folk and their Negro neighbours.
+
+[107] Recently translated into French by M. O. Houdas (Paris: Ernest
+Leroux. 1900).
+
+[108] Leo Africanus.
+
+[109] At one time Melle ruled over Songhay and Timbuctoo. In 1329 the
+Mellians were driven from Timbuctoo by the pagan Mosis (the most powerful
+pagan kingdom which ever arose in West Africa). The people of Melle
+reconquered the place, but were finally expelled by the Tuareg in 1433.
+Melle was subsequently overcome by the Songhay and fell to pieces.
+
+[110] Published by the Hakluyt Society.
+
+[111] We are indebted to M. Dubois for the first complete copy.
+
+[112] The reigning family says the _Tarik_ were white and their subjects
+Wakoris (Mandingoes). This strengthens the Fulani argument, the
+complexion of the pure-blood Fulani inclining to white by comparison with
+their neighbours. In his “Notice Géographique sur la Région du Sahel”
+(which includes Bakunu, the former Baghena), Commandant Lartigue says of
+the Fulani still inhabiting that district, “Quelques-uns sont presque
+blancs; leur cheveux sont à peine crépus, et ils ont les traits fins et
+réguliers des Européens de bonne race.”
+
+[113] The language of the Fulani.
+
+[114] The Empire which, as we have observed, was raised upon the ruins of
+Ghanata by the Mandingoes, the subject race at the time of the latter’s
+foundation.
+
+[115] D’Eichtal’s assertion (“Les Foulahs.” Paris: 1842), that the
+Fulani “to this day” call the whole of Senegambia “Melli,” I do not find
+confirmed, but it is worth mentioning, nevertheless.
+
+[116] The first map in which Melle figures is a Spanish one (1375 A.D.).
+In the map of Mathias de Villadestes, the Venetian (1413 A.D.), the word
+“Toucuzor” is written by the side of that of the King of Melli, “Mussa.”
+For “Toucuzor” read “Toukulor” (Tukulor), the cross race of Fulani-Joloff
+and Fulani-Mandingo.—“Considérations sur la Priorité des Découvertes
+Maritimes sur la Côte Occidentale d’Afrique.”—Binger.
+
+[117] Barth’s chronological table of the Songhay.
+
+[118] Marmol—born in Granada, 1580—translated by Nicholas Perot
+d’Ablancourt.
+
+[119] The _Tarik’s_ statement that Salta Tayenda fled into “Futa” affords
+substantial indication of the presence of Fulani in that country at a
+previous date, which we know, of course, from other sources.
+
+[120] This tradition obviously refers to Fulani pressure—the root of the
+word (Pul, or Ful) signifying red, or reddish.
+
+[121] A correspondent of a Paris paper, _La Dépêche Coloniale_, writing
+from Kunde, on the Sangha River, on December 10, 1901, says: “Our
+clothes, which are ragged from bush travelling, do not convey a great
+idea of our influence, especially when compared to the Fulbes (Fulani)
+in their embroidered cloths and leather riding-boots. They are all on
+horseback and we are on foot. _There are thousands of them_, and all are
+armed.”
+
+[122] Their presence in Omdurman—that is to say, in the heart of the
+Eastern Sudan in the Nile valley—has already been noted by Father
+Ohrwalder. On page 300 of “Ten Years’ Captivity in the Mahdi’s Camp”
+(Major Wingate, R.A. London: 1895), we read, “Several of the Fellata, who
+came from distant parts of Bornu, Wadai, &c., were stopped at Omdurman on
+their way to Mecca”; and again, on page 305, “The inhabitants of Omdurman
+are a conglomeration of every race and nationality in the Sudan—Fellata,
+Takruris, natives of Bornu, &c.”
+
+[123] Dr. Barth’s estimate as to the date of the foundation of Ghanata
+is certainly not exaggerated, in view of the _Tarik’s_ statement that
+twenty-two kings had reigned before the Hejira.
+
+[124] Ernest Flammarion, Paris. English edition: W. Heinemann.
+
+[125] Toledo was wrested from the Moors in 1085; Saragossa in 1118;
+Valencia, 1238; Seville, 1248; the Beni-Nasr held Granada until 1492.
+
+[126] De Barros, Barth, _Tarik_.
+
+[127] Makrizi, de Barros, Barth.
+
+[128] _L’Anthropologie_ (Tome x., No. 6), of which Dr. Verneau is one of
+the editors.
+
+[129] In plain language, a prominence of the jaws—one of the
+characteristics of the Negro type.
+
+[130] Dr. Randle MacIver and Anthony Wilkin, in “Libyan Notes.” Macmillan
+& Co. 1901.
+
+[131] Concubinage with negresses being the natural explanation.
+
+[132] Other authorities, basing their arguments, _inter alia_, upon
+the assumption that the wild people “covered with hair” encountered
+by the Carthaginian colonists were none other than the gorillas which
+Du Chaillu, more than two thousand years afterwards, brought to the
+knowledge of an incredulous world, and upon the unlikelihood of any
+of those animals being in Hanno’s day so far north, maintain that the
+expedition reached the Gaboon estuary, or even the mouth of the Congo.
+The point is never likely to be cleared up. The two sides are stated with
+great clearness by the late Miss Kingsley in “West African Studies.”
+(Macmillan & Co.)
+
+[133] Lest it be supposed that I am appropriating other people’s ideas
+without acknowledgment, I hasten to add that Major Rennel, in his notes
+on Park’s travels (“Travels in the Interior of Africa.” London: 1799)
+hazards the same suggestion, and Barth and Frey follow suit. But I think
+that, in the light of our further knowledge of the peoples and history of
+Western Africa, the identification of the “Leucæthiopes” with the Fulani
+becomes a good deal more than a suggestion.
+
+[134] The cattle possessed by the Fulani—who are the herdsmen of West
+Africa—are the hump-backed Asiatic kind (_Bos indicus_). That was a great
+point with Faidherbe in favour of the Eastern theory. The Abyssinians’
+cattle, it may be observed, belong to the same breed.
+
+[135] “Then Joseph came and told Pharaoh, and said: ‘My father and my
+brethren, and their flocks, and their herds, and all that they have, are
+come out of the land of Canaan, and, behold, they are in the land of
+Goshen.’”
+
+[136] Cattle-rearer.
+
+[137] “An Account of the Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of Sierra
+Leone.” By Thomas Winterbottom, D.D., Physician to the Colony of Sierra
+Leone. 1803.
+
+[138] The Joloffs (Senegal) declare that the Fulani converse habitually
+with their cattle.
+
+[139] Moore, writing of the Gambia Fulani in the eighteenth century,
+says, they manage cattle so well that the Mandingoes give them their own
+to look after.
+
+[140] Native cavalry soldier.
+
+[141] Related in the French African Committee’s journal.
+
+[142] De Guiraudon was, apparently, unaware of this passage, which has an
+important bearing upon his statements.
+
+[143] Not pear-shaped, as with the negress.
+
+[144] Barth, Baikie, Gray, Monteil, Mollien, De Giraudon, Callié, &c.,
+vie with one another in their enthusiasm over the beauty of the Fulani
+woman of pure blood, which is all the more pronounced in view of their
+ethnic surroundings. Barth speaks of young Fulani girls whose forms
+“recall the finest Grecian sculptury.” “The women are very beautiful, and
+possess strange powers of fascination in their large deep eyes,” says
+Monteil. “The women in particular,” remarks Gray, “might vie in point of
+figure with the finest forms in Europe, and their walk is particularly
+majestic.” “The Fulani women, many of whose countenances are resplendent
+with a veritable beauty” (Reclus).
+
+[145] “West Africa.”
+
+[146] _Ibid._
+
+[147] Witness, for example, the admirable work on land tenure on the
+Ivory Coast just published by Administrator Clozel; also that gentleman’s
+article in the _Journal of the African Society_ for July.
+
+[148] I have not yet heard of any departure from the rule.
+
+[149] “Modern ideas and legislation,” says Dr. Alfred Zimmerman, “forbid
+violent proceedings. The natives should be taught to work by cultivating
+the sentiment in them that it is their interest to do so. _Experience
+proves that protection of property is the surest means to attain that
+end._”
+
+[150] Paul Kollmann’s “The Victoria Nyanza” may be consulted in this
+connection with advantage. The illustrations of domestic ornaments, of
+flasks, bark-boxes, drums, &c., constructed by the natives of Usukama and
+Ukerewe show real beauty of design.
+
+[151] Sir Marshall Clarke’s recent report is instructive. Speaking of the
+natives of Rhodesia, he says: “They work in the mines either from direct
+pressure brought to bear upon them by the administration, a pressure only
+short of force, or the necessity of earning enough to pay their taxes....
+This,” continues Sir Marshall Clarke, “does not tend to make industry
+attractive”; and, he adds, “At present there is undoubtedly discontent
+among the natives.”
+
+[152] “The evidence available seems to indicate that the labour
+difficulty on the Gold Coast may probably be overcome without the
+importation of labourers from other countries, and that success or
+failure in the matter is largely dependent on the person in charge of the
+undertaking. It is very desirable that the persons in charge should be
+gentlemen and men of education, as it is found that such are more likely
+to be able to deal satisfactorily with the natives, who generally require
+to be handled with much tact and judgment.”—Par. 9, “Labour Ordinance”:
+issued by Colonial Office.
+
+[153] “According to native ideas there is no land without owners. What is
+now a forest or unused land will, as years go on, come under cultivation
+by the subjects of the Stool, or members of the village community, or
+other members of the family” (“Fanti Customary Law,” J. M. Sarbah). What
+holds good in the Gold Coast is equally applicable to the rivers and to
+Lagos, indeed throughout West Africa, wherever Negro culture is met with.
+
+[154] In order, of course, to do away with the idea that there is any
+wish or desire on the part of the Government to alienate the land from
+the rightful owners thereof.
+
+[155] The amended Lagos Bill exempts from its operation native
+customary rights and defers to the authority of the Native Councils
+of the hinterland. Its working depends largely, therefore, upon the
+interpretation placed by the Colony’s Governor for the time being on the
+nature of the relationship between those Councils and the Administration.
+Sir W. MacGregor has passed a Bill (the Native Councils Bill) which, he
+thinks, will strengthen the position of the Councils. But it is safe to
+say that, in all matters affecting land legislation in West Africa, the
+procedure for safeguarding native rights, and in their main lines those
+rights themselves, should be laid down as clearly as possible in the Act
+itself.
+
+[156] For an intelligent native view on the subject the reader is
+referred to the speeches of Dr. O. Johnson, Member of the Legislative
+Council of Lagos, in moving the rejection of the Amended Forest Ordinance
+(May 1902). Dr. Johnson’s status in the Colony may be estimated from
+the fact that the extraordinarily able historical address on the native
+history of Lagos, delivered by him at the Lagos Institute last year, was
+published as a Government paper in the Colony.
+
+[157] Who, for some time past, has individually done much to stimulate
+cotton-growing for export in West Africa.
+
+[158] In the manifesto issued by the Association in October there figures
+a list of Vice-presidents, headed by Sir Alfred Jones, K.C.M.G., and
+including no less than twenty-two members of Parliament, among whom one
+notices such well-known names as Winston S. Churchill, R. Yerburgh,
+Alfred Emmott, Sir William Mather, Lord Stanley, the Hon. Arthur Stanley,
+the Hon. W. R. W. Peel, C. A. Cripps, K.C. J. H. Whitley, Sir J. Leigh,
+&c.
+
+[159] Moloney.
+
+[160] Secretary of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce.
+
+[161] The cotton-producing capacities of Northern Nigeria have already
+been commented upon.
+
+[162] The _Deutsche Togo-gesellschaft_.
+
+[163] And as with cotton, so with rice—the Songhays were great
+rice-growers, and _Gao_, or Gago, their ancient capital, is said to mean
+rice in the Songhay language.
+
+[164] Sir Alfred Jones has voluntarily offered to carry cotton from West
+Africa freight free for two years, and I understand that Mr. Woermann, of
+the line of that name, has agreed to ship a considerable quantity of Togo
+cotton free of charge.
+
+[165] And where the enterprise has been carried out on the household
+labour plan, which has been compared to the peasant proprietary system.
+
+[166] Chemical manure has been supplied free by manufacturers of the
+article. An exhibit of cloths manufactured with Togo cotton has been held
+at Dusseldorf, &c.
+
+[167] Sir H. Johnston’s and Mr. Grogan’s discoveries have recently
+emphasised this fact.
+
+[168] Now Southern Nigeria.
+
+[169] And, say the merchants engaged in the trade, to high freights.
+
+[170] The American demand is, I understand, increasing.
+
+[171] C. O. Report, No. 348.
+
+[172] For a technical explanation read the following: “The extremely high
+prices obtained here for figured logs have naturally excited shippers,
+especially native traders, and all are desirous to learn what constitutes
+figure.... This is a subject difficult to elucidate, but we may say that
+‘roe’ may be described as the curved direction the grain of the wood
+takes by one ring overlapping the other; to be of any value, beyond
+ordinary plain wood, it must be of a very pronounced and bold character.
+This gives the required variation of light and shade.”
+
+[173] The conversion of several hundred natives to Islam at Jebu-Ode, one
+of the large Yoruba centres in close proximity to Lagos, and where the
+Church has laboured for years, is a recent incident which points in the
+direction stated.
+
+[174] _Tarik._
+
+[175] Kanem at the time ruled over what was known later as Bornu.
+
+[176] Makrizi attributes the introduction of Islam into Kanem to Hadi el
+Othman, who was probably of Fulani origin, although Makrizi does not say
+so.
+
+[177] Timbuctoo was not founded until about seventy years after the
+conversion of Za Kasai.
+
+[178] The theory which gives an Eastern origin to Mohammedan proselytism
+in Kanem seems unworthy of consideration.
+
+[179] The manatee is the _ayu_ of the Fulani, and its signification—viz.
+that of a mythical creature living in the water and dragging any one in
+who sees it—seems to argue the existence of an ancient superstition.
+In various parts of the Niger and Binue this strange animal is still
+regarded with a certain awe, which, however, does not prevent it from
+being slaughtered, both for its flesh and skin. The Soninke legend of the
+water serpent, which each year claimed the handsomest girl of the village
+as a victim, would seem to bear a distinct relation to this, the former
+_ayu_ worship of the Songhays.
+
+[180] Binger suggests that the word Mande, or Mandingo, is derived from
+the same root as manatus, and signifies the people of a country where the
+manatus is worshipped.
+
+[181] “Mungo Park.” Joseph Thomson. The “World’s Greatest Explorers”
+series.
+
+[182] Palgrave’s “Arabia,” vol. i. p. 372.
+
+[183] “Niger and Yoruba Notes,” January 1900.
+
+[184] A native of the Western Sudan.
+
+[185] Blyden.
+
+[186] It has been pointed out to me that the Muslim teachers in this
+mosque do not teach reading, but only the Slate-pattern. That simply
+shows that Islam in West Africa is capable of being much improved, and
+should be moulded, if possible, on Western lines of thought; but it does
+not affect the main argument in the least.
+
+[187] Captain Morrison’s report, issued by the Government of the French
+Sudan.
+
+[188] For instance, read the following passages in “Pilkington of
+Uganda” (C. F. Harford Battersby). “This is the lost truth, the loss of
+which gave Satan the opportunity of introducing both Mohammedanism and
+Popery.... They (the Waganda) have learnt to contend with the three forms
+of darkness which they will meet in Africa: Heathenism, Mohammedanism,
+and Popery.” And again: “Does it not seem as if the French Mission is
+just God’s appointed instrument to complete the confusion of Rome in
+Uganda?”
+
+[189] Le Chatelier.
+
+[190] The nineteenth century.
+
+[191] The nineteenth century.
+
+[192] It is a remarkable fact, frequently borne witness to, that an
+unarmed Muslim Negro can travel without molestation through vast
+stretches of country in Africa, a privilege denied to his Christianised
+compatriot.
+
+[193] “Esclavage, Islamisme, et Christianisme.”
+
+[194] Affecting in many parts the laws and customs of the people in
+respect to native land tenure.
+
+[195] “Le Sénégal: la France dans l’Afrique Occidentale.”
+
+[196] Negro medical men—I mean qualified medical men—of whom there are
+a few in West Africa, emphatically corroborate this: and they bring a
+great many arguments, founded upon actual experience, in support of the
+contention.
+
+[197] An ecclesiastic well known in the African field, and for whose
+really wonderful labours I entertain the highest respect and admiration,
+informed me only the other day that, within his personal cognisance,
+over 150 couples had been married in Liberia by a certain minister,
+in a certain district, within a period of five years; and that the
+total number of births up to date was five, and the survivals two. My
+reverend friend found in that striking fact (for the truth of which he
+vouched, and he is a truthful man) a justification of his view that a
+large proportion of Liberians, that is to say, the descendants of the
+blacks from the States, led indolent and unhealthy lives. To my mind, it
+conveys an eloquent demonstration, that _on West African soil_ monogamy
+for the Negro spells race extinction. Naturally my friend would not
+admit the conclusion, although in his heart of hearts I believe he is
+rather troubled on the subject. But he recognised—and admitted—in course
+of conversation that polygamy was a question which the Church, in her
+work among tropical peoples, had now to resolutely face and earnestly
+discuss. There is, I fear, no doubt that the monogamist—or professing
+monogamist—Liberians are, like the Waganda, dying out.
+
+[198] Politically, the same attitude is adopted by the British
+authorities; and in the case of the Sierra Leone Hut-tax war, and
+the Forest Ordinances in Lagos, it has been sought to divorce the
+educated—and mainly, professing Christian—element of the coast from
+community of thought, sympathy, and common racial feelings with the
+non-educated, and mainly pagan or Mohammedan, element of the interior.
+
+[199] “As soon as half a dozen missionaries leave Liverpool,” writes the
+same authority, Archbishop Dobson, “no end of a stir is made about the
+devoted party, and so forth. I do not mean to be sarcastic about the
+missionaries, but it does make one a trifle ashamed at times to meet a
+stalwart trader hereabouts on an occasion, who has been coming here off
+and on for twenty years, and his chief business is palm-oil, and his best
+view a mangrove swamp.”
+
+[200] It is even admitted to be harmful by Sir Alfred Jones, whose
+steamers carry a large proportion of this liquor to West Africa, and
+by a large proportion of the merchants who deal in it. The merchants
+are sometimes violently attacked on account of this trade. Personally,
+I detest the West African liquor traffic. I look upon it in the same
+light as the opium traffic in the Far East—a blot upon the escutcheon
+of Christian Europe. But those who denounce the merchants might just
+as well, and more logically, denounce the Governments. _Per se_ the
+liquor traffic is not a lucrative trade to the merchant, but to the
+local administrations on the coast it is the backbone of revenue. I was
+never able to share the late Miss Kingsley’s views on this subject,
+while fully agreeing with her as to the inanity of making the merchants
+the scapegoats of an evil the responsibility for which is, in a sense,
+universal. Despite anything that may be said to the contrary, I shall
+believe that a powerful factor in determining Miss Kingsley’s views was
+the knowledge that, but for the existence of the liquor traffic as a
+supplier of revenue, direct taxation would be substituted throughout
+British West Africa owing to the extravagance of the Crown Colony system;
+and I know that Miss Kingsley strongly objected to the introduction of
+European spirits into the interior regions by means of the railways. The
+liquor question would require a special chapter to adequately discuss.
+
+[201] He will, no doubt, be edified to learn that the Cape Government has
+found it necessary to pass a law imposing a severe term of imprisonment
+upon white _women_ convicted of sexual intercourse with the natives—a
+circumstance not precisely calculated to increase his respect for our
+Christian civilisation.
+
+[202] Captain—now Commandant—Binger has for some little time past been
+in charge of the African Department of the French Colonial Office. His
+travels, books, and pamphlets are familiar to every student of Western
+Africa.
+
+[203] It would seem now that they have temporarily prevailed with the
+Government.
+
+[204] In the Sokoto Empire (Hausa States) more particularly.
+
+[205] They did it so well that, after the failure of their attack upon
+the French camp, they denuded the country of supplies and reduced the
+expedition to terrible straits for a time.
+
+[206] The fall predicted, and officially foreseen, in 1901 has come
+about, owing to the rubber crisis. The measures taken during the last
+fifteen months to stimulate fresh industries in the country, and the
+advance of the railway, will, no doubt, make themselves felt in the next
+two or three years.
+
+[207] For the Lagos exports and expenditure, see Appendix.
+
+[208] C.O. Report. 1900.
+
+[209] “Rapport d’ensemble.” Dahomey, 1900.
+
+[210] For 1902, on a total estimated expenditure of £121,560, Dahomey
+provides £32,000 for the railway and £11,911 for public works ordinary
+or, say, a total of £43,911 for railway and public works.
+
+[211] The following statistics of the export trade of Dahomey, compiled
+from figures recently obtained, are interesting:
+
+                         QUANTITIES IN KILOS.
+                       (1015 kilos to the ton.)
+
+                          Palm-kernels.    Palm-oil.
+                  1898     18,091,312      6,059,539
+                  1899     21,850,982      9,650,081
+                  1900     21,986,043      8,920,359
+                  1901     24,211,614     11,290,658
+    First quarter 1902      6,972,297      3,488,766
+    _Ibid._       1901      4,768,050      1,993,520
+
+[212] See Appendix.
+
+[213] It is worthy of note that the French Government authorises the
+Administration of the several West African colonies to make their own
+agreements for railway construction.
+
+[214] So far as the heavier duties charged on spirits in Lagos are
+concerned, the fact is distinctly to the credit of Lagos.
+
+[215] There is a very curious circumstance connected with the ground-nut
+trade. All the ground-nuts go to the Continent—both from Senegal and
+Gambia—the oil extracted, therefrom, or the bulk of it, is used in making
+margarine, which is subsequently consumed, to a very large extent,
+by the English people! Why have we not our own crushing-mills? Is it
+because we are short of milk? It cannot but strike one as peculiar and
+unfortunate that we should send our West African ground-nuts to France,
+and afterwards buy from the French the oil the nuts yield for our own
+consumption! Ground-nuts will grow anywhere in West Africa, and the
+labour involved in cultivating them is very small.
+
+[216] Belgian syndicates have been trying, and are still trying, to
+get hold of the French Ivory Coast goldfields. Hitherto they have been
+defeated by the vigilance of the French merchants; but there is no
+knowing what may happen in view of the extraordinary influence which King
+Leopold appears to wield over the French official world.
+
+[217] “Sur des traces probables de civilisation Egyptienne et d’hommes de
+race blanche à la Côte d’Ivoire.” Masson & Cie., Paris. A pamphlet which
+ought to be read by all students of West Africa.
+
+[218] Specie is usually included in the trade figures—a very misleading
+practice.
+
+[219] Sir David Chalmers’ report, p. 169.
+
+[220] Like the Susus, for example, who are very numerous in French
+Guinea, but of whom a few only have settled in the British Protectorate
+adjoining.
+
+[221] Let it not be imagined that the contrast here made between French
+political action in Dahomey and British political action in Ashanti
+implies approval of direct taxation _per se_. It is ever a dangerous
+experiment in West Africa, especially with pagans, even if conquest has
+supervened. If the system under which the taxes are collected is not
+carefully watched, grave abuses are almost certain to follow. Quite
+recently rumours of oppression in the taxation of the natives in Upper
+Dahomey have appeared in the French Press. What truth there may be in
+them I do not know. But it is true, I believe, that the excellent staff
+whom Governor Ballot gathered round him has left the Colony since Ballot
+left it, and has been replaced by less experienced and less competent
+material.
+
+[222] Last Ashanti Blue Book, 1902.
+
+[223] See Note in Appendix.
+
+[224] See the evidence of Lieutenant-Colonel Gore, Colonial Secretary for
+Sierra Leone. Sir David Chalmers’ report.
+
+[225] Between July 1894 and February 1898 no fewer than sixty-two
+convictions—admittedly representing a small proportion of offences
+actually committed—were recorded against them for flogging, plundering,
+and generally maltreating the natives.
+
+[226] One of the pet arguments of the authorities consists in invoking
+the benefits which have accrued to the people of the Protectorate since
+the passing of the Protectorate Ordinance in the matter of putting down
+the slave trade. For these benefits the natives, says officialdom, ought
+to be delighted to pay a tax. Possibly they would have paid it in time,
+more or less willingly, had they been approached in a different spirit.
+But, so far as the slave trade is concerned, the argument is singularly
+weakened by the circumstance that Sir F. Cardew publicly declared in
+1895 that the slave traffic had “practically disappeared within the
+Protectorate.”
+
+[227] The French West African Company, _Cie française de l’Afrique
+Occidentale_, is the largest French firm of African merchants in West
+Africa. Founded in 1887 with a capital of 7,000,000 francs; total
+turn-over in 1899, 22,000,000 francs; factories in Senegal, French and
+Portuguese Guinea, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Lagos, and Ivory Coast.
+
+[228] In 1900, 39,874,005 francs; in 1901, 43,965,950 francs.
+
+[229] The same game was tried with the Germans in Cameroons. To quote
+from an article in the _National Zeitung_, which, as I have reason to
+know, may be accepted as authorised: “If in the Congo State itself the
+Berlin Act could be disregarded in this way, and the natives obliged to
+bring in the produce against their will, why could it not also be done
+in other places? And as the Congo State was itself making the best use
+of its monopoly, and only gave concessions to others at high prices, the
+monopolists tried, and not without result, to obtain the same state of
+affairs both in France and in Germany. In Germany, the German Colonial
+Society at once protested against this state of affairs. In spite of
+this, however, several of the Belgian capitalists were able to obtain the
+help of influential German persons, who obtained from the Government the
+concession of South Cameroon. This company had obtained the assistance
+of Colonel Thys for its operations on the Brussels Stock Exchange, and
+immediately after the flotation of the company the shares were driven up
+to two or three times their value. Further concessions in the free-trade
+zone were not conceded, and, with the exception of the North-West
+Cameroon concession, in consequence of the energetic opposition in
+colonial circles, no further concessions were, or will be, made in the
+German territories. The German Government has entirely abandoned this
+policy of concessions.”
+
+[230] It is, of course, no easy matter to get at the precise
+constitution of these companies, but the following example of one of
+the “groups” is typical of the majority of them. _Comptoir Colonial
+français._ Parent company: head offices, Paris; has founded at least six
+Concessionnaire Companies, of a total capital of 9,650,000 francs; Board
+of Administration numbers six directors, of whom three are Belgians;
+two-thirds of the shares held in Belgium; two of the Belgian directors
+are directors of the four _Domaine Privé_ Companies in the Congo State,
+whose profits are shared by the State (read the King); the third also
+belongs to the Congo clique; among the Belgian shareholders are other
+directors of these same _Domaine Privé_ Companies, all men enjoying
+the confidence of, and closely connected with, the Sovereign of the
+Congo State. One of the six Concessionnaire Companies of this “group”
+has specially distinguished itself in the persecution to which British
+merchants have been subjected—discussed in the next chapter.
+
+[231] Some light has been thrown upon its African chapters by Mr. R. E.
+Dennett, an Englishman in French Congo, and a recognised authority on the
+Fjort peoples, in “West Africa.”
+
+[232] I should say now, ex-Deputy.
+
+[233] “Une idée domine l’ensemble du système, tous les produits du
+territoire, concédé quels qu’ils soient, sont la propriété de la Société
+Concessionnaire. Seuls les agents de cette Société ont le droit de les
+recueillir ou de les acheter des indigènes qui les ont récoltés; ces
+derniers ne pouvant disposer librement que des produits des reserves qui
+leur ont été spécialement attribuées et sur lesquelles je reviendrai, et
+devant en thèse générale, lorsqu’ils s’emparent d’un produit quelconque
+du sol en dehors de ces reserves, les remettre aux concessionnaires dont
+l’intérêt bien entendu, est de remunérer ensuite leur travail.”
+
+[234] “Les indigènes ont droit aux superficies qui leur sont nécessaires
+pour les cultures vivrières correspondantes aux besoins de leur
+alimentation. On peut leur attribuer une certaine étendue de forêt
+nécessaire à leurs besoins de chauffage et de construction, mais ils
+n’ont pas droit a réclamer des forêts domaniales _dans le but de
+faire commerce de leurs produits naturels_ et de constituer ainsi une
+concurrence ruineuse pour le concessionnaire” (Art. 18).
+
+[235] The French Government has recently voted De Brazza an annual
+pension of 10,000 francs.
+
+[236] “Concessions Congolaises.” By Albert Cousin, Membre du Conseil
+Supérieur des Colonies. Paris: Augustin Chalamel.
+
+[237] An English trader, Mr. Walker, was the first to do so. He is
+admitted by French writers to have discovered the Ogowe.
+
+[238] Messrs. John Holt & Co. and Messrs. Hatton & Cookson, both of
+Liverpool, and both connected with the West African Trade for upwards of
+half a century. Mr. John Holt is probably the most enterprising pioneer
+of Britain’s trade in West Africa, possessing trading stations in most of
+the British and Foreign West African Colonies. He is the vice-chairman
+of the African Trade Section of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, and
+very few men living have so wide a grasp of West African questions or so
+profound a knowledge of West African problems.
+
+[239] Whose existence was unknown in England until towards the end of
+last year.
+
+[240] Seizure of British goods on public roads; breaking open of British
+factories; flogging of British native agents, &c.
+
+[241] Notably that most excellent monthly, _Le Bulletin du Comité
+de l’Afrique française_, through the instrumentality of the two
+distinguished thinkers and writers who dictate its policy, Count Robert
+de Caix and M. Auguste Terrier.
+
+[242] Forty tons of ebony, bought in the usual way by a British firm on
+the Congo and shipped to Havre in a French ship, were seized at that
+port (1902) on a mandate of a Concessionnaire Company. This produce has,
+however, now been restored.
+
+[243] The Foreign Office was warned as far back as the beginning of 1898
+by the Manchester Chamber of Commerce of the danger of the possible
+inauguration of a system of territorial monopolies. Lord Salisbury said
+it would receive “our most earnest attention,” and admitted inferentially
+that in fiscal questions England had, as a free-trade country, “inferior”
+means of influencing other countries; “with the occasional exception,”
+added his lordship, “of territorial concessions, we have no means
+whatever of persuasion.” Nevertheless, in the purely fiscal question
+which formed the principal object of the Deputation of Chambers of
+Commerce to Lord Salisbury on this occasion, that of the differential
+tariff in the French possessions, Lord Salisbury was able to get his
+own way, simply by persuasion, by “influencing France’s ideas.” Yet in
+this matter of the French Congo Concessions, in which the purely fiscal
+question does not enter at all, and where we have an international treaty
+to work on, Lord Lansdowne has been unable to prevent the expulsion of
+British merchants from an internationally free-trade zone!
+
+[244] The _Morning Post_, the _Manchester Guardian_, the _Liverpool Daily
+Post_, and _West Africa_.
+
+[245] The German merchants, despairing of obtaining even the most
+elementary justice, have evacuated the territory. Our merchants have
+chosen the nobler part of making a stand for their rights, guaranteed
+under international law.
+
+[246] To which must now be added the somewhat similar Rabinek affair—an
+Austrian subject arrested and “removed” by the Congo State in the Katanga
+district under circumstances analogous, in some measure, to the case of
+Mr. Stokes.
+
+[247] The other day the then French Parliamentary representative of
+Senegal, in a speech to his constituents at St. Louis, warned them that
+the greatest danger threatening their hinterland, the French Sudan, was
+King Leopold of Belgium and his monopolist gang.
+
+[248] At the great “Colonial Congress” held in Berlin on October 11,
+Consul Vohsen moved a resolution, unanimously carried, calling upon the
+Powers to institute proceedings for the revision of the Berlin Act.
+Consul Vohsen said: “From the very first the Congo State, and recently
+France in the French Colony of French Congo, have acted against the
+principles laid down in the Congo Act.” ... Referring to the Congo
+State, he continued: “All so-called countries ‘not occupied by natives’
+situated in the Free Trade zone were, as far back as July 1885, declared
+the property of the State, and in the year 1892 heavy taxes were imposed
+upon the rubber trade, which was entirely prohibited in parts of the
+Free Trade zone. The consequence was that the freedom of trade and
+commerce guaranteed by the Congo Act was practically abolished. The first
+condition of freedom of trade for the nations is freedom to the natives,
+in such a way as to leave them free to dispose of the natural products
+of the soil and of the chase; which state of affairs existed before the
+passing of the Act in all French, English, and German colonies in West
+Africa, and exists to-day, with the exception of the territories of the
+Congo State and the French Congo, the very colonies where, strange to
+say, free trade is insisted upon by Articles I. and V. of the Act.”
+
+[249] Among the supporters of the Mansion House meeting of May 15
+(held under the auspices of the Aborigines Protection Society) were
+Mr. John Morley, Sir J. Kennaway, Earl Spencer, the Marquis of Ripon,
+Lord Avebury, Mr. Lecky, M.P., Sir Edward Clarke, K.C., Sir W. Brampton
+Gurdon, M.P., K.C.M.G., Sir Charles Dilke, M.P., Sir Mark J. Stewart,
+M.P., Mr. James Bryce, M.P., Mr. W. S. Robson, M.P., and other
+politicians of both parties. Five Chambers of Commerce, the African
+Society, and the German Colonial Society were represented, and Dr. Alfred
+Zimmermann, _attaché_ to the German Embassy in London, also attended.
+
+[250] Commandant Binger’s views are well known. M. Cousturier (Governor
+of French Guinea), in his report on French Guinea for 1901, does not
+conceal his adverse opinion of Belgian methods of collecting rubber in
+the Congo State.
+
+The author could produce documentary evidence showing that similar
+opinions are held by other well-known French officials in West Africa.
+
+[251] Belgium, Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy and
+Russia sent delegates to the conference.
+
+[252] This was done with the exception of England.
+
+[253] Diego Cam.
+
+[254] The original title had by this time been changed to that of
+“International Congo Association.”
+
+[255] The point is brought out very clearly by Mr. Dennet, our only
+authority on the Fjort Kingdom of Congo, and the author of several books
+concerning the Fjort, in a series of interesting letters published
+last year in “West Africa.” Mr. Dennet, who has lived twenty-two years
+consecutively in the Lower Congo, positively declares that the treaties
+made by the Association, and referred to by General Sandford, had no
+validity whatever in native law.
+
+[256] In his report on the Congo State for 1898, Consul Pickersgill
+concludes a long enumeration of the taxes levied upon independent trade
+by the following humorous passage:
+
+“I may sum up this portion of my remarks by quoting the jocose
+observations of the English and American missionaries, who declared to
+me that there is nothing free in the Independent State, except fevers;
+while a Belgian Father with whom I had some conversation on the subject,
+remarked: ‘The Government taxes even the civilisation we bring.’”
+
+[257] Who held the monopoly of the ivory trade in the Upper Congo, which
+the Congo State, by exterminating them with the aid of its cannibal
+soldiery (see Hinde’s “Fall of the Congo Arabs”), became possessed of.
+
+[258] See Mr. Herbert Ward’s “Five Years with the Congo Cannibals,” p.
+297.
+
+[259] The whole paragraph might have been written a few weeks, instead
+of eleven years, ago. The state of affairs pictured by Colonel Williams
+has worsened instead of bettered. The evil is more widespread and the
+means of perpetuating it more extensive and more powerful. Read in this
+connection the latest revelations by Mr. Canisius and Captain Burrows.
+
+[260] The importance of the 10 per cent. import duty was purposely
+exaggerated. The amount derived therefrom was trifling. The merchants
+objected to it on principle. As Sir Albert Rollit justly remarked,
+“The reason for our opposition is only that they (the import duties)
+would infringe the great principle of freedom of commerce, which was
+the very basis of the programme of the Berlin Conference.” It is quite
+clear, however, that the majority of the merchants also opposed the
+import duties from a vague distrust of the king’s ultimate intentions, a
+distrust which events proved to be only too well founded.
+
+[261] The map published by the African Society in the May (1902) issue of
+its Journal may be consulted with advantage in this respect.
+
+[262] Among whom might be mentioned Augouard, Hinde, Glave, Morrison,
+Hawkins, Sheppard, Andrew, Sjöblom, Alfred Parminter, De Mandat-Grancy,
+Rankin, Murphy, Lloyd, Grogan, and many others, without counting Belgian
+authorities—more numerous than all foreigners put together.
+
+[263] At the present moment heavy fighting is going on in the Welle
+district, due, as I have reason to know, to the usual rubber taxes. The
+facts as to this particular rising may, happily, have been made public
+before the publication of the present volume.
+
+[264] The regular army—_Force Publique_—of the Congo State is admitted
+officially (Bulletin, July 1900) to be 15,000, but we know that in
+addition to this regular force—15,000 cannibals armed with Albinis,
+sections of whom are continually revolting—the State habitually arms,
+whenever it deems necessary, thousands of irregulars, cannibals for
+choice (see the letter written in October 1899 to the king by the acting
+head of the American Presbyterian Mission in the Kassai district). There
+is also a large reserve corps, but the extent of it is not known.
+
+[265] It may be usefully noted here that the _impôts de nature_ are
+applied by the Congo State in the so-called Free Trade Zone as well as
+in the _Domaine Privé_, and until the Kassai district was incorporated
+in the _Domaine Privé_ many and bitter were the complaints by companies
+operating in the former zone of the unfair competition to which they were
+subjected by the levying of this tribute. Instances have been given by
+some of these irate traders where the State’s officials have threatened
+the natives with condign punishment if they did not hand over all their
+rubber to the said officials. An arrangement has recently been concluded
+between the State and the Kassai companies—the Kassai district was
+the only portion of the Upper Congo where independent trade had been
+allowed—whereby the Kassai companies have amalgamated into a syndicate
+_in which the State holds one half the interest_. To all intents and
+purposes, therefore, the Kassai has now been incorporated in the _Domaine
+Privé_, WHICH HENCEFORTH EMBRACES THE WHOLE OF THE CONGO STATE NORTH OF
+STANLEY POOL.
+
+[266] Both these facts have been repeatedly asserted. They were proved
+beyond manner of doubt last year by the disclosures attendant upon the
+Mongolla scandals, in which agents of the _Société Anversoise_ were
+involved.
+
+[267] Seven, if we include the Kassai Trust recently formed.
+
+[268] Baron A. Goffinet is “Conseiller de Légation, Secrétaire des
+Commandements de leurs MM. le Roi et la Reine, Major de l’Etat, Major de
+la Garde Civique, Aide-de-camp, Ministre Résident.” Baron C. Goffinet is
+“Conseiller de Légation, Intendant de la Liste Civile du Roi, Ministre
+Résident, Major de la Garde Civique.”
+
+[269] I have quite recently received from another correspondent in the
+Congo the photograph here reproduced.
+
+[270] “Abir (Société à responsabilité limitée) Statuts.” Anvers:
+Imprimerie Ratinckx Frères, Grand Place, 40-42.
+
+[271] “Comptoir Commercial Congolais (Société à responsabilité limitée)
+Statuts.” Anvers: Imprimerie Ratinckx.
+
+[272] “Compagnie du Lomami (Société Anonyme) Statuts.” Bruxelles: P.
+Weissenbruch, Imprimerie du Roi, 45 rue du Poincon.
+
+[273] In chapter xxviii. I referred to the constitution of the _Comptoir
+Colonial français_, which has managed to secure for its subsidiaries such
+a respectable slice of French Congo. Well, Alexis Mols is one of the
+Administrators, and so is A. Osterrieth, a shareholder in the _Abir_, and
+so is A. Lambrechts, also a shareholder in the _Abir_, &c. &c.
+
+[274] I am afraid Sir H. M. Stanley was somewhat premature when, in 1884,
+he told the London Chamber of Commerce that people “could not appreciate
+rightly” King Leopold’s philanthropy, because there were “no dividends
+attaching to it.”
+
+[275] Whip made out of hippo hide—the Congo _sjambok_.
+
+[276] Or was until quite recently.
+
+[277] In Congo circles in Belgium it is suggested that to guard against
+“attacks which might become too threatening” (by “attacks” is meant
+exposures in the public Press, and on public platforms in England and
+Germany) the Congo State should largely increase its standing army.
+
+[278] The author, who may claim to have brought the Rabinek affair to
+light, is able to state that the British Government is causing specific
+inquiries to be made through its representatives in Central Africa in
+connection with the matter. See Appendix.
+
+[279] The trade of the Lower Congo has sensibly diminished since the
+Congo State came into existence. On August 10 of last year the merchants
+established in the Lower Congo (of whom there remain a few) petitioned
+the king to reduce taxation. After pointing out the heavy import and
+export duty on goods and produce (20_s._ per ton on palm-oil, for
+instance) and showing how small the existing export trade already was,
+owing to the taxes and emigration of native labour, due to “the means
+employed in raising native levies,” the petitioners went on to say:
+“We do not disguise from ourselves that business in the Lower Congo is
+practically _nil_.... Each of us,” continues the petition, “consistently
+hopes for an increase in trade; but these hopes appear to us more and
+more unreliable, and the Government of the Congo State, instead of coming
+to aid us, imposes increased and too onerous taxes.”
+
+[280] The figures for 1900 are based upon the known sale on the Antwerp
+market by the State brokers in 1900 of 1828 tons of rubber and 153,445
+kilos. of ivory, worked out at an average of 6 francs per kilo. for
+rubber (1115 kilos, to the ton) and 18 francs per kilo, for ivory. I
+believe a proportion of the produce imported was held in stock on account
+of the poor state of the rubber market.
+
+[281] “There is no trade, properly so called,” says Mr. Codrington, “on
+the Congo coast of Tanganyika, but all rubber and ivory is regarded as
+the property of the State, and has to be surrendered by the natives in
+fixed quantities annually. The natives are, however, continually in
+rebellion, and the country is unsafe, except in the immediate vicinity
+of the military garrisons, and within the sphere of influence of the
+missionaries.”
+
+[282] As was anticipated, the acquirement from Spain for purposes of
+exploitation of a portion of the Muni territory (which was recently
+handed over to Spain by France) by the Belgian “clique” has been followed
+by the usual results. A correspondent, whose name commands universal
+respect, and who is in a position to speak _de visu_ on the subject,
+wrote to an English friend recently that “atrocities” were going merrily
+on; natives being shot down, and villages burnt in the course of “ivory
+collecting” by the Belgian concessionnaires; “outrages on the villagers
+are indiscriminate,” the writer adds. The same “clique” is threatening
+Fernando Po.
+
+[283] Apart from the large quantities of rifles, cap-guns, and
+ammunition imported into the Congo State for the arming and equipment
+of the soldiers, regular and irregular, it is morally certain, although
+not easy to prove, that the agents of the State and the agents of
+the _Domaine Privé_ Companies encourage some of the biggest and
+most powerful chiefs of the Upper Congo to obtain ivory for them by
+presents of repeating-rifles and ammunition. In this connection a M.
+Léon. C. Berthier, writing from the French Upper Congo to the Paris
+organ _La Dépêche Coloniale_ (issue July 16, 1902), says: “The M’Bomu
+(a branch of the Upper Ubanghi, which forms the frontier between the
+French and Congolese possessions, and which pursues its course to the
+Bahr-el-Ghazal), here very wide, forms the southern base of the square;
+this is the route where the ivory passes _sous notre barbe_ to be sold
+to the Belgians on the other bank, _who pay for it in Albini rifles_,
+notwithstanding all the Acts of Berlin and Brussels, which forbid even
+the sale of percussion-cap guns!” The writer goes on to assert that he
+has documents to prove his statements.
+
+[284] Mary Kingsley, in the “Story of West Africa.”
+
+[285] Excluding specie. The figures are taken from the Parliamentary
+Report, June 1902.
+
+[286] _Sierra Leone Royal Gazette_, April 18th, 1902.
+
+[287] Estimated. Appropriation Ordinance, 1902.
+
+[288] “Railways and Telegraphs,” Appropriation Ordinance, 1902.
+
+[289] Colonial Office Report, No. 324. On page 8 of the same Report the
+figures a given as £29,126 18s. 7d. I cannot explain the difference.
+
+[290] _Sierra Leone Royal Gazette_, April 18th, 1902.
+
+[291] _Idem._
+
+[292] Estimated.
+
+[293] The figures for 1900 do not include the expenses of the Ashanti
+expedition.
+
+[294] Including exports of specie.
+
+[295] Ordinary for 1897, 1898, 1899 and 1900; extraordinary for 1897,
+1898 and 1899.
+
+[296] Sir Matthew Nathan’s report on the Northern Territories (No.
+357—issued July 1902) says: “The expenditure in 1901 has not yet been
+completely estimated.” Farther on he estimates the expenditure for 1902
+at £52,381 11s. 7d. The expenditure is, therefore, largely increasing.
+The above amount includes £23,038 11s. 7d. or military purposes.
+
+[297] According to Lieutenant-Colonel Morris (C.O. Report, No. 35) the
+revenue in 1901 was £7415 4s. 3d. It was estimated at £8000; and the
+estimate for 1902 is also £8000.
+
+[298] Including £97,769 paid back to the Imperial Government for cost of
+expenditure on Ashanti expedition.
+
+[299] Official statement, dated March 1902:—1st section, 39¼ miles long,
+open to traffic; and section, of 9¾ miles, “approaching completion.”
+
+[300] Colonial Office Report, No. 344:—Sum borrowed to end 1900,
+apparently £798,000 (£220,000, 1898; £578,000, 1899).
+
+[301] _Idem._
+
+[302] Railway development, £578,000; harbour works at Accra, £98,000.
+
+[303] Estimated.
+
+[304] Colonial Office Report, No. 348.
+
+[305] _Idem._
+
+[306] If for re-sale.
+
+[307] _Idem._
+
+[308] One mile—1609 metres.
+
+[309] In 1901 there was an increase of 4600 tons of palm oil and kernels
+exported compared with the previous year.
+
+[310] Wallach.
+
+[311] Late Lieutenant-Colonel Northcote’s estimate. It does not include
+the portion of the Anglo-German neutral territory, which is eventually to
+be incorporated within the British sphere, according to the Anglo-German
+Convention of November 1899.
+
+[312] The principal towns of the Protectorate are Ibadan (population
+180,000), Abbeokuta (population 150,000), Oyo (population 50,000).
+
+[313] If we assume the population of Northern Nigeria to be 30 millions,
+this gives us a rough total, exclusive of Ashanti, of 33,218,324
+inhabitants to 645,000 square miles of territory; or not far short of the
+population of France, in a territory as large as France and Germany, with
+a good half of Austria-Hungary thrown in.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+  Abbeokuta, 199
+
+  Abderrahman ben Abdallah ben Imran ben Amir Es-Sa’di, 130
+
+  _Abir_, _see_ Congo State
+
+  Aborigines Protection Society, 185
+
+  Abutshi, 119
+
+  Abyssinia, _see_ Christianity
+
+  Adamawa, 57, 61, 95, 128, 180
+
+  African Association, 28, 38
+
+  African Oil Mills Co., 79
+
+  Agoult, Comte d’, 290
+
+  Agricultural Committee, _see_ German
+
+  Ahmed-Baba, 55, 130
+
+  Air, 53, 54
+
+  Akassa, 56, 75
+
+  Allen, Commander, 94, 103
+
+  Alvensleben, Count, 176
+
+  Amageddi, 111
+
+  Anglo-French Convention, _see_ Treaties
+    -German Convention, _see_ Treaties
+    -Portuguese Convention, _see_ Treaties
+
+  Angola, 193, 241
+
+  Ansorge, Dr., 181
+
+  Anton, Dr., 344
+
+  _Anversoise_, _see_ Congo State
+
+  Apis, 146
+
+  Ashanti, 14, 19, 68, 104, 135, 205, 280, 281
+
+  Assay, 76
+
+  Assinie, 204, 271
+
+  Atani, 75
+
+  Axim, 204
+
+
+  Baghena, 131, 132
+
+  Baghirmi, 57, 258, 259, 262
+
+  Bakundi, Lake, 111
+
+  Bakunu, 130
+
+  Ballay, Dr., 87, 114, 274
+
+  Ballot, Governor, 280
+
+  Bambarras, 53, 129, 180, 215
+
+  Bamboo-palm, 116, 117
+
+  Bambuk, 133
+
+  Bangalas, 330, 339
+
+  Banyo, 111
+
+  Baobab, 116
+
+  Barbot, 271
+
+  Barros, de, 133
+
+  Barth, Dr., 40, 44, 52, 54, 55, 59, 60, 62, 70, 71, 72, 118, 126,
+        131, 133, 136, 209, 214, 221
+
+  Basset, Serge, 290
+
+  Bathurst, 162
+    Earl, 39
+
+  Battel, Andrew, 241
+
+  Bayol, Dr., 139
+
+  Belgian policy in West Africa, 176, 307, 311, _see also_ Congo State
+
+  Belgians in French Congo, 288, 307
+    on Muni River, 307, 350
+
+  Belgium, King Leopold of, _see_ Congo State
+
+  Bello, Emir, 36, 46, 49, 50, 51, 53, 59, 150
+
+  Benin, 68, 105, 204
+
+  Berlin, Act of, _see_ Treaties
+
+  Béthancourt, De, 239
+
+  Bilma, 42, 58, 67
+
+  Binger, Commandant, 133, 211, 220, 239, 240, 249, 271, 309
+
+  Binue, 109, 111, 113, 118, 119, 148, 211, 257
+
+  Biru, _see_ Walata
+
+  Bismarck, 250, 317
+
+  Blyden, Dr., 130, 139, 149, 213, 214, 222, 226, 227, 245, 276
+
+  Bohn, M., 173, 247, _see also_ French West African Co.
+
+  Bondu, 133, 180
+
+  Bonny, 79
+
+  Borgu, 9, 49, 251
+
+  Bornu, 40, 41, 43, 45, 50, 57, 58, 63, 85, 87, 113, 209, 259
+
+  Brass, 79, 80
+
+  Brazza, De, 251, 289, 293, 315-316
+
+  Bretonnet, Lieut., 259, 260
+
+  British Cotton Growing Association, 188, 189, 190
+
+  Brown, Dr. Robert, 131
+
+  Brüe, Sieur de, 134, 251, 274
+
+  Brussels, Act of, _see_ Treaties
+
+  Burutu, 64, 75, 76, 86
+
+  Bussa, 49, 50
+
+  Butter-tree, 114, 115
+
+
+  Ca-de-Mosto, 133
+
+  Caix, Count Robert de, 302
+
+  Cambyses, 76
+
+  Cameroon, 14, 177, 201, 287, 308
+
+  Caravan traffic, 41, 62-65
+
+  Cardew, Sir F., 283
+
+  Cardi, Count de, 80
+
+  Cattier, M., 313, 343, 344, 350
+
+  Chad, Lake, 38, 41, 42, 43, 48, 58, 63, 67, 70, 118, 136, 256, 259,
+        260, 262
+
+  Chalmers, Sir David, 281, 282
+
+  Chama, 204
+
+  Chamberlain, Right Hon. Joseph, 12, 25, 59, 169, 278, _see also_
+        Colonial Office
+
+  Christianity, in Abyssinia, 237
+    in Uganda, 227, 228, 229
+    in West Africa, 208-37, 256
+
+  Clapperton, 35-51, 53, 103, 126, 147, 150
+
+  Clarke, Sir Andrew, 83, 258
+
+  Clarke, Sir Marshall, 182
+
+  Clozel, M., 171, 173, 273
+
+  Codrington, Mr. Robert, 349
+
+  Colonial Office, 165, 169, 183, 184, 281, 283, _see also_ Chamberlain
+
+  _Comptoir Colonial français_, 288, 336
+
+  Conakry, 20, 114, 274
+
+  Concessions _régime_, _see_ French Congo
+
+  Congo State, history of, 312-326
+    “trade of,” 286, 343-53
+    taxation in, 327-29, 330, 339, 340, 347, 348
+    native policy of, 287, 292, 319, 328-29, 337, 345, 352
+    land policy, 323, 324
+    commercial policy of, 319, 323, 325, 330, 344, 345
+    traffic in arms, 351
+    _Force publique_, 329, 330
+    _Domaine Privé_, 327-42, 343, 347, 351
+    privileged Companies in, 330-38
+    Stokes’ affair, 306
+    Rabinek affair, 306, 344-49, _see also_ Appendix
+    and Belgian Parliament, 333-334
+    on Tanganyika, 349
+    in Nile Valley, 349
+    slavery in, 296
+    influence in France, 271, 287, 288, 289, 310
+
+  Copal, _see_ Trade in Gums
+
+  Copra, 80
+
+  Copts, _see_ Gober
+
+  Cotton, 59, 117, 180, 181-200, _see also under_ Trade
+
+  Cousin, M. Albert, 294
+
+  Cousturier, M., 115, 309
+
+  Crampbel, Paul, 259
+
+  Crown Agents, _see_ Crown Colony System
+
+  Crown Colony system, 12, 13, 16, 17, 22, 31, 32, 33, 85, 87, 89, 92,
+        93, 184, 186, 235, 269, 281
+
+  Crowther, Bishop, 97
+
+  Currency, 60, 101
+
+
+  Dahomey, _see under_ French
+
+  Dakar, 270
+
+  Daw, Mr., J. A., 170, 183
+
+  Décrais, M., 285, 291, 302
+
+  Degama, 75
+
+  Delafosse, 173, 273
+
+  Denham, 35-51
+
+  Dennett, Mr., 289, 317
+
+  Denton, Sir George, 194
+
+  Desert, the, 38, 41, 64, 70, 111, 209, 253
+
+  Dilke, Sir Charles, 276
+
+  Dobson, Archbishop, 233
+
+  Donovan, Captain, 170
+
+  Dubois, M. Félix, 131, 137, 138
+
+  Dufferin, Marquis of, 252
+
+  Dybowski, M., 259
+
+
+  Ebony, 117, _see also_ Timber
+
+  Edrizi, 55
+
+  Egga, 76
+
+  Eichtal, M. d’, 132, 140
+
+  El Bekri, 55, 209
+
+  El-Haji-Omar, 129, 223, 252, 261
+
+  El-Kuti, 259
+
+  Ellis, A. B., 171
+
+  Etienne, Eugène, 250-63
+
+
+  Faidherbe, 143, 226, 243, 250, 252, 263
+
+  Fans, 293
+
+  Ferry, Jules, 243, 244, 249
+
+  Finances of British West Africa, 17, 18; _see also_ Appendix
+    of Nigeria, 17, 89, 93; _see also_ Appendix
+
+  Finances of Lagos, 267; _see also_ Appendix
+    of Sierra Leone, 274, 275, 284; _see also_ Appendix
+    of French Colonies, 266, 275; _see also_ Appendix
+
+  Flatters, 259
+
+  Fondère, M., 294
+
+  Forcados, 204
+
+  Foreign Office, 14, 26, 303
+
+  Foureau, M., 254, 259, 261
+
+  Freeman, R. Austin, 104, 201, 271
+
+  French, exploration and discovery, 238-48
+    trade, 4, 5, 265-75
+    policy, 18, 64, 249-84
+    in French Guinea, 81, 111, 114, 266, 274, 275, 281-84
+    in Dahomey, 177, 266, 267, 268, 269
+    in Chad region, 64, 254, 256, 257, 259, 260-64
+    in Western Sudan, 196, 251, 256, 257
+    in Senegal, 76, 81, 266, 269, 270
+    in French Congo, 177, 201, 263, 285-304
+    in Ivory Coast, 177, 266, 270, 271, 272, 273
+    and British, 238-48, _see also under_ Nigeria, French policy, and
+        French in French Congo
+    West African Company, 285, _see also_ Bohn
+
+  Frey, Colonel, 55
+
+  Fulani, origin of, 136-52
+    history of, 125-29, 130-135
+    in Yoruba, 125, 126, 135
+    in Hausa States, 47, 60, 85, 102, 125-30
+    in Gambia, 130, 134, 141
+    in Futa-Jallon, 128, 130, 133, 139, 140, 180
+    in Senegal, 127, 128, 132, 133, 134, 136, 252
+    in Western Sudan, 128, 147, 148, 253
+    in Gurma, 134
+    in Adamawa, 128
+    in Baghirmi, 262
+    in Congo Basin, 135
+    in Segu, 129
+    in Baghena, 131, 132, 133
+    in Bornu, 40, 128, 138
+    in Melle, 131, 132, 133
+    in Omdurman, 135
+    in Massina, 129, 134, 214
+    and Portuguese, 133
+    and British, 46-50, 152
+    and French, 134, 147, 148, 152, 252
+    and Hebrews, 145, 152
+    characteristics of, 47, 134, 146, 148
+    religion of, 55, 56, 127, 216, 254
+    language of, 70, 71, 72, 132
+
+  Fula, _see_ Fulani
+
+  Fulbe, _see_ Fulani
+
+  Fulfalde, _see_ Fulani
+
+  Futa-Jallon, 9, 14, 20, 66, 139, 245, 274
+
+
+  Gaboon, 298, 299
+
+  Gambia, 19, 134, 194, 196, 197, 242, 269, 278
+
+  Gambetta, 243, 244
+
+  Gando, 57, 95
+
+  Gao, 197, 210
+
+  Geary, Sir William, 280
+
+  _Générale Africaine, Société_, _see_ Congo State
+
+  Gentil, Lieut., 254, 258, 259, 260
+
+  German, trade, 4, 5, 74, 75, 193, 196, 199
+    agricultural committee, 23, 24, 196
+    Colonial advisory board, 23, 24
+
+  German Colonial Society, 29, 308
+
+  Ghana, 131
+
+  Ghanata, _see_ Walata
+
+  Gober, 53, 54, 55, 59, 125, 129
+
+  Gold Coast, 12, 13, 18, 25, 57, 183, 194, 204, 245
+
+  Gold, _see_ Mining Industry; _also under_ Trade
+
+  Goldie, Sir George, 9, 39, 68, 104
+
+  Grand Bassam, 204, 273
+
+  Green, Mrs. J. R., Foreword
+
+  Gregory, Professor, 99, 179
+
+  Grogan, Mr. H. S., 178, 179, 181, 202, 349
+
+  Ground-nut, _see under_ Trade
+
+  Guiraudon, Capt. de, 148-50
+
+  Gutta-percha, 116
+
+
+  Hamarua, 113
+
+  Hanno, 136, 140, 141, 142, 202
+
+  Hatton and Cookson, 300
+
+  Hausa Association, 70, 71
+    language, 54, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73
+    history, 53, 54
+    religion, 53, 56, 68
+
+  Hausas as manufacturers and traders, 57, 63, 67, 68, 69, 111, 117
+    as travellers, 57, 69, 111, 116
+    as soldiers, 68, 69
+    as slave-owners, 55, 63, 112
+    relations of with Fulani, 53, 55, 56, 68
+
+  Helm, Mr. E., 182
+
+  Herodotus, 35, 76
+
+  Hess, M. Jean, 290
+
+  Holt, Mr. John, 300
+
+  Horneman, 38
+
+  Houdas, M. O., 130, 132
+
+  Hourst, 22, 26
+
+  Hut-tax in Sierra Leone, _see under_ Taxation
+    in French Congo, _see under_ Taxation
+
+  Hutton, Mr. Arthur, 11, 20, 188
+
+  Hyksos, 140, 142, 143, 145, 146
+
+
+  Ibi, 111
+
+  Idah, 76
+
+  Igarras, 56, 118
+
+  Ilorin, 68, 96
+
+  Illushi, 76
+
+  Indigo, 117
+
+  In Salah, 65
+
+  International Congo Association, 309, 314-20
+
+  Islam in West Africa, 208-23
+    in Bornu, 209, 213
+    in Hausa States, 53, 55, 56, 101, 213, 214, 221
+    in Baghirmi, 215
+    in Kanem, 209, 210
+    in Gambia, 278
+    in Yoruba, 208
+    in Adamawa, 214
+    in Lagos, 213-15
+    in Sierra Leone, 213-15
+    in Futa-Jallon, 215
+    in Western Sudan, 209, 215, 216, 244, 254
+    in Kong, 220, 221
+    in French possessions, 215, 216, 278
+
+  Ivory Coast, 57, 206, 220, _see also under_ French
+
+  Ivory, _see under_ Trade
+
+
+  Jago, Consul, 64
+
+  Jalonkes, 128
+
+  Jebba, 76, 119
+
+  Johnson, Dr. O., 187
+
+  Johnston, Sir H., 70, 141, 202, 227, 228, 265, 349
+
+  Joloffs, 128, 147
+
+  Jones, Sir Alfred, 20, 188, 192, 235
+
+
+  Kanem, 45, 69, 209, 254, 257
+
+  Kano, 45, 46, 52, 57, 58, 59, 60, 62-67, 70, 72, 86, 111, 112, 191,
+        192
+
+  Kanuri, 56, 59, 70, 71, 72, 114, 128
+
+  Katamansu, battle of, 28
+
+  Katanga Co., _see_ Congo State
+
+  Katsena, 54, 55, 59, 62, 72
+
+  Kingsley, Miss Mary, 86, 124, 141, 171, 173, 232, 235, 266, 276, 353
+
+  Koelle, the Rev., 72
+
+  Kola, 57, 116
+
+  Kontagora, 98
+
+  Kotonu, 268
+
+  Krause, the Rev., 70
+
+  Kuka, 41, 43, 48, 63
+
+
+  Labat, 134, 240
+
+  Labour, native, 76, 77, 170-87, 197
+    Ordinance in Gold Coast, 13
+
+  Lagos, 18, 19, 49, 162, 164, 186, 193, 199, 201, 204, 206, 245, 267,
+        268, 269
+
+  Lahou, 204, 271
+
+  Lamy, Lieut.-Colonel, 254, 259, 261
+
+  Lamy, _see under_ Trade
+
+  Lander, Richard, 40, 41, 48, 51
+
+  Land-tenure, in West Africa, 170-87
+    in Sierra Leone, 278
+    in Ivory Coast, 171
+    in French Congo, 291, 292
+    in Congo State, _see_ Congo State
+
+  Lansdowne, Lord, 302, 303, 310
+
+  Lau, 111
+
+  Laveran, 163
+
+  Leather-ware, 58, 59, 60
+
+  Leo Africanus, 59, 131, 137, 209
+
+  Lepsius, Professor, 143
+
+  Leucæthiopes, _see_ Fulani
+
+  Liberia, 57, 220, 229
+
+  Liquor traffic, 179, 235
+
+  Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, 20, 163, _see also_ Ross
+
+  Logon River, 43
+
+  Lokoja, 76
+
+  _Lomami_, _see_ Congo State
+
+  London School of Tropical Medicine, 20
+
+  Lucas, 38
+
+  Lugard, Sir Frederick, 9, 83, 85, 87, 88, 89, 99, 104, 127
+
+  Lyon, 38
+
+
+  Macdonald, Sir Claude, 11
+
+  MacGregor, Laird, 28, 94
+    Sir William, 19, 22, 32, 33, 162, 163, 164, 168, 170, 187, 189
+
+  Maclaud, Dr., 138
+
+  Mahogany, _see under_ Trade (Timber)
+
+  Maistre, M., 259
+
+  Makrizi, 210
+
+  Malaria, 12, 153-69
+
+  Manatus, 55, 211
+
+  Mandara, 39
+
+  Mandingoes, 53, 128, 131, 133, 150, 195, 211
+
+  Maritime Zone, 290
+
+  Marmol, 133
+
+  Maroba, 97
+
+  Méline, M., 247
+
+  Melle, 131, 132, 195, 210
+
+  Mendis, 69, 123, 278
+
+  Merchants, British, in West Africa, 8, 22, 23, 25, 30, 238, 239, 246,
+        252, 257
+    in French Congo, 286, 291, 298-304, 306
+    and liquor traffic, 235
+    German, in West Africa, 23, 24
+      in French Congo, 291
+    French, early exploits of, 240-42
+    in Senegal, 81
+    in Ivory Coast, 81
+
+  Mille, M. Pierre, 81, 330
+
+  Mining industry, in Gold Coast, 12, 29, 182-83, _see also_ Appendix
+    in Ivory Coast, 270-71
+
+  Misahöhe, 196
+
+  Missionaries, _see_ Christianity
+
+  Mitchi, 118
+
+  Mohammed-el-Kanemy, 45, 51
+
+  Mohammed Lebo, 129
+
+  Mohammedans, _see_ Islam
+
+  Moloney, Sir Alfred, 203
+
+  Mongolia, atrocities in, _see_ Congo States
+
+  Monopoly, _see_ Congo State and French in French Congo
+
+  Monteil, Lieut.-Colonel, 57, 59, 70, 96, 118, 251
+
+  Moor, Sir Ralph, 90
+
+  Moore, Francis, 130, 147
+
+  Mosis, 9, 131, 251
+
+  Mosquitoes, _see_ Malaria
+
+  Muni River, 307, 350
+
+  Murzuk, 38, 41, 42
+
+
+  Nachtigal, 118
+
+  Nathan, Sir Matthew, _see_ Appendix
+
+  National African Company, _see_ Niger Company
+
+  Natron, 58, 61
+
+  Navarette, 239
+
+  New Calabar, 79
+
+  N’Gaundere, 111
+
+  Niger Coast Protectorate, _see_ Nigeria
+
+  Niger Company, 9, 67, 75, 88, 90, 91, 95, 96, 111, 112, 118
+
+  Niger, _see_ Nigeria
+
+  Nigeria, discovery of Northern, 35-51
+    inhabitants of, 84, 180
+    trade of, 59, 60-66, 84, 91-93
+    finances of, 89, 93
+    administration of, 18, 19, 83-88, 255, 257, 258
+    forest ordinances in, 184-87
+    national industry in, 74, 82
+    and the French, 66, 85
+
+  Nikki, 9
+
+  Northcott, Lieut.-Colonel, 107, 108
+
+  Nupe, 50, 58, 61, 68, 95, 97, 104
+
+
+  Ogowe, 293, 299, 303
+
+  Ogute Lake, 75
+
+  Old Calabar, 79
+
+  Onitsha, 75
+
+  Orashe River, 75
+
+  Osogbo, 126, 135
+
+  Othman Fodio, 45, 53, 55, 57, 125, 126, 129, 222
+
+  Oudney, Dr., 35-51
+
+  Overweg, 70
+
+
+  Palm-oil industry, in Southern Nigeria, 74-82, 110
+      in Dahomey, 268
+      in Lagos, 67, 268
+      in Sierra Leone, 123, _see also under_ Trade
+    -kernels industry, in Southern Nigeria, 76
+      in Dahomey, 268, _see also under_ Trade
+      in Lagos, 268
+
+  Park, Mungo, 36, 37, 150
+
+  Paw-paw, 114, 115, 116
+
+  Peddie, Major, 37
+
+  Peuhl, _see_ Fulani
+
+  Pickersgill, Consul, 317
+
+  Pilcher, Lieut.-Colonel, 69
+
+  Pliny, 35
+
+  Polygamy, _see_ Islam
+
+  Porto Novo, 268
+
+  Portugal and the Congo
+    and the Fulani, _see_ Fulani
+    and Great Britain, _see_ Treaties
+
+  Portuguese discoveries in West Africa, 239, 240, 259
+    Church in West Africa, 216, 217, 218
+
+  Potash, 118
+
+  Prempreh, 26, 280
+
+  Prince Henry the Navigator, 240
+
+  Ptolemy, 141
+
+  Punitive expeditions, 19, 87, 98, 279
+
+  Puttkamer, Herr von, 96
+
+
+  Quadriyah, 219, 220
+
+
+  Rabba, 50
+
+  Rabah, 63, 64, 256, 258, 259, 261, 262
+
+  Rabinek, _see under_ Congo State
+
+  Racka, 48, 49, 50
+
+  Railways, in British West Africa, 12, 18, 22, 32, 193, 267, 284, _see
+        also_ Appendix
+    in French Guinea, 20, 32, 66, 274, _see also_ Appendix
+    in Dahomey, 66, 267, _see also_ Appendix
+    in Senegal, 270, _see also_ Appendix
+    in Northern Nigeria, 8, 66, _see also_ Appendix
+    Matadi, Stanley Pool, 37, 69, 287, 348, _see also_ Appendix
+
+  Reclus, Élisée, 118
+
+  Religion, _see_ Christianity and Islam
+
+  Richardson, James, 55, 70, 96
+    Rev. J., 86
+
+  Ripon, Marquis of, 12
+
+  Ritchie, 38
+
+  “Rivers,” the, _see_ Nigeria
+
+  Robinson, John A., 70
+    Canon, 54, 70, 71, 72, 231
+
+  Rollit, Sir Albert, 318, 323
+
+  Ross, Major R., 20, 152-69
+
+  Roume, M., 196
+
+  Rubber, in Nigeria, 67, 110, 119-24
+    in French Congo, 298
+    in Lagos, 82, 123
+
+  Rubber, in Congo State, _see_ Congo State
+
+  Russell, Lord John, 94, 103
+
+
+  Sahara, _see_ Desert
+
+  Salisbury, Lord, 252, 253, 297, 303
+
+  Salmon, C. S., 20, 170
+
+  Salt, 58, 62, 167
+
+  Samory, 256, 261
+
+  Sandford, General, 316
+
+  Sangha, 57, 293
+
+  Sanitation, 153-69
+
+  Sapelli, 117, 204
+
+  Sarbah, 171, 184
+
+  Schön, 70, 71
+
+  Schurz, 98
+
+  Sekondi, 204
+
+  Senegal, 25, 82, 132, 197, 243, 252, 269, 270, _see also under_ French
+
+  Senussi, 64, 257
+
+  Sette Camma, 299
+
+  Shari, 43, 44, 45, 57, 63, 215, 258, 259, 261
+
+  Shea-butter, 113
+
+  Sherbro, 82
+
+  Shongo, 76
+
+  Shuwa, 75, 180, 254, 262
+
+  Sierra Leone, 14, 18, 19, 27, 28, 74, 82, 164, 194, 201, 242, 245,
+        252, 274, 275, 277, 278, 279
+
+  Silver, 118
+
+  Slavery, in West Africa, 100, 218
+    over-sea, 228, 255, 297, 298
+    domestic, 94-109
+    in Sierra Leone, 283
+    in Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, 107, 108
+    in Nupe and Ilorin, 109
+    in Congo State, 296, _see also_ Congo State
+    the “New Slavery,” 177, 307, _see also_ Congo State
+
+  Slave-raiding, 87, 94-109, 171, 219, 319
+
+  Slaves, “White Slaves of England,” 107
+
+  Sokoto, treaties with, _see under_ Treaties
+    under Bello, 41, 45, 47, 49, 50, 126, _see also under_ Fulani
+
+  Songhays, 53, 55, 56, 131, 197, 209, 210, 211, 253, 236
+
+  Soninkes, 211
+
+  Stanley, Sir H. M., 297, 312, 315, 319, 321, 337
+
+  Stewart, Captain Donald, 281
+
+  Stokes, _see under_ Congo State
+
+  Strachan, Dr., 163
+
+  Strachir, Monsignor, 227
+
+  Strauch, Colonel, 315
+
+  Susus, 278, 279
+
+
+  Tanganyika, 349
+
+  _Tarik_, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 209, 211, 214
+
+  Taxation, in Sierra Leone, 14, 18, 27, 82, 135, 277, 278, 281, 284
+    in Lagos, 269
+    in Dahomey, 269, 279, 280
+    in Ashanti, 279-81
+    in Gambia, 280
+    in French Guinea, 274, 277, 278, 281-84
+    in Congo State, _see_ Congo State
+    in French Congo, 293, 295, 301
+    in Hausa States, 127
+    direct in West Africa, 280
+
+  Terrier, Auguste, 262, 302
+
+  Thomson, Joseph, 9, 39, 56, 58, 95, 97, 118, 126, 211, 221
+
+  Thys, Colonel, 37, 288, 325, 348
+
+  Tibati, 111
+
+  Tijaniyah, 129, 219
+
+  Timber, _see under_ Trade
+
+  Timbo, 139
+
+  Timbuctoo, 38, 59, 65, 128, 131, 210, 253
+
+  Tin, 118
+
+  Togoland, 193, 196, 199
+
+  Trade, British trade with British West Africa, 2, 3, 4
+      French West Africa, 4, 5, 6, 297
+      German West Africa, 4, 5
+      Portuguese West Africa, 4, 5
+      Congo State, 297
+    of Gambia, 4, 194
+    Gold Coast, 4, _see also_ Appendix
+    Lagos, 4, 267-69, _see also_ Appendix
+    Sierra Leone, 284, _see also_ Appendix
+    of Kano, 60, 61, 62, 65
+    of Nigeria, 4, 74-82, 91-93
+    of French possessions, 265-75
+    of Congo State, 286, 343-53
+    early in West Africa, 238-48
+    in ivory, 38, 61, 67, 118, 202, 203, 271, 272, 298
+    in Gold, 38, 63, 118, 202, 203, 271, _see also_ Mining Industry
+        and Appendix
+    in ostrich-feathers, 38
+    in kola, 57, 116
+    in benni-seed, 117
+    in skins, 38, 63
+    in “lamy,” 115
+    in timber, 117, 201-207, 271, 272, 298, _see also_ Appendix
+    in bees-wax, 67
+    in gums, 67, 112
+    in shea-butter, 113, 114
+    in cottons, 59, 67, 111, 269
+    in palm-oil, 74-82, 110, 268, 272, 298
+    in palm-kernels, 74-82, 268, 272
+    in ground-nuts, 76, 81, 194, 269, 270
+    in rubber, 67, 82, 110, 111, 119-124, 298, 299
+    piassava, 117
+
+  Treaties, Anglo-French, 24, 67, 246, 247
+    Anglo-German, 111
+    Anglo-Portuguese, 316, 318, 319
+    Franco-German, 111
+    with Fulani Emirs (Sokoto), 9, 85, 86, 95, 97, 257-58
+    Berlin Act, 177, 297, 299, 300, 301, 303, 306, 307, 308, 314, 318,
+        319, 321, 323, 343, 344, 345
+    Brussels Act, 303, 323, 324, 325
+    of Vienna, 243
+
+  Trentinian, Général de, 196
+
+  Tripoli, 33, 41, 42, 58, 62, 63, 64, 65, 213
+
+  Trotter, Captain, 94, 103
+
+  Tuareg, 53, 56, 58, 71, 85, 128, 253, 260
+
+  Tuckey, Captain, 37
+
+  Tugwell, Bishop, 86
+
+  Tukulors, 129, 131, 253, 254
+
+  Twin Rivers, 204
+
+
+  Ubanghi, 57, 215, 262
+
+  Uganda, 181, 227
+
+  United States, 200, 204, 309, 310, 316, 318
+
+  Unyoro, 179
+
+
+  Verneau, Dr., 138
+
+  Viera, 239
+
+  Villadestes, 132
+
+  Villaut de Bellefonds, 240
+
+  Vohsen, Consul, 308
+
+  Volta, 193
+
+
+  Wadai, 57, 64, 254, 257, 263
+
+  Wahuma, 144, 180
+
+  Wa-Kavirondo, 181
+
+  Walata, 131, 133, 134, 137, 209, 210
+
+  Waldeck-Rousseau, 244, 285
+
+  Washington, Booker T., 199
+
+  Wauters, A. J., 312
+
+  West African Frontier Force, 86
+
+  Western Sudan, 35, 129, 130, 147, 209, 210, 272
+
+  Winterbottom, 147
+
+  Woermann, 197
+
+
+  Yola, 111, 119
+
+  Yoruba, 193
+
+
+  Za Dynasty, 209
+
+  Za-Kasai, 209, 210
+
+  Zaky, _see_ Othman Fodio
+
+  Zanfara, 55
+
+  Zaria, 57
+
+  Zeg-Zeg, 54, 55
+
+  Zimmerman, Dr. A., 175
+
+                   Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
+                            London & Edinburgh
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75580 ***
diff --git a/75580-h/75580-h.htm b/75580-h/75580-h.htm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9d9d74f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/75580-h.htm
@@ -0,0 +1,20008 @@
+<!DOCTYPE html>
+<html lang="en">
+<head>
+    <meta charset="UTF-8">
+    <title>
+      Affairs of West Africa | Project Gutenberg
+    </title>
+    <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover">
+    <style>
+
+a {
+    text-decoration: none;
+}
+
+body {
+    margin-left: 10%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+}
+
+h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 {
+    text-align: center;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+h2.nobreak {
+    page-break-before: avoid;
+}
+
+hr {
+    margin-top: 2em;
+    margin-bottom: 2em;
+    clear: both;
+}
+
+hr.tb {
+    width: 45%;
+    margin-left: 27.5%;
+    margin-right: 27.5%;
+}
+
+hr.chap {
+    width: 65%;
+    margin-left: 17.5%;
+    margin-right: 17.5%;
+}
+
+img.w100 {
+    width: 100%;
+}
+
+div.chapter {
+    page-break-before: always;
+    margin-bottom: 1.5em;
+}
+
+.chapter p {
+    font-size: 90%;
+    margin: auto 2em;
+}
+
+ul {
+    list-style-type: none;
+}
+
+li.indx {
+    margin-top: .5em;
+    padding-left: 2em;
+    text-indent: -2em;
+}
+
+li.ifrst {
+    margin-top: 2em;
+    padding-left: 2em;
+    text-indent: -2em;
+}
+
+li.isub1 {
+    padding-left: 4em;
+    text-indent: -2em;
+}
+
+li.isub2 {
+    padding-left: 6em;
+    text-indent: -2em;
+}
+
+p {
+    margin-top: 0.5em;
+    text-align: justify;
+    margin-bottom: 0.5em;
+    text-indent: 1em;
+}
+
+table {
+    margin: 1em auto 1em auto;
+    max-width: 40em;
+    border-collapse: collapse;
+}
+
+th {
+    padding: 0 0.25em;
+    font-weight: normal;
+    font-size: 90%;
+    vertical-align: bottom;
+}
+
+td {
+    padding-left: 2.25em;
+    padding-right: 0.25em;
+    vertical-align: top;
+    text-indent: -2em;
+}
+
+.contents .tdc {
+    text-align: center;
+    padding: 0.75em 0.25em 0.5em 0.25em;
+    text-indent: 0;
+}
+
+.tdc {
+    text-align: center;
+    padding: 0 0.25em;
+    text-indent: 0;
+}
+
+.tdr {
+    text-align: right;
+}
+
+.tdpg {
+    vertical-align: bottom;
+    text-align: right;
+}
+
+.bt {
+    border-top: thin solid black;
+}
+
+.total {
+    border-top: thin solid black;
+    border-bottom: double black;
+}
+
+.antiqua {
+    font-style: normal;
+}
+
+.blockquote {
+    margin: 1.5em 10%;
+}
+
+.caption p {
+    text-align: center;
+    margin-bottom: 1em;
+    font-size: 90%;
+    text-indent: 0em;
+}
+
+.center {
+    text-align: center;
+    text-indent: 0em;
+}
+
+.ditto {
+    margin-left: 1em;
+    margin-right: 1em;
+}
+
+.ditto2 {
+    margin-left: 2.3em;
+    margin-right: 2em;
+}
+
+.figcenter {
+    margin: auto;
+    text-align: center;
+}
+
+.footnotes {
+    margin-top: 1em;
+    border: dashed 1px;
+}
+
+.footnote {
+    margin-left: 10%;
+    margin-right: 10%;
+    font-size: 0.9em;
+}
+
+.footnote .label {
+    position: absolute;
+    right: 84%;
+    text-align: right;
+}
+
+.fnanchor {
+    vertical-align: super;
+    font-size: .8em;
+    text-decoration: none;
+}
+
+.larger {
+    font-size: 150%;
+}
+
+.noindent {
+    text-indent: 0em;
+}
+
+.nw {
+    white-space: nowrap;
+}
+
+.pad {
+    padding-right: 2em;
+}
+
+.pagenum {
+    position: absolute;
+    right: 4%;
+    font-size: smaller;
+    text-align: right;
+    font-style: normal;
+}
+
+.poetry-container {
+    text-align: center;
+}
+
+.poetry {
+    display: inline-block;
+    text-align: left;
+}
+
+.poetry .stanza {
+    margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;
+}
+
+.poetry .verse {
+    padding-left: 3em;
+}
+
+.poetry .indent0 {
+    text-indent: -3em;
+}
+
+.right {
+    text-align: right;
+}
+
+.smaller {
+    font-size: 80%;
+}
+
+.smcap {
+    font-variant: small-caps;
+    font-style: normal;
+}
+
+.allsmcap {
+    font-variant: small-caps;
+    font-style: normal;
+    text-transform: lowercase;
+}
+
+.titlepage {
+    text-align: center;
+    margin-top: 3em;
+    text-indent: 0em;
+}
+
+.valign {
+    vertical-align: middle;
+}
+
+.x-ebookmaker img {
+    max-width: 100%;
+    width: auto;
+    height: auto;
+}
+
+.x-ebookmaker .poetry {
+    display: block;
+    margin-left: 1.5em;
+}
+
+.x-ebookmaker .blockquote {
+    margin: 1.5em 5%;
+}
+
+/* Illustration classes */
+.illowp100 {width: 100%;}
+.illowp48 {width: 48%;}
+.x-ebookmaker .illowp48 {width: 100%;}
+.illowp50 {width: 50%;}
+.x-ebookmaker .illowp50 {width: 100%;}
+.illowp52 {width: 52%;}
+.x-ebookmaker .illowp52 {width: 100%;}
+.illowp53 {width: 53%;}
+.x-ebookmaker .illowp53 {width: 100%;}
+.illowp56 {width: 56%;}
+.x-ebookmaker .illowp56 {width: 100%;}
+.illowp61 {width: 61%;}
+.x-ebookmaker .illowp61 {width: 100%;}
+.illowp75 {width: 75%;}
+.x-ebookmaker .illowp75 {width: 100%;}
+.illowp88 {width: 88%;}
+.x-ebookmaker .illowp88 {width: 100%;}
+
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75580 ***</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_i"></a>[i]</span></p>
+
+<h1>AFFAIRS OF<br>
+WEST AFRICA</h1>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="illus01" style="max-width: 29.6875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus01.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>ON FISHING BENT—SOUTHERN NIGERIA</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ii"></a>[ii]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iii"></a>[iii]</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage larger">AFFAIRS OF<br>
+WEST AFRICA</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage"><span class="smaller">BY</span><br>
+EDMUND D. MOREL<br>
+<span class="smaller">(E. D. M.)<br>
+MEMBER OF THE WEST AFRICAN SECTION OF THE<br>
+LIVERPOOL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">WITH ILLUSTRATIONS AND MAPS</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter titlepage illowp75" id="heinemann" style="max-width: 6.25em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/heinemann.jpg" alt="">
+</figure>
+
+<p class="titlepage">LONDON<br>
+WILLIAM HEINEMANN<br>
+<span class="smaller">1902</span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_iv"></a>[iv]</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller">(<i>All rights reserved</i>)</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_v"></a>[v]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vi"></a>[vi]</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">TO<br>
+MY WIFE</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_vii"></a>[vii]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="PREFACE">PREFACE</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Whatever its defects—and, no doubt, they are many and
+various—the Author claims for this volume that it is, at least,
+an honest attempt to deal with the problems, racial,
+political and commercial, yearly increasing in magnitude,
+connected with the administration of Western Africa by
+Great Britain and by the other Powers of Western Europe
+which participated in the scramble for African territory.
+As such it is respectfully submitted to the thinking Public.
+The Author considers it advisable to state that he has no
+commercial interests in West Africa, and is, therefore,
+uninfluenced by considerations of a personal nature, in
+emphasising the importance of the part played by the
+merchant on the West African stage. He also deems it
+right to say that the West African Section of the Liverpool
+Chamber of Commerce is neither responsible nor answerable
+for the opinions expressed herein. The Author hereby
+acknowledges the courtesy of the Editor of the <i>Pall Mall
+Gazette</i>, the Editor-Proprietor of <i>West Africa</i>, the Editor of
+the <i>Contemporary Review</i>, and the Editorial Committee of
+the <i>Journal of the African Society</i>, in permitting the incorporation
+of certain matter contributed by himself, from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_viii"></a>[viii]</span>
+time to time, to those publications. His sincere thanks are
+due to Major Ronald Ross, F.R.C.S., F.R.S., C.B., for the
+chapter which that distinguished scientist has specially
+written at the Author’s request. To other kind friends
+and acquaintances who have good-humouredly submitted
+to cross-examination, and have allowed themselves to be
+victimised by the Author’s importunities generally, grateful
+appreciation is due, and is thankfully acknowledged.</p>
+
+<p class="smaller"><span class="smcap">Hawarden, 1902.</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_ix"></a>[ix]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="CONTENTS">CONTENTS</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<table class="contents">
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr smaller">CHAP.</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdpg smaller">PAGE</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr"></td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Foreword—Mary Kingsley</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#FOREWORD">xiii</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="3"><a href="#PART_I">PART I</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">I.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Five Years of British Trade with Western Africa</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_I">1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">II.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Old and the New</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_II">7</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">III.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Real and the Ideal</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_III">11</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">IV.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Some Necessary Reforms</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_IV">20</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="3"><a href="#PART_II">PART II.—NIGERIA</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">V.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Discovery of Northern Nigeria</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_V">35</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">VI.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Discovery of Northern Nigeria</span>—(<i>cont.</i>)</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VI">43</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">VII.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Hausas and their Emporium</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VII">52</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">VIII.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Hausas and their Emporium</span>—(<i>cont.</i>)</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">59</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">IX.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The National Industry of Southern Nigeria</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_IX">74</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">X.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Administration of Northern Nigeria</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_X">83</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XI.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Finances of Nigeria</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XI">89</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XII.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Mohammedans, Slave-raiding and Domestic Servitude</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XII">94</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XIII.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Principal Products of Nigeria</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">110</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XIV.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Rubber-collecting in Nigeria</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">119</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XV.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Fulani in Nigeria</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XV">125</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XVI.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Fulani in West African History</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">130</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XVII.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Origin of the Fulani</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">136</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_x"></a>[x]</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="3"><a href="#PART_III">PART III</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XVIII.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Sanitary Affairs in West Africa. By Major Ronald Ross, C.B.</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">153</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XIX.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Land Tenure and Labour in West Africa</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">170</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XX.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">A Cotton Industry for West Africa</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XX">188</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XXI.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Mahogany Trade</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">201</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XXII.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Islam in West Africa</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">208</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XXIII.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Islam in West Africa</span>—(<i>cont.</i>)</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">224</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="3"><a href="#PART_IV">PART IV.—THE FRENCH IN WEST AFRICA</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XXIV.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Anglo-French Relations in West Africa</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">238</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XXV.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Ten Years of French Action in West Africa</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">249</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XXVI.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Commercial and Financial Condition of the French Possessions</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVI">265</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XXVII.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">French and British Management in West Africa</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVII"> 276</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="3"><a href="#PART_V">PART V.—MONOPOLY IN WEST AFRICA</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XXVIII.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Concessions Régime in French Congo</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXVIII">285</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XXIX.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">International Interests and Monopoly</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXIX">297</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XXX.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The History of the Congo State</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXX">312</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XXXI.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The Domaine Privé</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXI">327</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">XXXII.</td>
+    <td><span class="smcap">The “Trade” of the Congo State</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">343</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="3"><a href="#APPENDIX">APPENDIX</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Sierra Leone (Expenditure, Loans, Exports, &amp;c.)</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#SIERRA_LEONE">355</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Gold Coast (Expenditure, Loans, Exports, &amp;c.)</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#GOLD_COAST">356</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Lagos (Expenditure, Loans, Exports, &amp;c.)</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#LAGOS">359</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Dahomey (Comparative Table of Duties)</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#COMPARATIVE_TABLES">360</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">The Dahomey Railway</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#THE_DAHOMEY_RAILWAY">362</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">French Guinea Railway</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#FRENCH_GUINEA_RAILWAY">364</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">West African Mahogany Trade</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#WEST_AFRICAN_MAHOGANY_TRADE">365</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">The Gold Coast Mining Industry</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#THE_GOLD_COAST_MINING_INDUSTRY">367</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">British Possessions in West Africa (Population and Area)</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#APPROXIMATE_AREA_AND_POPULATION">370</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">The Rabinek Case</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#THE_RABINEK_CASE">371</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Index</span></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#INDEX">373</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xi"></a>[xi]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="ILLUSTRATIONS">ILLUSTRATIONS</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<table class="contents">
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>On Fishing Bent, Southern Nigeria</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus01"><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><i>Facing page</i></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>*<i>A Pure-bred Kano Man (Hausa)</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus02">54</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>*<i>A Hausa from Yola</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus03">56</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Hausa Loom and Spool</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus04">62</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Hausas Drilling</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus05">68</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Making Palm-oil</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus06">74</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Duke-Town, Old Calabar, Southern Nigeria</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus07">76</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Filling Palm-oil Barrels, Southern Nigeria</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus08">78</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>A Palm-kernel Market in Southern Nigeria</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus09">80</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>A Mohammedan Chief and his Standard-Bearer</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus10">100</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Mandingo Muslims</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus11">106</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>A Baobab—The Giant of West African Flora</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus12">116</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Washing Rubber</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus13">122</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Fulani Sword</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus14">126</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>*<i>Pure-bred Fulani Girl, Adamawa</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus15">128</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Fulani Chief, Futa-Jallon</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus16">130</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Half-caste Fulani Girl, Futa-Jallon</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus17">134</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Low-caste Fulani, Western Sudan</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus18">136</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Pure-bred Fulani Girl, Futa-Jallon</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus19">140</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Fulani House, Futa-Jallon</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus20">142</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Fulani Cattle-pen</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus21">146</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>A Half-caste Fulani Girl and a Susu</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus22">148</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>The Idle Native! Market Scene in West Africa</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus23">176</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>West African “Young Hopefuls”</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus24">180</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>An Ibo Family Group, Southern Nigeria</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus25">186</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Travelling on the Niger in the Dry Season</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus26">196</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xii"></a>[xii]</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Felling a Mahogany-tree</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus27">202</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Squaring the Tree</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus28">202</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Dragging the Squared Log through the Bush</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus29">204</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Sapelli, Southern Nigeria’s principal Timber Port</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus30">204</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>A Susu Mallam</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus31">218</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Fulani Mallam</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus32">228</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Susu Chief and Staff</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus33">278</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Ashanti Field Force at Cape Coast <span class="antiqua">en route</span> for Kumasi</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus34">280</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Return of Ashanti Field Force</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus35">282</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>The Victim of a Rubber Raid</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#illus36">334</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdc" colspan="2">MAPS</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Northern Part of Africa</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#map1">38</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Northern Nigeria</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#map2">84</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><i>Sketch Map showing Harbour Improvement Scheme, Ivory Coast</i></td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#map3"><i>page</i> 273</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><i>Photographs marked thus * are reproduced from “Adamawa” by kind permission
+of Mr. Ernst Vohsen (Dietrich Reimer). The author is indebted (through the kindness
+of a friend) to Dr. Maclaud, of the French Guinea Administration, for several of the
+photographs here reproduced.</i></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xiii"></a>[xiii]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="FOREWORD">FOREWORD<br>
+<span class="smaller">MARY KINGSLEY</span></h2>
+
+<p>“Mary Kingsley—the heir and sustainer of a great name, one of the
+ablest of that remarkable band of wandering writers, men and women, who
+are the eyes and ears of our nascent Empire, who are bringing home to
+England, that weary Titan, her tasks, her faults, her problems—Mary
+Kingsley has gone from us.”—Mrs. <span class="smcap">Humphry Ward</span>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Those who had the honour of knowing Mary Kingsley, and
+corresponding with her on West African affairs, who have
+studied her writings and her speeches, who realise all that
+this “good woman with a gigantic intellect” might have
+done for the Empire in West Africa had she lived, can with
+difficulty reconcile themselves to the inscrutable decree of
+Providence which robbed us of her presence. One of her
+greatest admirers to whom I was expressing the other day
+much the same feeling, expressed a different view. “Miss
+Kingsley’s work was done”—he said in effect—“she was
+the pioneer, she showed the way. That was her allotted
+task: the fruit of her labours will come in due season.” It
+may be so. Indeed, when we think of what Mary Kingsley
+accomplished in the few short years which she devoted to
+West Africa, the thought arises whether there is not an
+element of unconscious selfishness in the desire that she
+might have been spared. The nature of the work she had
+undertaken, the intense fervour with which she devoted herself
+body and soul to preaching the morals it was given her
+to inculcate, the utter brain weariness which at times she
+was fain to admit—no mortal being could have endured for
+very long so perpetual a mental and physical strain. It was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xiv"></a>[xiv]</span>
+a passing heavy load for a weak woman of indifferent health
+to bear, and in death Mary Kingsley has perhaps achieved
+a greater triumph, a success more striking and profound,
+than living on she would have attained. Death has had the
+effect of rapidly fertilising the seeds she sowed, and from
+her ashes have sprung forces gathering daily in power
+which, united in a common aim, are taking up her burden
+and carrying it along the path she pointed out, assured that
+every year will bring fresh helpers, be the obstacles ever so
+great. <i>La verité est en marche</i>, and although the spirit of the
+hour is not precisely favourable to that patient investigation
+of West African problems which affords the only guarantee
+of political and administrative success, the phase is but a
+fleeting one, and when the present fashionable policy of
+force and hurry is found by practical tests to be even more
+sterile in useful results than the apathy which preceded
+it, the main truths Mary Kingsley taught will appeal to
+thinking men with an eloquence all the greater for having
+been temporarily obscured.</p>
+
+<p>On the personal aspect of Mary Kingsley’s character one
+would fain dwell at length. Few women, I believe, have
+inspired all sorts and conditions of men with so intense a
+respect, so wondering an admiration. Few women are able,
+as Mary Kingsley was able, to draw forth, by the magic of
+her earnest personality, the best in a man. She was so unassuming,
+so unaffected, such a womanly woman in every
+sense of the word, that it appeared almost incredible she
+should have grasped the essentialities of West African politics
+with such comprehensiveness and scientific perception;
+mastered, as no one had done before—in the sense, at any
+rate, of being able to impart the knowledge to the world—the
+intricacies of native custom and native law, or have
+affronted the physical perils she made so light of. Eminent
+politicians and administrators, distinguished men of letters,
+world-renowned scientists, commercial magnates, were
+regular visitors at her modest residence, and one and all
+drew from her inexhaustible store. The least of those to
+whom she extended the privilege of her friendship were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_xv"></a>[xv]</span>
+always welcome, and never failed to leave her presence
+without feeling that her words of sympathy and encouragement
+were a fresh incentive to push onward, never losing
+hope and fortified against disappointment. The truest,
+kindest, staunchest friend that ever breathed—such was
+Mary Kingsley; and we who knew her, and have lost her,
+know also that something has gone out of our lives which
+can never be replaced. In a passage of singular beauty,
+Mrs. Alice Stopford Green thus closes a tribute<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> to the
+dead friend whose work she herself is doing so much to
+carry on: “She laid her armour down when she asked
+to be carried out to the unfathomable Ocean, alone in
+death as she had been alone in life, going out with her last
+wish from the bitter strife of men to the immensities where
+she sought the will of God.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_1"></a>[1]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_I">PART I</h2>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I<br>
+<span class="smaller">FIVE YEARS OF BRITISH TRADE WITH WESTERN AFRICA</span></h3>
+
+<p class="center">“West Africa, that great feeding-ground for British manufactures.”—<span class="smcap">Mary
+Kingsley.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>One still—but too often, alas!—meets with people who
+wonder why England should bother about West Africa at
+all, and pooh-pooh the idea that we have interests there at
+the present time worth looking after, while as for the future
+possibilities of that huge country as a field for British
+enterprise, they simply will not trouble themselves to give
+the matter a moment’s consideration.</p>
+
+<p>Now figures are very uninteresting things, no doubt, to
+the average reader; but they possess a practical significance
+superior to any number of the most glowing dissertations,
+and I trust my readers will forgive me if I make, as a basis
+of justification for inflicting this volume upon them, a few
+sets of figures which I would respectfully suggest as worthy
+of their attentive consideration. The statistics are compiled
+from the Custom House returns, and they show the extent,
+nature and distribution of British trade in Western Africa
+during the last few years. In perusing them, three facts
+should be borne in mind: first, that, although Europeans
+have been engaged in commercial transactions on the West
+Coast for upwards of five hundred and fifty years, those
+transactions were, prior to the abolition of the over-sea<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_2"></a>[2]</span>
+slave trade, confined, with very few exceptions<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a>—so far as
+the exports from West Africa were concerned—to the human
+cargo, and to gold dust and ivory: that the trade in palm
+oil and kernels, which are now the staple articles of export
+from West Africa, is therefore of comparatively recent
+growth, and that the mahogany trade and the rubber trade
+have only come into existence—to any appreciable extent—within
+the last few years, a fair indication of the fertility
+and producing power and almost boundless resources of
+West Africa. Secondly, that the extensive business relationship
+which has been built up between Great Britain and
+West Africa, in the shape of a legitimate commerce, has
+grown to its present proportions under circumstances absolutely
+disadvantageous to development, without railways,
+with but few roads, with intertribal wars often preventing
+the circulation of trade for months at a time, by merely
+scratching the surface of the most prolific region in the
+world. Thirdly, that the figures given below do but show
+the actual volume of Britain’s trade with West Africa and
+the wages earned by thousands of English men and
+women who directly and indirectly benefit by that trade;
+the British capital invested in West Africa in factories,
+machinery, craft for navigating the rivers, coaling depôts,
+surf-boats and lighters, stores and the like, to which must
+now be added railway material, dredging apparatus, batteries
+and soon, we may hope, cotton gins, not to mention a fleet
+of some sixty steamers employed in the carrying trade and
+passenger traffic—all these things have to be taken into
+account in estimating West Africa’s worth to Great Britain.</p>
+
+<p>The total values of British produce and manufactures<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>
+shipped to the <i>British possessions in West Africa</i> in the five
+years 1896-1900 were respectively as follows:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_3"></a>[3]</span></p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1896</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£1,828,395</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,763,461</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,999,505</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2,116,080</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2,148,149</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">Gross total</td>
+    <td class="tdr bt">£9,855,590</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="noindent">Percentage of increase in five years, 17½ per cent.</p>
+
+<p>The total values of British produce and manufactures
+shipped to the <i>possessions of Foreign Powers</i> in West Africa
+in the five years 1896-1900 were respectively as follows:</p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1896</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£970,080</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,002,318</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,247,994</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,490,603</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2,145,349</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">Gross total</td>
+    <td class="tdr bt">£6,856,344</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="noindent">Percentage of increase in five years, 121 per cent.</p>
+
+<p>If we add these two totals together, we find that the value
+of British produce and manufactures shipped to <i>West Africa</i>
+in the period mentioned was £16,711,934, which is a percentage
+of increase of 138 per cent.</p>
+
+<p>From the British export trade we turn to the British
+import trade with West Africa.</p>
+
+<p>The total values of raw produce imported by Great Britain
+<i>from British West Africa</i> in the five years 1896-1900 were
+respectively as follows:</p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1896</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£2,223,925</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2,153,412</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2,352,285</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2,427,946</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2,137,023</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">Gross total</td>
+    <td class="tdr bt">£11,294,591</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="noindent">The total values of raw produce imported by Great Britain
+from the <i>possessions of Foreign Powers</i> in West Africa in the
+five years 1896-1900 were respectively as follows:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_4"></a>[4]</span></p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1896</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£333,803</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr">553,130</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">622,287</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">651,043</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">806,077</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">Gross total</td>
+    <td class="tdr bt">£2,966,340</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="noindent">These two totals added together show that Great Britain
+imported West African produce in the period under review
+to the amount of £14,260,931.</p>
+
+<p>The value of Great Britain’s direct commerce with West
+Africa in the five years 1896-1900 was, therefore, £30,972,865.
+To this might be added a further sum of £1,750,888, representing
+foreign and colonial merchandise shipped to West
+Africa from British ports in the years mentioned.<a id="FNanchor_4" href="#Footnote_4" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is interesting, and valuable, to see which, among the
+possessions of Foreign Powers in West Africa, were the
+chief absorbers of British goods and the chief exporters of
+raw produce to Great Britain. Examination yields the
+following knowledge:</p>
+
+<p>Principal possessions of Foreign Powers which absorbed
+in five years £6,856,344 of British goods:<a id="FNanchor_5" href="#Footnote_5" class="fnanchor">[5]</a></p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th>French.</th>
+    <th>Portuguese.</th>
+    <th>German.</th>
+    <th>Others.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th>£</th>
+    <th>£</th>
+    <th>£</th>
+    <th>£</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1896</td>
+    <td class="tdr">348,258</td>
+    <td class="tdr">402,445</td>
+    <td class="tdr">68,355</td>
+    <td class="tdr">151,022</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr">401,224</td>
+    <td class="tdr">360,121</td>
+    <td class="tdr">91,320</td>
+    <td class="tdr">149,653<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_5"></a>[5]</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">531,848</td>
+    <td class="tdr">438,320</td>
+    <td class="tdr">109,580</td>
+    <td class="tdr">178,246</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">693,255</td>
+    <td class="tdr">503,788</td>
+    <td class="tdr">126,047</td>
+    <td class="tdr">167,513</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">709,900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,084,072<a id="FNanchor_6" href="#Footnote_6" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr">120,910</td>
+    <td class="tdr">212,175</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Principal possessions of Foreign Powers which exported
+to Great Britain in five years £2,966,340 of raw produce:</p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th>French.</th>
+    <th>Portuguese.</th>
+    <th>German.</th>
+    <th>Others.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th>£</th>
+    <th>£</th>
+    <th>£</th>
+    <th>£</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1896</td>
+    <td class="tdr">203,442</td>
+    <td class="tdr">33,937</td>
+    <td class="tdr">42,001</td>
+    <td class="tdr">54,423</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr">312,430</td>
+    <td class="tdr">116,554</td>
+    <td class="tdr">68,194</td>
+    <td class="tdr">55,952</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">431,192</td>
+    <td class="tdr">85,544</td>
+    <td class="tdr">35,165</td>
+    <td class="tdr">70,186</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">461,267</td>
+    <td class="tdr">68,021</td>
+    <td class="tdr">48,736</td>
+    <td class="tdr">73,019</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">534,727</td>
+    <td class="tdr">75,037</td>
+    <td class="tdr">94,681</td>
+    <td class="tdr">101,632</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The French possessions are, it will be observed, far and
+away our principal markets and our principal suppliers
+among the possessions of Foreign Powers. Our exports to
+and imports from the French possessions amounted together
+to £4,627,543, or just under 50 per cent. of our total export
+and import trade with the possessions of Foreign Powers
+together. The increasing importance of the French possessions
+in West Africa as a market for the sale of British
+goods and as suppliers of British home markets is a fact which
+it is of the utmost consequence for British statesmen to lay to
+heart. The subject is one which I shall refer to later on. It is
+already one of the dominant factors of West African politics
+affecting Great Britain, and is destined to become so more
+and more as the years go on, for France is in a territorial
+sense the mistress of West Africa, and may become so in a
+commercial sense as well.</p>
+
+<p>The general conclusions to be drawn from a study of
+these figures are various. First and foremost there is the
+clearly established fact that British trade with West Africa
+is expanding enormously and has almost unlimited prospects
+before it, now that serious and concentrated efforts are being
+made on all sides to open up the untapped wealth of the
+interior by the means of roads and railways and by the improvement
+of navigable waterways, while the cessation of
+intertribal warfare in many districts must entail a large<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_6"></a>[6]</span>
+increase in the population, and therefore, in the native
+capacity for production and purchase. It is also demonstrated
+that every year West Africa absorbs a larger quantity
+of British manufactured goods: that the exports of British
+manufactured goods are steadily increasing to British West
+Africa and increasing to an extraordinary degree to the
+possessions of Foreign Powers in West Africa, especially
+to the French possessions: that Great Britain is consolidating
+her hold upon the carrying trade of West Africa as
+testified by the increased quantity of foreign and colonial
+manufactures shipped to West Africa from British ports: that
+the Continent—Germany<a id="FNanchor_7" href="#Footnote_7" class="fnanchor">[7]</a> chiefly—is receiving a greater
+amount of raw produce from the British possessions in West
+Africa, a deduction which can be fairly drawn from the
+stationary aspect of the importation by Great Britain of such
+produce from her own West African possessions. And the
+final conclusion is this, that, in view of the restricted extent
+of the British possessions in West Africa, compared with the
+possessions of Foreign Powers in that part of the world, the
+latter offer a very much vaster field for the sale of British
+goods. Consequently, it is the bounden duty of the British
+Government and the British Chambers of Commerce, while
+in no way neglecting the brilliant possibilities which the
+British West African possessions offer under wise administration
+for the enterprise of Englishmen, to be ever on the
+alert to look to the future and to protect British trade with
+the possessions of the Foreign Powers in West Africa against
+legislation tending to close the door of those possessions
+against it; and to insist that, whenever international treaties
+guaranteeing freedom of trade to the subjects of all nations
+exist in West Africa, they shall be rigidly adhered to by the
+signatories. In this respect British diplomacy has shown
+itself singularly lax. But the mischief already committed
+may even yet be remedied, and further dangers which loom
+ahead averted, if the British public will only realise before
+it is too late the enormous issues at stake.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_7"></a>[7]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE OLD AND THE NEW</span></h3>
+
+<p>“The past has gone with its follies and its waste.... Let us then face the
+present and contemplate the future.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In the previous chapter we discussed in practical fashion the
+grounds upon which the British public is called upon to
+devote more attention to the affairs of West Africa than it
+does at present, and an attempt—I hope a successful
+attempt—was made to show how very short-sighted and
+singularly misinformed is the opinion which would disinterest
+itself from a part of the world where the possibilities
+of commercial development are so strikingly manifest.
+There has never been such urgent need for an intelligent
+appreciation, on the part of the British public, of the
+problems which confront this country in West Africa. In a
+few short years the policy of Great Britain in West Africa
+has undergone a complete change. Events have followed
+one another with bewildering rapidity. Official indifference
+has been galvanised into life by French activity, and after a
+brief but dangerous period of international rivalry, British
+political rights have been established over a considerable
+extent of territory, not, however, nearly so considerable as a
+pacific, consistent, well-thought-out programme adopted
+some years previously would have brought, had our merchant-pioneers
+been listened to, and had successive Governments
+been able to throw off the paralysing influence of
+the resolution of 1865. There is a story told of a certain
+Minister in charge of the Foreign Office—it was related
+to me by one of those present at the interview—which
+illustrates very forcibly the feeling which prevailed in
+Government circles in those days. A deputation of merchants<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_8"></a>[8]</span>
+waited upon his Excellency with the request that
+he would permit the hoisting of the Union Jack on certain
+parts of the West African littoral where British merchants
+had long been trading, and where the rulers of the country
+were genuinely desirous of receiving a British protectorate.
+<i>Pro-formâ</i> treaties were produced by the deputation between
+these rulers and the resident merchants. The merchants
+asked for no reward. There was no question of expenditure
+involved. All that the Government was required to do
+was to meet the wishes of the chiefs. The deputation
+pointed out that, so far as the relations between the natives
+and the commercial representatives of Great Britain were
+concerned, the acceptance of the Government would in
+no wise alter them, but would simply have the effect of
+cementing a friendly understanding which already existed.
+But, urged the deputation, the treaties, if agreed to by the
+Government, would prove an invaluable diplomatic instrument
+if the time came, as it seemed likely to do, when
+England might find herself faced in West Africa by foreign
+competition. The Minister flung the treaties across the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>It was a time of wasted opportunities, when a little political
+foresight would have conferred upon this country great
+future benefit, and it seems extraordinary, but is unhappily
+true, that the same failure to look ahead as regards West
+Africa appears to afflict our Foreign Office to-day despite
+the lessons of the past. Of this, more anon.</p>
+
+<p>But if successive Governments showed unpardonable
+negligence in safeguarding British interests in West Africa,
+for decade after decade, down to the very time when the
+French had worked their way so far southward into the
+natural <i>hinterlands</i> of our old Colonies that action became
+imperative if anything was to be saved from the wreck, the
+British press and public were greatly to blame also. I well
+remember that at the very height of the recent Anglo-French
+controversy which culminated in the Convention
+of 1898, when rival English and French expeditions were
+rushing hither and thither through the territories west of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_9"></a>[9]</span>
+the Niger, and when British and French efforts were concentrated
+upon wringing out of the unfortunate Borgu Chiefs
+all sorts, kinds, and conditions of agreements, sowing Union
+Jacks and Tricolors by the wayside, the well-known editor
+of an equally well-known newspaper to which I then contributed,
+asked me to show him Nikki<a id="FNanchor_8" href="#Footnote_8" class="fnanchor">[8]</a> on the map, as he had
+not the least idea where it was.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Chamberlain came into power just at the moment
+when French enterprise in the West African uplands had
+reached its maximum of threatening intensity, and he set
+himself to vigorously counteract it as far as he could. The
+invertebrate policy had, however, compromised the situation
+almost beyond remedy, and had it not been for Mr. Joseph
+Thomson’s success in obtaining treaty rights with the
+Emirs of Sokoto and Bornu in 1884 on behalf of the National
+African Company of Merchants—subsequently the Royal
+Niger Company—and, it may be added, for the loyal
+adherence of those native States to the treaties passed with
+the Company, the magnificent possession of Northern
+Nigeria would have gone the way of Futa Jallon, of Mossi,
+and of so many other countries lying at the back of our
+Colonies; that is to say, would have fallen into French hands.
+The man who deserves the most credit for saving Northern
+Nigeria to the Empire is Sir George Taubman Goldie, and
+however one may deplore some of the uses to which he put
+his Charter—things we are paying for now in the French
+Congo and elsewhere—it is but common fairness to assert
+that, if it had not been for Sir George Goldie, the possessions
+of Great Britain in West Africa would have been reduced by
+about one half. It is a matter for some surprise that the
+Government should not have succeeded in securing the
+continuation of Sir George Goldie’s co-operation in West
+Africa after the Royal Niger Company’s Charter was cancelled.
+An old opponent has lately said of him that “there
+is no one more competent to guide our West African
+Administration on practical, humanitarian, economical,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_10"></a>[10]</span>
+prudent, and statesmanlike lines, no one more fitted to take
+a high position in West African affairs political and commercial,”
+a statement which will meet with wide acceptance.</p>
+
+<p>But this, after all, is ancient history, and what we are
+chiefly concerned with now, is the present. What we are
+called upon to seriously consider is the general trend of
+England’s policy in West Africa, administrative, financial,
+political and commercial. Internationally, we are secure in
+the possession of our territories. The only rivalry we have
+to fear is the peaceful rivalry of commerce, but commerce
+is the explanation of our presence in West Africa: it constitutes
+the sinews of our administration, and its requirements
+demand the constant vigilance, the most careful
+attention of the official world.</p>
+
+<p>It is the bounden duty of those who, believing in the
+immense importance of West Africa to Great Britain, and
+similarly believing that the present policy which is being
+pursued by Great Britain in West Africa is open on several
+grounds to grave objection, to say so, and to give their
+reasons for saying so, with the assured conviction that,
+however unpopular their arguments may be, the general
+interest demands that they should be put forward.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_11"></a>[11]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE REAL AND THE IDEAL</span></h3>
+
+<p>“The nature of the natives, the climate, everything is against precipitate
+and hasty action. To advance slowly, leaving no bad or unfinished
+work behind, to gain the respect and liking of the natives, and only to use
+force when compelled as a last resource to do so, are the means which in my
+humble opinion lead to success in West Africa. To quote from the words of
+a celebrated French traveller: ‘Do not let us dream of a hasty transformation
+of Africa. Let us employ a method, slow but sure. Let us try and teach the
+natives what knowledge we have acquired, and not try and make them learn
+in a few years what it has taken us twenty centuries to learn.’”—<span class="smcap">Sir
+Claude Macdonald</span> in Liverpool, 1892.</p>
+
+<p>“These figures are surprising. One would naturally have expected
+that as the trade increased the proportion of expenditure would have
+decreased.... From that date, however, the expenditure has advanced
+by leaps and bounds, and in 1900 amounted to 28 per cent. of the
+exports. In other words, the expenditure has increased more rapidly than
+the trade.... If, however, the expenditure had been on the basis of former
+years ... we could have given over £1,000,000 worth additional European
+goods in exchange for the same amount of produce. In other words, the
+heavier the expenditure the higher price must the merchant ask for his European
+goods, or the less he is able to give for native produce. This must have
+the double effect of reducing the demand for manufactures and diminishing
+the energy of the natives in gathering produce. There is another possibility
+which should not be lost sight of: our colonies are hemmed in by our French
+and German neighbours. If in consequence of increased expenditure and
+the resulting heavier taxes we are unable to offer the natives as large a
+quantity of manufactures and as good a price as our competitors are enabled
+to do, produce which is grown on the borders of our Colonies may be diverted
+to foreign territory with a consequent loss of trade to this country.”—Mr.
+<span class="smcap">Arthur Hutton</span>, President African Section, Manchester Chamber of
+Commerce.<a id="FNanchor_9" href="#Footnote_9" class="fnanchor">[9]</a></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>A wise man has said that there is no way of conveying a
+rebuke so efficiently as upon the back of a compliment, and
+as a preliminary to criticism of certain phases of British
+administration in West Africa, a measure of praise is both
+just and needful. To avoid personalities—whether in the
+sense of praise or otherwise—should be the constant<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_12"></a>[12]</span>
+endeavour of any critic in approaching the subject under
+discussion, because it is primarily the system, and not the
+agents of the system, which is in question. Unfortunately
+the Crown Colony system being what it is, a despotism—though
+by no means necessarily a tyrannical despotism—there
+is great difficulty, if not actual impossibility, in
+altogether avoiding the personal equation.</p>
+
+<p>The revolution in British West African policy is indelibly
+associated with the advent to power of the present Colonial
+Secretary, the Right Honourable Joseph Chamberlain. His
+entry upon the scene was contemporaneous with the culmination
+of certain events which must infallibly have
+modified our previous attitude in relation to West Africa
+whoever the statesmen responsible at the time might have
+been. The point need not be laboured, but it is often
+overlooked. Be that as it may, it is an undoubted fact—a
+fact redounding greatly to Mr. Chamberlain’s credit—that
+no Colonial Secretary before him has displayed so lively
+and personal an interest, both publicly and privately, in the
+affairs of British West Africa, an interest which has continued
+unabated during the entire period of his administration.
+In specific directions the result has been all to the good.
+Railways, the preliminary surveys of which had been made
+by direction of Mr. Chamberlain’s predecessor, the Marquis
+of Ripon, before he quitted office, have been constructed;
+others are commenced; the routes of more have been
+surveyed. The study of malaria has received the right
+honourable gentleman’s warmest support. A general
+publicity has been given to British West Africa by its
+identification with so powerful a politician as Mr. Chamberlain,
+which has materially contributed to remove it from
+the rut of oblivion and popular ignorance. It may also be
+added that the Colonial Secretary’s confident public declarations
+in respect to the future of the gold-mining industry in
+the Gold Coast has done much to attract capital to that
+Colony, and that the damper which he recently felt it wise
+to apply to the introduction of the more undesirable elements
+connected with the revival, under modern conditions, of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_13"></a>[13]</span>
+gold-mining enterprise in a part of the coast celebrated for
+its former export of the precious metal, was entirely to his
+honour, although it would perhaps have been more useful
+had it come somewhat earlier in the day; while the memorandum
+he caused to be drawn up in September 1901
+embodying the principle of treating native labourers on the
+Gold Coast, is perhaps the most admirable document ever
+issued from the Colonial Office.<a id="FNanchor_10" href="#Footnote_10" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> In like manner, it can be
+taken for granted that all officials in West Africa are animated
+by the best of intentions, and however profoundly one
+may differ, from time to time, from certain of their actions,
+it is always essential to bear in mind that the system under
+which they work—the inconvenience of which not a few of
+them in private conversation readily admit—leaves the door
+wide open to the commitment of errors for which the system
+is in the first place responsible, while the climate is most trying
+to the constitutions and temper of Europeans. But it is
+unreasonable, and subversive of the true interests of the
+Empire, that the tendency should be encouraged to denounce
+honest criticism of a specific act of policy in West Africa
+with which this or that official must in the nature of things
+be associated, although he need not be, and often is not, the
+originator of it, as a personal attack upon an absent man,
+to be resented as an outrage and stigmatised almost as a
+crime, as an offence at any rate against common decency
+and fairness. The contention is absurd, and mischievous
+and unfair. The autocratic power which the Crown Colony
+system confers upon West African Governors, District Commissioners,
+and military commandants makes it absolutely
+essential that independent criticism, so long as it is legitimate,
+should be exercised by the public at home, whether or
+no full sanction has been obtained by a particular official
+from the Colonial Office for the application of measures
+giving rise to criticism, or whether the measures have been
+initiated by the Colonial Office itself. By public criticism
+alone can we hope to avoid the repetition of such deplorable<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_14"></a>[14]</span>
+mistakes as led to the Hut Tax war in Sierra Leone
+and the last Ashanti outbreak; the framing of legislation
+far in advance of the needs of the country and antagonistic
+to native feeling, which interest and duty alike imperatively
+demand, should be taken into consideration; the constant recurrence
+of punitive expeditions, which in another portion
+of our Tropical African Empire have worked such incalculable
+injury; and financial embarrassments, outcome of mismanagement,
+extravagance, and errors of policy.</p>
+
+<p>There is always danger in reaction, as in the body physical,
+so in the body politic; and it is not altogether astonishing,
+perhaps, that the long spell of official apathy in West
+Africa, being suddenly changed to precipitate action, should
+have given rise to some objectionable features. But it cannot
+be admitted that the latter, instead of being a passing phenomenon,
+should take permanent root, and become part and
+parcel of the new order of things. If this be the case,
+we shall presently be witnessing yet another reaction in
+West Africa, and with embarrassed finances, a yearly expenditure
+far in excess of any visible increase in producing
+power, increased taxation, a native population alienated and
+disorganised, and energetic rivals forging ahead while we
+continue to struggle painfully in a quagmire of self-imposed
+difficulties, the public will lapse once more into its old
+attitude of indifference tinged with dislike, until some
+brilliant gentleman at the Foreign Office, deeming the
+moment opportune, hands over a further slice of British
+West Africa to a Foreign Power, in exchange for cod-fisheries,
+or something equally vital to the Empire’s prosperity.<a id="FNanchor_11" href="#Footnote_11" class="fnanchor">[11]</a>
+The forward policy in West Africa has had its uses;
+it has served its purpose. We are secure in the possession
+of a large territory some 700,000 square miles in extent, unsurpassed
+in natural wealth by any other region in the globe,
+containing a population of probably 30,000,000 to 35,000,000
+souls, of whose habits and customs we possess but the haziest
+knowledge, whose very languages we are in the main ignorant<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_15"></a>[15]</span>
+of; a population composed of the most diverse elements,
+the resources of whose widely scattered habitat are barely
+tapped, whose willing co-operation, which is essential to the
+success of our rule, can only be gained by scientific, painstaking
+study and the most tactful, sympathetic treatment.
+Now should be a close time for British West Africa. The
+country needs political rest. It has been turned topsy-turvy
+by European rivalry; old landmarks have been swept away;
+the boundaries of Native States altered to suit the exigencies
+of European diplomacy; immemorial trade roads interfered
+with. The native requires breathing space. Official activity
+should in the main be limited to the construction, with due
+regard to method and economy, of certain indispensable
+public works, collecting data concerning the native peoples
+and respective regions in which they dwell, strengthening
+native authority so rudely disturbed by recent events; in
+protecting commerce, encouraging capital, fostering native
+industries—perfecting those in existence and preparing the
+ground for others; in short, a work of gradual, sure,
+systematic consolidation. It should be our object to intermeddle
+as little as possible with native institutions, abide
+with scrupulous exactitude to both the spirit and the letter
+of our treaties with the Chiefs; develop the native peoples
+along the lines of their own civilisation both in the case of
+Mohammedans and Pagans; use conciliation in preference
+to dictation, gold rather than the sword. Administrative
+extravagance should be rigidly held in check for fear of
+burdening new Colonies with a load of debt; the soldier
+and the policeman should be kept in the background, only
+to be used as a last extremity. Commerce, good roads, <i>and
+statesmanship</i> should be our preferable choice of weapons
+for mitigating evils, some at least of which the example of
+Europe in the past has intensified, others lying in deep-rooted
+religious beliefs, requiring careful preliminary investigation
+and thorough understanding before being made the
+object of official action, and then only of a repressive nature
+after every pacific inducement had been tried in vain.
+Patience, more patience, and again patience. That should
+be, ought to be, the corner-stone of British policy in West<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_16"></a>[16]</span>
+Africa. It was the tortoise that won the race; not the
+hare.</p>
+
+<p>Unfortunately the hare is the more popular beast just
+now, and the forward policy is as much in evidence in
+British West Africa to-day as it was five years ago, with the
+result that what may have been justifiable then bids fair, if
+it be not stopped in time, to be disastrous now that the
+necessity for it has passed away with the close of international
+competition. Energy is being misapplied and misdirected.
+Let it be conceded that the existing basis of rule
+in West Africa, the Crown Colony system, is the worst in the
+world to stand the strain of a naturally active directing
+influence at headquarters; let it be admitted that it is a
+clumsy, inelastic instrument which allows the governed no
+voice in the government, which places the suppliers of
+revenue, both direct and indirect, in the position of having
+no effective control over the expenditure of that revenue,
+which permits of the jeopardising of years of commercial
+effort by some ill-considered legislative act—let these and
+many other counts against the Crown Colony system be
+admitted. The fact nevertheless remains that that system is
+capable of reform, of modification, of being moulded in
+accordance with the requirements of the case. The task
+should not be beyond the capacity of statecraft. Is it to be
+seriously maintained that British statesmanship has sunk so
+low that machinery suitable to a bygone age cannot be
+improved and brought more into line with our altered situation:
+that we must needs cling to every ancient wheel and
+rivet though they be clogged with superfluous matter, and
+eaten through with rust? If the machine which it was sought
+to preserve intact had done yeoman service in past days,
+there might be some excuse for hesitating to supply it with
+new works. But that is emphatically not so with the West
+African machine.</p>
+
+<p>And it is positively heart-breaking to see that the last few
+years, far from bringing any reforms, far from holding out
+the hope of reform in the future, have but accentuated the
+evil. We cannot, it is true, lose any more territory, unless<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_17"></a>[17]</span>
+we care to give away that which is assured to us by international
+agreement. But in almost every other respect the
+Crown Colony system, as it prevails in West Africa, and under
+the new circumstances in which it is performing its functions,
+is building up a legacy of trouble which can only be contemplated
+with equanimity, or viewed with indifference, by
+the thoughtless; by those good people who refuse to walk
+save in pleasant places, who constitutionally dislike criticism
+as much as a cat objects to a wetting.</p>
+
+<p>Haste and hurry are the order of the day in British West
+Africa. Expenditure is going up by leaps and bounds,<a id="FNanchor_12" href="#Footnote_12" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> altogether
+apart from expenditure on public works. In the case
+of public works, large and costly undertakings are arranged
+for on the most unpractical lines, with no effort to benefit by
+competition, no putting out to tender, no safeguards without
+which a business man of ordinary intelligence will surround
+himself in order that he may be sure of getting the best
+value for his money. An extraordinary theory in economics
+has become fashionable. It is that the higher the revenue
+of a given West African Colony the more prosperous that
+Colony must be, quite oblivious of the effect which every
+increase of taxation has upon the volume of trade in the way
+of reduction, and driving it away to the neighbouring
+territory of a foreign rival. If a West African Colony
+shows in a given year an increase of £10,000 in revenue,
+obtained from increased taxation, jubilation in official
+quarters is excessive: but either nothing is heard of the
+falling off in trade accompanying the increase in revenue,
+or it is explained in some other way. The fact that there
+is a gain in revenue is held to be proof positive of an
+abounding prosperity and wise management. Every fresh
+increase in revenue is followed by a corresponding increase
+in expenditure. The one is made to keep pace with the
+other. It does not always succeed, because the expenditure
+is not infrequently in excess of the revenue <i>quand même</i>.
+It is also becoming the usual thing to financially assist these<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_18"></a>[18]</span>
+Colonies by “loans” or “grants-in-aid” or “advances”
+quite on the West Indian model, while the official reports
+invariably lead off with the reassuring statement that “this
+Colony has no public debt”: a little farther on, casual
+reference to the “grant-in-aid” may be discovered by the
+aid of a microscope, tucked away in some obscure corner,
+a footnote for choice. Lagos, Sierra Leone, the Gold
+Coast, Nigeria, are all at the present moment in the enjoyment
+of Imperial loans: Sierra Leone for the Railway and
+the late Hut-Tax war, Lagos for the Railway, the Gold
+Coast for the Railway and Ashanti war, Nigeria for the
+purchase of the Niger Co.’s treaties with the natives (the
+terms of which we have not adhered to), and for raising an
+army. Meantime, our neighbours the French are—in their
+West Coast Colonies proper, where comparison alone is
+possible—making their own Colonies pay a considerable
+part in the expenses of Railway construction; taxing their
+trade less, spending less on administration, governing more
+cheaply and quite as well—better by a long way in some cases.</p>
+
+<p>The producing power of our Colonies, that is to say, the
+export trade, the only true test of prosperity in West Africa,
+is either increasing slowly by comparison with the expenditure,
+or it is stagnant, or it is retrogressing. When it is
+increasing, the increase is much below the corresponding
+ratio of increased expenditure. “Large doses”—veritable
+purgatives—of European conceived legislation are being
+thrust down the throats of the bewildered natives. The
+number of Ordinances passed in the British West African
+Colonies during the last few years, especially in Southern
+Nigeria,<a id="FNanchor_13" href="#Footnote_13" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> is simply amazing. Most of them are far in
+advance of the times and cannot but remain a dead
+letter because, thank goodness, the existing machinery is
+not yet sufficiently extensive to carry them out. To make
+as few Ordinances as possible, and to ensure that such as
+are made shall be permanently useful, does not appear to
+enter into the official conception; and in the face of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_19"></a>[19]</span>
+growing objections to this rapidity and fertility of the
+official brain in forming premature legislation, not only on
+the part of the natives who are getting more and more
+confused, and—as the French put it—<i>déséquilibrés</i>, but
+by all people in affairs on the Coast who would desire that
+officialdom should move more slowly, carrying at each step
+real and understanding consent: the work of drafting portentous
+decrees, the exact meaning of which the very
+lawyers at home cannot comprehend, or reconcile with
+avowed intentions, goes merrily on.</p>
+
+<p>Punitive expedition follows punitive expedition. We have
+had a war in Sierra Leone, a war in Ashanti, two expeditions
+in the Gambia, a big expedition up the Cross River
+in Southern Nigeria, together with minor affrays, while in
+Northern Nigeria, which so far is producing no revenue
+and has not attracted a single merchant (and but one exploring
+expedition for possible mining purposes), one punitive
+expedition succeeds another at an interval of a few
+weeks at most. I will not now labour the case of Northern
+Nigeria, as that most interesting portion of our West African
+dominions is discussed at some length farther on, but it is
+quite evident that the attention of Parliament to the expenditure
+of Northern Nigeria is becoming increasingly urgent.
+Lagos alone, under the able guidance of Sir William
+MacGregor, has known the blessings of peace. Long may
+it continue to do so.</p>
+
+<p>Specific instances and examples of these general statements
+will be found scattered throughout this volume. It
+was, however, necessary to place them in collective form.
+In the next chapter, endeavour will be made to briefly
+indicate the lines upon which certain reforms might be
+attempted and the reasons for those reforms. Official
+optimism notwithstanding, it is an undoubted fact that, if
+something is not very shortly done to improve the prevailing
+system, the majority of the British West African
+Colonies will drift into a morass of financial confusion
+paralysing to their development and progress, while the
+native population within them will be comparatively poorer
+than in the neighbouring Colonies of commercial rivals.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_20"></a>[20]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV<br>
+<span class="smaller">SOME NECESSARY REFORMS</span></h3>
+
+<p>“It is well known also that this personal system, at its best, is full of
+abuses of the worst kind politically; the Administrators and those who influence
+them, get to have favourites, and even chiefs have their legitimate
+power, influence and dignity interfered with because they refuse to pay
+homage to their views. In consequence of all this, an apparently successful
+Administrator is usually and sharply followed by even worse confusion and
+more protracted wars than were known before his advent. It is the history
+of all weak despotic systems, having no basis in the country or among the
+people sought to be governed or influenced.”—“The Crown Colonies of
+Great Britain” (chapter vi. West Africa), by C. S. Salmon, formerly Colonial
+Secretary and Administrator of the Gold Coast, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>“The inhabitants of the country and the mercantile community who
+provide the whole of the revenues, have no voice at all in the governing of
+their Colonies and the expenditure of these revenues, and I sincerely hope
+that the day is not far distant when the African community will rise up and
+protest against this Crown Colony system of government”—Mr. <span class="smcap">Arthur
+Hutton</span>, President of the African Section of the Manchester Chamber of
+Commerce. (Extract from speech delivered.)</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It will, I think, be conceded that, notwithstanding the extraordinarily
+important and revolutionising discoveries of
+Major Ross, to whom the entire credit of recent demonstrations
+belongs, the admirable work performed by the
+Liverpool<a id="FNanchor_14" href="#Footnote_14" class="fnanchor">[14]</a> and London schools in the study of tropical
+disease and sanitary improvements on the West Coast, the
+chances of British West Africa ever becoming a possession
+where English men and women can flourish and multiply, is
+excessively remote; so remote, indeed, as to be outside the
+sphere of useful discussion. In fact, with the one possible
+exception of the Futa-Jallon uplands, when the Konakry-Kurussa<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_21"></a>[21]</span>
+railway line has connected them with the coast,
+West Africa as a whole is unsuitable, and will, according to
+all reasonable supposition, always remain unsuitable for
+European <i>colonisation</i>. The dominion of British West Africa
+must, therefore, be regarded not in the light of a colony
+properly so called, but as a vast tropical estate.</p>
+
+<p>From that postulate arises a query, or rather, series of
+queries. What are we in West Africa for? What do we
+hope to do there? What object took us there? What main
+purpose keeps us there? The answer is not for a moment
+in doubt. Commerce took us to West Africa; commerce
+keeps and will keep us in West Africa. It is the <i>fons et origo</i>
+of our presence in West Africa. The day that it ceases to
+be so, West Africa ceases to be of use to the Empire. It will
+become a costly plaything, and the British people is too
+essentially practical a people to care long for toys of that
+kind. As in every other part of the world, commerce in
+West Africa is the outcome of supply and demand. There
+is a demand for the products of West Africa on the markets
+of the world, and there is a demand in West Africa for the products
+of European industrialism. The increased circulation
+of a portable currency in West Africa in the shape of silver
+coinage will facilitate the operations of commerce, but will
+not dislodge or alter the fundamental nature of that commerce.
+The development of a mining industry in this or
+that portion of West Africa will, while it lasts, modify the
+conditions of trade in the portion affected, but commerce
+will remain the backbone, as it ever has been, of European
+intercourse with West Africa.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing that need occasion regret at the contemplation
+of the truth. Commerce is the greatest civilising
+agent. The steps upward in the ethical development of the
+human race have been synonymous with the spread of
+commercial relations, and the creation of the means and
+measures whereby their promotion has been successively
+extended. The most backward peoples to-day are, generally
+speaking, those whose secluded habitat renders their commercial
+transactions with the outside world scanty and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_22"></a>[22]</span>
+precarious. In these days, when the noble meaning which
+attaches to “philanthropy” and “civilisation” is made the
+cloak to cover in West Africa so much that is vile, the excuse
+both sincerely and hypocritically given to explain away so
+much that is in painful contradiction, one needs, perhaps,
+to be reminded that such commonplace things as commerce
+and improved means of communication will do more to
+benefit the native than any number of attempts to impose
+laws and institutions unfamiliar to him, by violent even if
+well-meaning measures of so-called reform.<a id="FNanchor_15" href="#Footnote_15" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> As a nation
+we should gain much and lose nothing in frankly admitting
+to ourselves that it is due neither to a desire to mend the
+ways of priestly theocracies, nor to alter the tyranny of the
+strong over the weak, which has led to the incorporation
+within the Empire of some thirty-five millions of West
+African natives, but the belief that West Africa constitutes a
+vast outlet for the free and unfettered development of British
+trade, and an equally vast field for the cultivation of products
+of economic necessity to ourselves. Thorough realisation
+of the fact would lead to more accurate appreciation and a
+truer sense of the direction which our policy should take in
+West Africa, if ultimate success and not failure is to attend it.</p>
+
+<p>Commercial development is then in an especial and
+peculiar degree the <i>raison d’être</i> of our presence in West
+Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Now what are the principal factors in British West African
+commerce, and how are their claims to consideration in the
+administration of British West Africa treated under the
+Crown Colony system? Obviously the two principal
+factors are the European merchant and his customer, the
+native. The merchant directly supplies, the native indirectly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_23"></a>[23]</span>
+supplies, the revenue which pays for the salaries of the officials
+and the general up-keep of the government, and if it be
+true, as it undoubtedly is, that the burden of taxation ultimately
+falls upon the native producer, it is equally true that,
+without the enterprise of the merchant, there would be no
+revenue and consequently no local funds for the support of
+administrative machinery. It follows, therefore, as a matter
+of simple justice, that the merchant should have a voice in
+the framing of legislation calculated to affect the internal
+politics, and consequently the commerce of our West African
+possessions. Apart from its justice, the claim of the merchant
+to representation in the affairs of our West African
+Empire has many features in its favour. He enjoys an
+expert’s knowledge, gained by long years of actual contact
+with the peoples of Western Africa. Experience has given
+him an insight into their customs and laws; an acquaintance
+with their peculiarities, with the working of their minds,
+with their inbred conservatism, which officials whose residence
+in West Africa—broken, as it is, by long intervals of
+leave—is usually of a very temporary or flitting nature,
+cannot hope to attain at any rate with the same completeness;
+and a mastery, even if it be only an instinctive
+mastery, of certain special characteristics which underlie
+native conceptions, and which have to be reckoned with in
+dealing with them. The merchant is consequently well fitted
+to be a most valuable assistant in the administration of
+British Western Africa.</p>
+
+<p>The fact is recognised by the French and Germans who
+share with us the vast proportion of influence in West Africa
+properly so called. Ever practical, the Germans have created
+an Advisory Board (<i>Kolonial-rath</i>) to their Colonial Office,
+composed for the most part of the leading men in the West
+African trade. The present Colonial Advisory Board has
+twelve merchants sitting on its Council.<a id="FNanchor_16" href="#Footnote_16" class="fnanchor">[16]</a> In French West<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_24"></a>[24]</span>
+Africa, but on somewhat different lines, the merchant is
+similarly treated, and just recently the representations of the
+French merchants to M. Décrais, the then Colonial Minister
+of France, averted a great evil threatening the Ivory Coast
+in the contemplated cession to King Leopold’s nominee, M.
+Empain, of a practical monopoly over the whole of the gold-bearing
+districts of that dependency, although M. Empain<a id="FNanchor_17" href="#Footnote_17" class="fnanchor">[17]</a>
+had the most influential support at his back.</p>
+
+<p>The French system, though far from perfect, is incomparably
+superior to anything we have in this country. It
+differs somewhat in the various Colonies, but is substantially
+composed of two Organisms, the Metropolitan Organism
+and the Colonial Organism. Under these dual Organisms,
+every Colony which is not directly represented in the French
+Parliament is represented at the Colonial Office by a delegate
+elected by vote of the white inhabitants of such Colony.
+In French Guinea, where the administration in force is in
+advance of that of any other French (or English for that
+matter) West African possession, a commercial delegate is
+regularly elected, and at the present moment a merchant,
+M. Gaboriau, representing the interests of that Colony, is
+attached to the Colonial Office. The weak point in the
+arrangement is, that the officials in the respective Colonies
+as well as the merchants have the right to vote in the election
+of a representative, with the result that very often the
+officials are in a majority. When that happens, a French
+politician, who can use his influence in promoting the officials
+who vote for him, is appointed. Each colony possesses a
+“Superior Council” or “Administrative Council” composed<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_25"></a>[25]</span>
+of the Governor, the heads of departments, and two or more
+merchants. In Senegal the merchant councillors have always
+enjoyed considerable power, and no step affecting the interests
+of the Colony is ever taken without the concurrence of
+the great Bordeaux merchant firms, which between them
+centralise the ground-nut trade (they themselves built it
+up), the staple industry of Senegal. Moreover, Senegal is
+particularly favoured in that it boasts a Deputy in the
+Chamber and a local General Council which enjoys large
+financial responsibility, the merchants—provided they do
+not fall out among themselves—being always in a majority
+in the said General Council.</p>
+
+<p>With us matters are altogether different. England,
+which passes for a country where common-sense is the
+cardinal virtue, refuses to her merchants any recognised
+<i>status</i> in the administrative machinery of West Africa. It
+has been accurately asserted that the merchant is the
+<i>uitlander</i> of British West Africa. He is seldom, if ever,
+consulted in the affairs of the country, and although
+Mr. Chamberlain has on more than one occasion given
+verbal assurances that no legislative acts affecting the
+natives (and <i>de facto</i> calculated to influence native production—or,
+in other words, trade) would be promulgated
+without previously being submitted to the merchants for
+their opinion, decrees of the highest importance embodying
+a kind of revolution in our historical native policy in regard
+to the laws of native land tenure have just become law in
+Southern Nigeria, not only without the merchants being
+consulted, but without their being advised in any other way
+than by a perusal of the published Ordinances in the local
+Government Gazette. From time to time—and during the
+last two years with increasing frequency, consistency, and
+earnestness—the Liverpool and Manchester Chambers of
+Commerce, which between them represent the majority of
+the commercial interests of Great Britain in West Africa,<a id="FNanchor_18" href="#Footnote_18" class="fnanchor">[18]</a>
+have approached the Foreign and Colonial Offices on their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_26"></a>[26]</span>
+own initiative, sometimes supported by as many as ten or
+twelve other leading chambers in the Kingdom voicing
+industrial interests more or less directly affected by specific
+occurrences. When—I am speaking now of recent times—the
+Foreign Office has been either memorialised or waited
+upon by deputations from the Chambers, the question at
+issue has been one of international import, such for instance
+as the differential tariff against British goods in the French
+West African Colonies (1898), and the violation of the Berlin
+Act in the Congo Basin (1901 and 1902). In the first case,
+the action of the Chambers was surprisingly successful;
+in the second case, success has not yet attended their
+efforts.</p>
+
+<p>When, as in the majority of instances, the Colonial Office
+has been waited upon or written to, the object has referred
+to some legislation either contemplated or assented to, or to
+some measure of internal policy towards a native tribe or
+ruler. I cannot find that the Colonial Office has on any
+single occasion, in a matter of importance, consented to
+adopt the views of the men who, as subsequent events have
+manifestly proved, saw clearer than the permanent officials,
+and whose advice, if taken, would have avoided the perpetration
+of serious mistakes. In 1895 the Manchester Chamber
+and the local Chamber at Cape Coast strongly advised
+“that the King of Ashanti (Prempreh) be allowed to reserve
+all the rights that he now exercises over his people,” but
+that a British resident should be established at his Court, as
+the best means of ensuring a lasting peace with the Ashanti
+people, who, if they had erred, also had—as is historically
+admitted—grounds of legitimate complaint against the
+British authorities on various occasions. Prempreh, however,
+was arrested and deported, and from that moment the
+Ashantis never ceased to intrigue against the British until
+their discontent, fanned into flame by the injudicious proceedings
+of Governor Hodgson, broke forth once more and
+led to the last sanguinary expedition, which involved an expenditure
+of a quarter of a million of money.</p>
+
+<p>But the most notable instance at once, of the value of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_27"></a>[27]</span>
+merchants’ expert knowledge and of the fatuity of lightly
+rejecting their counsel, is provided in the lamentable chapter
+in the history of Sierra Leone which began with the enforcement
+of the Hut Tax Ordinance in 1898, and which is not
+yet closed, whatever officialdom may say to the contrary.
+As I propose discussing this subject in some detail later on,
+it is sufficient to state here that the merchants almost went
+on their bended knees, figuratively speaking, in seeking
+to turn the Colonial Office from its purpose; that they
+entirely failed; that they were met by official assurances
+which were afterwards shown to be entirely erroneous;
+that their predictions and warnings were fulfilled to the
+letter; that their views were subsequently substantiated in
+every respect by the Special Commissioner despatched later
+by the Colonial Office to make investigations as to the origin
+of the rising, and that the persistent refusal of the Colonial
+Office to abide by the Special Commissioner’s report has
+reduced our oldest West African possession to such a condition
+that, if the railway now in course of construction
+through the eastern district does not—and there appears
+little or no hope that it will—entirely alter the present state
+of affairs, Sierra Leone under the present <i>régime</i>, and with
+the pressure of French competition in the neighbouring
+territories, is irretrievably ruined.</p>
+
+<p>Is it not time that in this respect at least something was
+done to bring the management of British West Africa more
+into line with modern requirements, and at a period when
+the commercial position of Great Britain in West Africa is
+everywhere threatened by foreign competition, to establish
+some working arrangement—call it a West African Council
+or Advisory Board or anything you please—whereby the
+accumulated experience of the men who are supplying the
+Government with the wherewithal to govern, should be used
+as an auxiliary force for the promotion of the general interests
+of Great Britain in West Africa? The nucleus of such a
+council or Advisory Board could be at once supplied.</p>
+
+<p>It is said that the merchants cannot agree amongst themselves.
+The plea lacks in truthfulness, and it is permissible<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_28"></a>[28]</span>
+to doubt whether it is sincerely put forward. Unquestionably
+there are rivalries in the West African trade. What trade
+is without them? But to argue that competition in trade is
+a bar to co-operation in matters affecting the general welfare
+of the country is a very narrow-minded position to take up.
+It is converting a legitimate, natural, and healthy phenomenon
+into a disqualification which nothing justifies. Where
+should we be in West Africa to-day but for our merchant
+pioneers? Suppose they had endorsed the official resolution
+of 1865 by withdrawing from the Coast, would the Union
+Jack be floating in West Africa except in Sierra Leone to-day?
+If the merchant had been devoid of political conception,
+and content to let his horizon be confined to those
+petty but inevitable aspects of commercialism which consist
+in under-selling a competitor, would not the abandonment
+of the Gold Coast have followed the battle of Katamansu,
+and would the richest portion of the Niger Valley be a British
+Protectorate to-day? Let those who suggest that the British
+merchant in West Africa is incapable of rising above sordid
+motives of self-interest remember MacGregor Laird. The
+merchant has everywhere preceded the administrator in
+West Africa. In his case the old adage must be reversed.
+It has been the flag which has followed trade, not trade the
+flag.<a id="FNanchor_19" href="#Footnote_19" class="fnanchor">[19]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is also said that the merchants are not unanimous with
+regard to certain features of West African policy. But can
+any one single out a body of men among whom variations
+of opinion on specific points do not occur? Do all the
+members of a Cabinet invariably see eye to eye on a particular
+measure to be introduced? Are not the very
+modifications which any given Bill must go through before
+being finally drafted and approved by the Cabinet as a whole<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_29"></a>[29]</span>
+a guarantee that legislation evolved from the interchange of
+ideas among the sundry persons concerned—and who, unless
+they be devoid of individuality, cannot all think alike on
+every point—will be the better for the destructive and constructive
+criticism to which it has been subjected? The
+merchants are in substantial agreement in what they consider
+the vital principles of British policy in West Africa, principles
+which informed public opinion is at last beginning to
+realise the urgency of upholding. No material divergency
+of views will be found among merchants as to the absolute
+necessity of respecting native land tenure, the need of careful
+finance, the danger of constant military operations, the
+indispensableness of preserving native institutions. If there
+be a charge against the merchants, it is that they have not
+hitherto sufficiently exercised their power of influencing
+successive Governments. They have not risen as they
+should have done to the height of their duties and responsibilities.
+They have allowed outsiders to perform a difficult
+and generally ungrateful work, which they themselves should
+have taken in hand—that of calling public attention to the
+urgency of reforms in West African administration. At
+critical moments they have been weak-kneed, and fearful of
+giving offence when they should have been resolute in
+standing by convictions which they knew to be sound.
+Their attitude is now happily undergoing a change which,
+if maintained, is bound to have lasting results for good.</p>
+
+<p>At no previous period in the history of British West Africa
+has the co-operation of the great merchant community in
+the task of administration been so pressing a necessity as it
+is to-day. Never could better use be made of such co-operation
+by the department responsible for West Africa as
+at present. In the increasing notice which is being given on
+all sides to West African affairs consequent upon the remarkable
+growth of European relations with that country and
+with the birth in West Africa of a modern mining industry,
+a host of dangerous advisers is arising. We see old errors
+creeping back in the guise of new verities, old misconceptions
+gaining fresh lease of life, exploded theories crowding<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_30"></a>[30]</span>
+forward to mislead and confuse. Appeals to force as the
+solution of all difficulties arising out of contact with a primitive
+people, contemptuous disregard of native laws and
+customs—the “damned nigger” theory in all its perennial
+beauty, insistent requests for lavish expenditure, heedless of
+plain economic facts, and so forth—these are the order of
+the day. Upon elementary errors of geography are grafted
+the crudest notions of the political and social condition of
+the Negro, the most amazing ignorance of history and past
+experience in every branch of West African lore. By a
+plausible inversion of facts, opponents of the wild and
+whirling talk indulged in regarding West Africa are denounced
+as sentimentalists, although it so happens that the
+denouncers draw the material which serves them as a basis
+for their contentions from that very discredited sentimentalism
+responsible for so many errors in West Africa, which
+portrays the native as an abject being, brutish, lazy, and
+degraded, greatly honoured by the bestowal of a bible, a suit
+of clothes; and a shilling, with a possible extra threepence
+thrown in as subsistence-money, for a hard day’s work. No
+doubt it is possible to exaggerate the importance of these
+<i>ad captandum</i> effusions, but their volume is, perhaps, calculated
+to momentarily drown the voice of reason. Parrot-like
+reiteration, if sufficiently sustained, is apt sometimes to
+impress.</p>
+
+<p>At such a time the assistance of a trained body of men
+thoroughly conversant with the affairs of Western Africa,
+in a position to point to past experiences, to vested interests,
+to technical knowledge as their claim to competency, and
+to the feeding of the administrative machine as their claim
+to consideration, ought surely to commend itself to the
+Authorities. To persist much longer in the rejection of
+that assistance would be equally short-sighted and unjust.</p>
+
+<p>Another and an equally important question connected
+with the management of our West African Possessions, is
+the question of the Crown Agents. If any one attempted
+to define the duties of that body, he would be hard put to
+it to do so. They are here, there and everywhere, and their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_31"></a>[31]</span>
+interference puts a premium upon extravagance and waste.
+The Crown Agents are an anomaly which ought to disappear.
+At present they constitute a sort of half-way house
+between the Colonial Office and the West African Governors,
+and are a positive obstacle to sound finance and good business
+methods. Enough examples of the extraordinary ways
+of the Crown Agents could be given to fill a volume. The
+West African Colonies are hampered right and left by the
+powers conferred upon this body. The Colonies are not
+allowed to purchase what they require in the shape of stores,
+equipment, material and so forth on the open market.
+Everything has to go through the Crown Agents, with the
+natural result that the Colonies have to pay 40 per cent. and
+50 per cent. more than they would have to if allowed to
+invite tenders on their own account. Look at the way in
+which these railways have been and are being built.</p>
+
+<p>The construction is, apparently, the monopoly of one
+particular firm (under the direction of the Crown Agents);
+a firm which, as far as can be gathered, had had but little
+experience in railway construction before, metaphorically
+speaking, falling upon its feet in West Africa.</p>
+
+<p>The same firm holds the position of “consulting engineers”
+to the Colonial Office. Surely it is anomalous,
+from the purely business point of view, that a firm retained
+as “consulting engineers” to a Government Department in
+charge of West Africa should also be the actual constructors
+of the West African railways! The two parts
+strike one as incompatible. Consulting engineers, one
+would imagine, would be advisers and arbiters. All contracts
+should be publicly and openly tendered for. A very
+widespread impression prevails that the time and cost
+expended in the construction of these railways have been
+very great. The Gold Coast Railway was begun in February
+1898; it is officially estimated to reach Kumasi early
+in 1904. Assuming that it does, it will have taken six years
+to build, which works out at about twenty-eight miles per
+annum—the distance from Sekondi to Kumasi being 169¼
+miles.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_32"></a>[32]</span></p>
+
+<p>It is as yet too early to say definitely what the cost of
+the line will average per mile. Official estimates, we know,
+are not always reliable. In this case, even the official
+estimate is very high, viz. £8000 per mile for the Sekondi-Tarkwa
+section, and £6300 per mile for the Tarkwa-Kumasi
+section.</p>
+
+<p>That dissatisfaction with the policy pursued up to the
+present (that is to say, the policy of constructing these
+railways under the “Department System,” or, otherwise
+stated, leaving their construction to the Crown Agents), is
+not confined to merchants, mine-managers and other
+revenue-payers of the West African Colonies, but is held
+by competent and highly placed officials, I reproduce the
+following remarks of Sir William MacGregor, made on the
+occasion of a visit to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce
+in 1900, and in reply to the following question of Mr. Arthur
+Hutton’s<a id="FNanchor_20" href="#Footnote_20" class="fnanchor">[20]</a>:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“Do you think, from what you have seen, it (<i>i.e.</i> railway construction)
+would be better done by contract?”</p>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Sir William MacGregor</span>: “I believe at the present moment—and
+I have said so to the Secretary of State—<i>I believe there would be men
+living who are now rotting in their graves, if it had been taken out of the
+control of the Crown Agents</i>....”<a id="FNanchor_21" href="#Footnote_21" class="fnanchor">[21]</a></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It is competently estimated that the Lagos railway, begun
+in 1896, will have cost £10,000<a id="FNanchor_22" href="#Footnote_22" class="fnanchor">[22]</a> per mile by the time its
+125 miles are in full working order—an enormous rate.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_33"></a>[33]</span>
+The Crown Agents, through whom the moneys have been
+advanced to the Colony, exact 5 per cent. interest, whereas
+with the security they have to offer, they should easily be
+able to get them—and probably have got them—from the
+Treasury at 3 per cent. Why should the Colony be saddled
+with an extra 2<a id="FNanchor_23" href="#Footnote_23" class="fnanchor">[23]</a> per cent. interest and find its liability for the
+current year on the railway loan increased to the enormous
+total of £54,000, or, say, 22 per cent. of the entire revenue?<a id="FNanchor_24" href="#Footnote_24" class="fnanchor">[24]</a>
+Why should all indents be sent through the Crown Agents?
+The delays which this ridiculous system entail are only
+second in point of importance to the squandering of the public
+funds which goes on under it. The Crown Agents appear to
+think that they know more about the material needs of the
+Colonies than the officials in charge of the Colonies themselves.
+Two instances have been recently brought to my
+notice which would be laughable were they not so deplorably
+unbusiness-like. A certain West African Colony required
+a two-ton engine for a short, light railway. The
+request was duly put forward. After months of delay an
+eight-ton engine was sent out, too heavy, of course, for the
+rails to support it. It was entirely useless. Again, a scheme
+was drawn up for the construction of a bridge by the local
+official responsible. An estimate was made, and the plans
+and so forth were forwarded home. The bridge was
+urgently required. Months elapsed; then the Crown Agents,
+who knew nothing of the local conditions, instead of
+despatching the materials, sent out an entirely different
+counter-scheme, far more elaborate, far more costly, and
+totally unsuited to local requirements. The Colony is still
+waiting for its bridge.<a id="FNanchor_25" href="#Footnote_25" class="fnanchor">[25]</a> I can only repeat that, whether<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_34"></a>[34]</span>
+avowed or not—in many cases, of course, it manifestly
+cannot be avowed—the Crown Agents are looked upon in
+official and commercial circles in West Africa as an unmitigated
+nuisance and a stumbling-block to progress.</p>
+
+<p>The needs of British West Africa at the present time may
+be resumed thus: (1) A Council or Advisory Board in
+which the merchant element shall be widely represented;
+(2) Tight control over the military element—fewer punitive
+expeditions, and more tact and patience in dealing with
+native races, the officials whose administration is virgin of
+wars to be looked upon as deserving of prior promotion;
+(3) Economy in Administration; (4) Thorough financial
+overhaul; (5) Elimination of the Crown Agents; (6) Open
+tenders for all public works; (7) Sanitation; (8) Scientific
+study of native peoples, laws and languages; (9) Scientific
+study of native products and improvement of native industries;
+(10) Maintenance and not murder of native institutions,
+upholding and strengthening of the power of the
+Chiefs; non-interference with domestic slavery in the Protectorates;
+preservation of native land-tenure; (11) A Civil
+Service on the lines of the Indian Civil Service; (12) A
+Civilian Governor-General.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_35"></a>[35]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_II">PART II</h2>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE DISCOVERY OF NORTHERN NIGERIA</span></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The nineteenth century will ever be memorable for the
+exploration of the interior of the African Continent. It is
+difficult to realise when we read in the daily newspapers of
+steamers plying upon Tanganyika, ocean steamers of 4000
+tons burthen ploughing their way through the brown waters
+of the Lower Congo, gun-boats patrolling the Niger, railways
+piercing alike the deserts of the Eastern Sudan and
+the forests of Equatoria, telegraphs extending in a network
+of lines across the Western Sudan and athwart the Great
+Central Lakes—it seems difficult, I say, when we read of
+these things to remember that at the close of the eighteenth
+century the interior of Africa was to all intents and purposes
+a blank, and that, even within the memory of most of us, the
+extent of geographical knowledge we possessed respecting
+vast regions many times larger than European Russia had
+made no progress since the days of Herodotus and Pliny.
+What a colossal work it has been, this solving of riddles
+which had baffled the world for ages upon ages! What
+prodigies of labour, of courage, of self-abnegation have been
+required to triumph over the obstacles which nature and
+man united in opposing to the early pioneers of African
+research! How many splendid lives have been immolated
+upon the altar of the African Moloch!</p>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding the remarkable progress in medical
+science and hygiene, and the potentialities of the modern<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_36"></a>[36]</span>
+rifle as a weapon of defence against the attack of man and
+beast, the difficulties of the African traveller at the present
+day are sufficiently great. Deadly maladies beset him on
+every side, and the chance of coming to a sudden and
+violent end is ever present. But these difficulties are as dust
+in the balance compared with the sufferings and privations
+which the first explorers of unknown Africa had to endure.
+Think of Park, and picture to yourself the position of a
+lonely European wandering about inland Western Africa in
+a thick blue fustian coat, with gilt buttons, keeping his precious
+notes in the crown of a top-hat, and kicked, buffeted,
+spat upon, treated with contumely and scorn, subjected to
+every possible insult, over and again a slave, exposed for
+hours at a time in a burning sun without water, often on
+the verge of starvation, racked by disease, and in so miserable
+a plight upon many occasions that death would have
+been a welcome relief—yet triumphing over everything and
+finally returning, notes and all, to his own land. Park’s
+experiences naturally occur to one in relation to the subject
+which it is proposed to treat in this chapter, because Park
+was the real discoverer of the Niger, which had been known
+in a vague manner to the ancients, and also to the Arabs
+(who, however, wrongly ascribed to it a westerly course, and
+identified it with the Nile),<a id="FNanchor_26" href="#Footnote_26" class="fnanchor">[26]</a> and laid the foundation of that
+remarkable series of explorations which ultimately ended in
+Lander’s supreme success.</p>
+
+<p>In 1805 Park set out once more on his second and fatal
+journey, with the firm conviction that he would be able to
+prove to the world the accuracy of his own theory, viz.
+that the Niger and the Congo were one and the same. The
+peripatetics of that eventful voyage are known to every
+student of Africa. After incredible hardships, Park managed
+to descend the Niger as far as Bussa. There, in sight almost
+of the goal of his ambitions he perished, victim of a cruel<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_37"></a>[37]</span>
+fate, which drove his boat upon those treacherous rocks,
+since celebrated for having brought two Christian nations
+to the brink of war. There are aspects of Park’s character
+which leave something to be desired, but his defects are lost
+sight of in the magnificence of his courage, his indomitable
+will, and the never-failing optimism with which he pursued
+his task, undeterred by disappointment and unshaken by
+adversity. As an example of human perseverance and fortitude
+carried to its highest limits, Park probably holds an
+unique position among African explorers.</p>
+
+<p>Park’s tragic end increased the desire of Englishmen to
+solve the mystery of the Niger’s course, and in 1816 the
+British Government organised a dual expedition on a large
+scale for this purpose. One section, under Captain Tuckey,
+ascended the Congo, and the other, under Major Peddie,
+endeavoured to reach the Niger by a more southerly route
+than that adopted by Park, the idea being that both sections
+would ultimately meet somewhere in Central Africa. How
+fantastic was the scheme does not need to be pointed out,
+but it must be remembered that in those days the consensus
+of learned opinion favoured Park’s theory of identification
+concerning the Niger and the Congo. The expedition was
+an utter failure. The Niger section excited the resentment
+of the natives, and had to return after losing its chief. Captain
+Tuckey ascended the Congo as far as the first cataracts,
+which had baffled the Portuguese for 200 years, and then
+leaving the River, pushed North, along what used to be the
+old caravan route, to the Upper River, now covered by the
+Matadi-Stanleyville railway, constructed by Colonel Thys.
+He managed to strike the Upper River in the neighbourhood
+of the modern Leopoldville, but the trying landmarch had
+played havoc with his followers. Sickness broke out, and
+finally the expedition had to return with a loss of 75 per cent.
+of its European members. Several lesser attempts followed.
+They all ended disastrously, and it seemed as though the
+Dark Continent refused to yield up its secrets. But Englishmen
+were not to be beaten. The Western route was indeed
+given up as impracticable for a time, but what could not be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_38"></a>[38]</span>
+accomplished from the West might be achieved from the
+North. True, the Desert had to be faced and traversed.
+But where the Phœnician and the Roman had dared and
+done, the Englishman might surely follow. The Desert had
+not balked the Sectaries of Mohammed, and long caravans,
+conducted by Tripolitan merchants, yearly made their way
+across those dreary solitudes. Why should not a party of
+Englishmen attach themselves to one of these caravans,
+and, protected by the influence of the British Government,
+armed with the authority of the Pasha of Tripoli, succeed
+in reaching the fertile countries of the South, whence rich
+supplies of ostrich feathers, skins, ivory, gold dust, and slaves
+found their way to the ports of the Northern littoral?</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="map1" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/map1.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>SKETCH OF THE NORTHERN PART OF AFRICA</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>For many years the African Association had been collecting
+materials with a view to a possible penetration by the
+Northern route. Once the idea found favour with the
+authorities, Mr. Lucas was despatched by the Association
+to Tripoli. He did very little in the way of exploration, but
+brought back many interesting facts confirming Leo Africanus’
+description in respect to the existence of flourishing
+kingdoms far away to the South, where arts and crafts had
+attained a high degree of development. Ritchie and Lyon
+followed Lucas. Lyon managed to reach the southernmost
+limits of Fezzan, on the borders of the Desert.<a id="FNanchor_27" href="#Footnote_27" class="fnanchor">[27]</a> The Desert
+itself remained uncrossed, however, and the mystery of the
+Niger still unsolved. Then it was that the British Government
+determined to make a great effort to solve the problem,
+and fitted out an expedition, which did not, it is true, fulfil
+all that was expected of it, but which succeeded, nevertheless,
+in throwing a vivid light upon unknown Central Africa, and
+in disclosing to an astonished world the remarkable civilisation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_39"></a>[39]</span>
+which, under Arab, Berber, and Fulani influence, had
+arisen in the heart of that black “Sudan” the “land of
+infidels,” and in popular conception,</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">“Of the cannibals that each other eat,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">The anthropophagi, and men whose heads</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Do grow beneath their shoulders.”</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p>And so the subjects of this sketch enter upon the scene—three
+men, Clapperton, Denham and Oudney, none of them
+perhaps conspicuous for ability, or qualified to make the
+most of their discoveries, yet animated all three with the
+ardent love of adventure for which their race has ever been
+famous, and whose united exertions enabled Western Europe
+to estimate the political and social conditions prevailing in
+the richest, most populated, most fertile, and undoubtedly
+most interesting portion of the Dark Continent. It is peculiarly
+fitting that the region which these Englishmen were
+the first Europeans to visit, and which we now designate by
+the name of Northern Nigeria, should have been ultimately
+incorporated with the British West African Empire by the
+foresight of another Englishman, Sir George Taubman Goldie,
+and the diplomatic ability of the gallant Joseph
+Thomson. A word now as to the three companions. Of
+Denham and Oudney, we know little beyond what can be
+gathered from their own writings; Oudney was a medical
+man, and Denham held the rank of Major in the army.
+Oudney was the real leader of the expedition, with which he
+had been entrusted by Earl Bathurst, then Secretary of
+State for the Colonies; but his untimely death had the result
+of depreciating the part which he personally played during
+its first two years’ work. Clapperton has written of him
+that he was “A man of unassuming deportment, pleasing
+manners, steadfast perseverance and undaunted enterprise;
+while his mind was fraught at once with knowledge, virtue
+and religion.” Major Denham’s action in joining a raiding
+party into Mandara (Eastern Bornu) has somewhat tarnished
+his reputation, in my humble opinion very unjustly, although
+it is quite true that his action in this respect was the cause<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_40"></a>[40]</span>
+of serious embarrassment to Clapperton later on. In criticising
+Denham’s conduct on this occasion, we must bear in
+mind in the first place that the Empire of Bornu, at that
+period, owing to various dynastic revolutions, and to the
+pressure of its powerful enemies on the East—Baghirmi and
+Wadai—was in a state of more or less constant warfare both
+within and without, and that warlike expeditions were constantly
+taking place, faction fighting against faction and tribe
+against tribe, warfare being in fact a more or less permanent
+institution in the social life of the country. And in the
+second place, we must also recollect that the members of
+the expedition had been instructed to examine and report
+upon all the various phases of life in the countries which
+they might traverse. Now it was impossible for Denham to
+obtain a thorough knowledge of the habits of the people
+without personally investigating the manner in which they
+waged war upon their neighbours. Apart, therefore, from
+the natural predilections of his soldierly instincts, which
+would lead him to find particular interest in matters of this
+kind, it may be assumed that Denham considered it his
+duty to act as he did. Years afterwards, Barth found himself
+in much the same predicament. As it happened, the
+adventure nearly cost Denham his life. The raided proved
+too strong for the raiders, and, assisted by the Fulani
+cavalry, completely defeated the latter. Denham’s escape
+was a marvellous one. He lost everything, and was wounded
+in three places.</p>
+
+<p>An account of Clapperton’s life is contributed by Lieut.-Colonel
+Clapperton in the preface to Clapperton and Lander’s
+journal of the second expedition to Sokoto, published by
+Murray in 1829. Hugh Clapperton was born in Dumfriesshire
+in 1788. At the age of thirteen he went to sea as an
+apprentice, and subsequently entered the Royal Navy. He
+served in the <i>Renommée</i> and <i>Venerable</i>, and visited the East
+Indies. He then went to the Canadian Lakes, and participated
+in the American War of Independence. In 1816 he
+got his commission. A year later the British vessels on the
+Canadian Lakes were paid off and laid up, and Clapperton<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_41"></a>[41]</span>
+returned to England on half-pay. In 1820 he met Dr. Oudney
+in Edinburgh, and struck up a friendship which resulted in his
+accompanying the latter to Africa. Of intellectual attainments
+he had none, but he was large-hearted, generous, and
+tolerant; courageous in the extreme, gifted with an iron constitution,
+and of great physical strength. So much for the
+personal characteristics of the trio. We may now examine
+the nature of their work. The narrative of the expedition in
+which all three took part is chiefly contributed by Denham.
+While Denham was compiling their joint notes, Clapperton
+started for Africa again, and reached Sokoto from Badagry
+on the West Coast. The story of Clapperton’s second journey
+was written by himself, and afterwards published by his faithful
+servant Richard Lander, who was destined ultimately to
+follow the Niger down to the sea, thus finally solving the great
+problem in the attempted elucidation of which Park, Tucker,
+Clapperton and many others perished.</p>
+
+<p>The primary, and in many respects the main, obstacle
+which had to be overcome by Oudney and his companions,
+was the crossing of that portion of the Sahara which lies
+between Murzuk and Bornu, and which, to use Denham’s
+words, “Is made up of dark frowning hills of naked rock,
+in interminable plains, strewed in some places with fragments
+of stone and pebbles, in others of one vast level surface of
+sand, and in others, again, the same material rising into immense
+mounds, altering their form and position according to
+the strength and direction of the winds.” Caravan routes
+across the desert had existed for many centuries, and the commerce
+of the Central Sudan, with the parts of North Africa,
+was still an important one. The route which the travellers
+hoped to take, in company with a party of merchants, was
+the shortest and safest one, that which starting from Tripoli
+passes through Murzuk and Bilma to Kuka, then the capital
+of Bornu, situated on the shores of Lake Chad. The expedition
+arrived at Tripoli in November 1821, but did not reach
+Murzuk, capital of Fezzan, until the 8th April 1822. Here
+the Englishmen met with such a discouraging reception from
+the Sultan that on the 12th May, finding no chance of making<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_42"></a>[42]</span>
+any progress whatever, Major Denham started back to
+Tripoli to interview the Pasha, by whom the British Government
+had been promised every possible assistance. The
+Pasha proving as lethargic as his prototype at Murzuk,
+Denham left Tripoli in a white heat of indignation to report
+his conduct to the British Government. This did not suit
+the Pasha at all, and he sent three despatches after the irate
+Englishman begging him to return, as he had arranged for
+an escort to accompany the expedition to Bornu. The despatches
+reached Denham while the boat he had taken passage
+in was quarantined outside Marseilles, and he forthwith set
+sail once more for the Barbary shore. On the 29th November
+1822, or a year after landing at Tripoli, the expedition
+left Murzuk, and set out upon its way to Bornu under the
+guidance of Bu-Kalum, a merchant of repute, much enamoured
+of pomp and show, and not over energetic in his
+movements. Within a few weeks’ march from Murzuk the
+members of the expedition were able to appreciate all the
+horrors of the trans-Desert slave trade in the sight of “more
+than 100 skeletons, scattered over the line of route, some of
+them with the skin attached to the bones.”</p>
+
+<p>On the 13th January they reached Bilma, famous for its
+salt pans, and on February 4th the discomforts they had
+endured in the desert received ample compensation by a
+view of “the great Lake Chad, glowing with the golden rays
+of the sun in its strength.” The natural emotion of the
+travellers is thus expressed by Denham, whose descriptions
+in the general way certainly do not incline to the picturesque:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“It conveyed to my mind,” he writes, “a sensation so gratifying and
+inspiring that it would be difficult for language to convey an idea of its
+force and pleasure.... My heart bounded within me at the prospect,
+for I believe this lake to be the key to the great object of our search,
+and I could not refrain from silently imploring heaven’s continued protection,
+which had enabled us to proceed so far in health and strength,
+even to the accomplishment of our task.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_43"></a>[43]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE DISCOVERY OF NORTHERN NIGERIA—(<i>cont.</i>)</span></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On the borders of the Lake the travellers observed the
+cotton shrub growing well and innumerable flocks of waterfowl
+disporting themselves. So tame were the latter that
+when approached they “merely changed their position a
+little to the right or left.” Following the Western shore of
+the Chad, the travellers pushed on to Kuka. Within a few
+days’ march of that once-flourishing city they began to
+realise how erroneous were the popular ideas of the
+“Sudan.” Instead of “ragged negroes armed with spears,”
+who, with the assistance of a few Arabs, managed to terrorise
+the country, the travellers were astonished to see a dense
+cloud of cavalry riding towards them, the guard of honour
+sent by the Sheik of Bornu to bid them welcome. With
+loud cries of “Blessing, blessing! Welcome! welcome!”
+the black warriors, clad “in coats of mail, composed of iron
+chain,” bore down upon them in orderly array, waving
+swords and spears. Surrounded by this imposing mass of
+horsemen they entered Kuka, and were received in audience
+by the Sheik. After a short residence in Kuka the companions
+separated, Denham going off with Bu-Kalum on
+the raid which turned out so disastrously for all concerned
+in it.</p>
+
+<p>The energetic Major subsequently visited a large portion
+of the Eastern parts of Bornu, located and ascended the
+Shari as far as Logon, then the capital of an important
+kingdom, and explored a considerable portion of the Eastern
+shores of the Lake. The information he collected in the
+course of his peregrinations and the maps of the district
+which he compiled were of very great value. The Southern<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_44"></a>[44]</span>
+and Eastern shores of the Lake were entirely unknown, the
+Lake itself practically unlocated, and the existence of the
+Shari unsuspected. It has always appeared to me that
+Denham never received the credit which was due to him for
+his exploring work. In view of his unscientific training, he
+was unable to turn his discoveries to the best advantage, but
+all things considered, his investigations proved in the main
+surprisingly accurate. His ignorance of African history, too,
+was very much against him. He was distinctly an unlettered
+man, neither possessed of a ready pen nor imbued with
+much imagination. The natural result of these shortcomings
+is apparent in every page of his Journal. We find him
+recording the most trivial incidents, and almost neglecting
+the social, political and ethnological problems with which
+he came daily in contact. The same lack of study and
+intelligent research—of education, really—is visible, but
+perhaps to a lesser extent, in Clapperton’s writings.</p>
+
+<p>It was in a sense a new world which the explorers had
+entered, a world of absorbing interest, where Eastern magnificence
+and barbaric display mingled with the naked
+barbarism of Africa; where semi-Arabised potentates went
+a-warring with mail-clad knights, and powerful Barons
+brought their contingent of retainers to assist their liege lord
+in his campaigns of plunder and conquest. The travellers
+had left nineteenth-century England, had plunged into the
+Desert, and had emerged therefrom amid a feudalism which
+recalled in many ways that of their own land in the Middle
+Ages. What an opportunity was theirs in this region, which
+for centuries, by reason of its fertility, had proved a magnet
+to attract the migration of races from the North, West, and
+East! Some twenty years later a man with a truly scientific
+mind went over the same ground, and then, and only then,
+did people realise all that Denham and Clapperton had left
+untold. But, although it was reserved for the genial and
+cultured German who succeeded Denham to show how
+profound is the gulf between a character such as Barth’s,
+studious and observant, replete with historical lore and
+scientific attainment, and men like Denham and Clapperton,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_45"></a>[45]</span>
+notable only for their courage, dogged perseverance, and
+love of adventure, yet the prestige of the former, which
+increases rather than diminishes as our knowledge of these
+regions in question becomes more extensive, can never rob
+the Englishmen of the right of priority of discovery. They
+were the first white men to reach the Chad, to discover the
+Shari, to explore Bornu, Sokoto, and part of Kanem, and to
+describe, however indifferently, the wonderful social fabric,
+the picturesque civilisation, teeming with energy and
+industrialism, which existed, and exists, in the upper portion
+of the Niger Basin.</p>
+
+<p>While Denham bent his steps eastwards, Clapperton and
+Oudney left Kuka in a westerly direction with the intention
+of entering the Empire of Sokoto, founded by Othman
+Fodio (the Fulani reformer during the first years of the
+nineteenth century) out of the heterogeneous and mutually
+antagonistic Hausa States. Of this Empire and the remarkable
+race which created it, the travellers had heard a great
+deal while in Bornu. The two States were for the time
+being at peace, and the Sheik Mohammed-el-Kanemy, the
+virtual, and subsequently the absolute ruler of Bornu, made
+no opposition to the Englishmen’s visit. Shortly after
+leaving Katagum, at the small village of Murmur, Dr.
+Oudney, who had been ailing for many months, died, much
+to Clapperton’s distress. The sad event did not, however,
+deter his companion from pushing onwards, noting as he
+went the extraordinary beauty and fertility of the country,
+the numerous plantations of cotton, tobacco and indigo,
+the rows upon rows of date-palms, the splendid cattle, the
+luxurious foliage, and the industry of the inhabitants, tending
+their flocks and herds, toiling in the fields, carrying fruit and
+butter to the markets, weaving and dyeing their handsome
+cotton cloths. On January 19, 1824, Clapperton reached
+Kano, the great Emporium of the Central Sudan, his first
+feeling being one of disappointment, which was not
+diminished by the circumstance that, although he had
+donned his naval uniform, no one took the slightest heed of
+him, “but all intent on their own business, allowed me to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_46"></a>[46]</span>
+pass by without remark.” This little incident, trivial in
+itself, throws an interesting sidelight upon the character of
+the gallant sailor, who was imbued with a proper sense of
+the dignity befitting his position and never failed to uphold
+it, as witness the following conversation which took place
+between him and the Governor of Kano. There is, by the
+way, a passage in this short dialogue which may be commended
+to the attention of certain missionary enthusiasts at
+the present time:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“‘How do you do, Abdullah (Clapperton’s native name)? Will you
+come and see me at Hadyja on your return?’ I answered, ‘God
+willing,’ with due Moslem solemnity. ‘You are a Christian, Abdullah?’
+‘Yes.’ ‘And what have you come to see?’ ‘The country.’ ‘What
+do you think of it?’ ‘It is a fine country, but very sickly.’ At this he
+smiled, and again asked, ‘Would you Christians allow us to come and
+see your country?’ I said, ‘Certainly.’ ‘Would you force us to
+become Christians?’ ‘By no means; we never meddle with a man’s
+religion.’ ‘What,’ said he, ‘and do you ever pray?’ ‘Sometimes;
+our religion commands us to pray always; but we pray in secret, and
+not in public, except on Sundays.’ One of his people abruptly asked
+what a Christian was? ‘Why a Kaffir,’<a id="FNanchor_28" href="#Footnote_28" class="fnanchor">[28]</a> rejoined the Governor.
+‘Where is your Jew servant?’ again asked the Governor; ‘you ought
+to let me see him.’ ‘Excuse me, he is averse to it, and I never allow
+my servants to be molested for their religious opinions.’ ‘Well,
+Abdullah, thou art a man of understanding, and you must come and
+see me at Hadyja.’”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Clapperton came very satisfactorily out of that interview,
+but he did not fare quite so well in a later colloquy with
+Sultan Bello, the ruler of the Sokoto Empire, who asked
+him one day whether he was a Nestorian or a Socinian.
+The puzzled Englishman, who probably had never heard of
+either sect, excused himself by replying that he was a
+Protestant. The fact of having such a question put to him
+thousands of miles in the interior of the Dark Continent,
+supposed to be the abode of primitive savagery, was sufficient
+evidence of the intelligence of the inhabitants, of which he
+received abundant proof every fresh day he prolonged his
+stay in the country. Under the able guidance of Bello,
+Othman’s successor and “a noble-looking man,” as Clapperton<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_47"></a>[47]</span>
+calls him (with the aristocratic and finely cut features peculiar
+to the Fulani), the statesmanlike qualities of the ruling race
+and the wonderful commercial and industrial activity of the
+Hausa population, reached their full development, and law
+and order reigned throughout that portion of the new States
+which had accepted the Fulani dominion. The country had
+been divided into Provinces, to each of which Governors
+were appointed. Trade was encouraged, industries protected,
+and manufactures promoted. Prosperity was everywhere
+apparent, and, to quote the words used by Clapperton
+in the course of one of his interviews with Bello:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“The people of England could all read and write, and were acquainted
+with most other regions of the earth; but of this country alone they
+hitherto knew scarcely anything, and erroneously regarded the inhabitants
+as naked savages, devoid of religion, and not far removed from
+the condition of wild beasts; whereas, I found them, from my personal
+observation, to be civilised, humane, and pious.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Clapperton very much desired to continue his westward
+journey, and, if possible, strike the Niger, follow it to its
+mouth, and thus attain the supreme object of the mission;
+for the information which the traveller had obtained in
+Sokoto made it a practical certainty that the Niger discharged
+itself somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. But Bello
+objected, alleging the disturbed condition of the westward
+country, which had not yet been subjected. Much to his
+disappointment, therefore, the Englishman was compelled
+to forego his plans. He, however, parted on the best of
+terms with his enlightened host, who gave him a letter to
+the King of England, and begged him to return at the
+earliest possible opportunity. The letter is worth reproducing
+here:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="center">“<span class="smcap">Bello to King George IV.</span></p>
+
+<p>“In the name of God, the merciful and the clement. May God bless
+our favourite prophet Mahommed and those who follow his sound doctrine.
+To the head of the Christian nation, the honoured and the
+beloved among the English people, George the Fourth, King of Great
+Britain. Praise be to God who inspires, and peace be unto those who
+follow the right path. Your Majesty’s servant, Rayes Abdullah, came
+to us, and we found him a very intelligent and wise man; representing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_48"></a>[48]</span>
+in every respect your greatness, wisdom, dignity, clemency, and penetration.
+When the time of his departure came he requested us to form
+a friendly relation and correspond with you, and to prohibit the
+exportation of slaves by our merchants to Ataghar, Dahomi, and
+Ashanti. We agree with him upon this, on account of the good which
+will result from it both to you and to us; and that a vessel of yours is
+to come to the harbour of Racka, with two guns and the quantities of
+powder, shot, &amp;c., which they require; as also a number of muskets.
+We will then send our officer to arrange to settle everything with your
+consul, and fix a certain period for the arrival of your merchant ships,
+and when they come they may traffic and deal with our merchants.
+Then, after their return, the consul may reside in that harbour, viz.,
+Racka, as protector, in company with our agent there. May God be
+pleased. Dated, 1st of Rhamadan, 1239 of Hejra. April 18, 1824.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Furnished with this letter, which he might well regard as
+a signal proof of success, and which augured a promising
+development of relations in the future, Clapperton travelled
+back to Kuka, where Denham joined him in due course,
+after his return from the Chad. The homeward journey
+was accomplished without mishap, and on January 25, 1825,
+the survivors of the mission reached Tripoli, after four
+adventurous years, replete with interest to their country and
+to the world.</p>
+
+<p>As already stated, Clapperton, when he parted company
+with Sultan Bello, did so with the full intention of returning
+at the earliest opportunity. Bello had shown himself most
+eager to establish durable relations with Great Britain, and
+had suggested that a British vessel should go to “Racka,”
+there to deliver the warlike stores which were to cement
+the understanding between his Christian Majesty King
+George IV. and the Fulani Ruler. Clapperton found the
+British Government eager to profit by the opportunity of concluding
+an alliance with so influential a potentate, and lost
+no time in giving Clapperton (who was raised to the rank
+of commander) authority to organise another expedition.
+Clapperton himself was all enthusiasm. On the 27th August
+1825 he left England in H.M.S. <i>Brazen</i>, in company with his
+trusted servant, Richard Lander, and attended by three companions,
+Mr. Dickson, Captain Pearce, and Dr. Morrison.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_49"></a>[49]</span>
+Dickson, for some unexplained reason, landed at Whydah
+with the intention of reaching Sokoto alone, and was never
+heard of again. Disappointed at not meeting any of Bello’s
+messengers at Lagos, which it appears had been arranged,
+Clapperton started his inland march from Badagry, after
+trying the Benin route and being dissuaded from adopting
+it by an English merchant established in that river. Shortly
+afterwards both Captain Pearce and Dr. Morrison contracted
+fever and died. Clapperton and Lander pushed safely onwards
+through Yoruba and Borgu, and arrived without further
+calamity at Bussa. The river was crossed below the rapids,
+and the expedition duly reached Kano by way of Zeg-Zeg.
+At Bussa, Clapperton gathered valuable information with
+regard to Park’s untimely end, fully confirming the previous
+information which had reached England.</p>
+
+<p>Everything seemed to promise well for the ultimate success
+of the mission. Unfortunately, however, there were a number
+of causes at work destined to wreck the sanguine hopes of
+its leader. As Clapperton neared his destination, a doubt
+of the reception awaiting him at Sokoto appears to have
+weighed heavily upon his mind. In the first place, Bello’s
+messengers had not put in appearance at Lagos; then the
+seaport of “Racka,” mentioned in Bello’s map, did not exist
+as such, which latter circumstance caused Clapperton to
+entertain serious misgivings as to his former host’s good
+faith. The absence of the messengers can easily be explained
+in view of the disturbed state of the country between Yoruba
+and the Niger, for the Fulani were then extending their
+conquests southwards, and the entire region was in a state
+of effervescence; but the misunderstanding about “Racka”
+is certainly strange. It is difficult to believe that Bello purposely
+intended to mislead. Bello had spoken of the “harbour”
+of Racka, but as is pointed out in the introduction to
+Clapperton’s journal, the Arabic word Bahr, used in the
+manuscript, does not necessarily signify sea, but any collection
+of water, whether lake or river.<a id="FNanchor_29" href="#Footnote_29" class="fnanchor">[29]</a> On Bello’s map the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_50"></a>[50]</span>
+Niger is designated as the “sea.” It is probable, therefore,
+that Bello was perfectly honest in describing “Racka” as a
+“harbour,” and that the <i>bahr</i> of the manuscript should more
+correctly have been translated by “river” instead of “sea.”
+Racka, however, turned out to be an inland town, and the
+fact strengthened Clapperton’s suspicions. How the confusion
+arose it is impossible, on the documentary evidence
+available, to determine, but it seems obvious that Racka must
+have been meant for Rabba, an important town on the banks
+of the Niger, some distance below Bussa, and at one time the
+capital of the kingdom of Nupe.</p>
+
+<p>To this error of interpretation and geography was really
+due Clapperton’s subsequent misfortunes, because, had the
+suspicion that Bello was playing him false been absent from
+his mind, the intrepid Englishman would hardly have
+adopted the unwise attitude which he subsequently did in
+his negotiations with the Fulani monarch. That attitude
+proved his undoing, and the direct cause of his death. His
+mental condition did not enable him to grasp the fact that
+the entire state of affairs had changed since his first visit.
+Sokoto was then at peace with Bornu. But in the interval
+war had broken out again. Now, in addition to the presents
+that Clapperton had brought to Bello, his baggage also contained
+a number of presents, including war-stores, for the
+Sheik-el-Kanemy, ruler of Bornu, who had become Bello’s
+deadly enemy. It was manifestly impossible for Bello to
+allow these presents to pass through the country at such a
+time, and he wrote to Clapperton to that effect. To this
+Clapperton rejoined that he had been instructed by his
+Government to go to Bornu, that he had a letter from Earl
+Bathurst to the Sheik-el-Kanemy, and that he was in duty
+bound to carry out his mandate. This insistence aroused
+Bello’s mistrust, which seems to have been intensified by
+reports, doubtless spread through the instrumentality of
+Arab merchants dreading commercial competition, that
+Clapperton was a spy sent on behalf of the English Government
+to obtain information with the idea of facilitating a
+future invasion of the country by the British. Clapperton<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_51"></a>[51]</span>
+repeatedly, and with growing exasperation, pressed his wishes
+upon the Sultan, and Bello, with increasing distrust, as
+repeatedly declined to entertain them. The strain and the
+mortification were too great, even for Clapperton’s splendid
+constitution, and when Bello, yielding to his own suspicions,
+and to the advice of his counsellors, demanded the production
+of the presents intended for the Sheik, Clapperton
+fell seriously ill. After hovering between life and death for
+many days, he finally expired in the arms of his devoted
+servant, Lander.</p>
+
+<p>Thus terminated a career of unbounding usefulness. To
+England and to science Clapperton rendered great services,
+and had his intellectual capacity equalled his courage and
+determination, those services would have been even greater
+than they were. Of him we may truly say that he was a fine
+type of the English gentleman of the old school, without
+much erudition, but simple, God-fearing, honest, manly, a
+credit to his country and to his race.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_52"></a>[52]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE HAUSAS AND THEIR EMPORIUM.</span></h3>
+
+<p class="center">“The province of Kano is the garden of Central Africa.”—Dr. <span class="smcap">Barth</span>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It has been said of the Hausas that they are “superior both
+intellectually and physically to all the natives of Equatorial
+Africa.” The statement strikes one as being exaggerated.
+The intellectual average of the Hausa is undoubtedly lower
+than that of the Fulani, who, thanks to their genius for combination,
+administrative capacity, religious fervour, fighting
+superiority, and moral influence, completely defeated and
+subdued their former masters, although the numerical odds
+were greatly in favour of the latter. Again, the physique of
+the Hausas, though usually good, is certainly inferior to that
+of several of the Senegalese races, the Krus, the Kaffir stock,
+and probably also to one or two of the Bantu offshoots now
+inhabiting the basin of the Upper Congo. Much has been
+made of the fact that 500 Hausas trained by British officers
+beat off several thousand Fulani at Bida. But what chance
+have Fulani horsemen against Maxim guns and repeating-rifles?
+The Baggara Arab, universally reputed the bravest
+of the brave, fared no better against Macdonald’s trained
+Sudanese.</p>
+
+<p>These remarks are by no means put forward to depreciate
+the Hausa race, which is undoubtedly a very fine one, but
+by way of protest against the somewhat hysterical estimates
+concerning this people which find favour among those who
+profess to look upon them as excellent material for proselytising
+purposes, and are ever representing them to us as
+cruelly oppressed, groaning under the tyrannical sway of the
+wicked Fulani. The fact is, that a great deal of sentimental
+nonsense has been said and written, principally by the missionary<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_53"></a>[53]</span>
+element, about the Hausas, who are generally content
+with their lot, and having accepted Islam do not suffer
+from the predatory incursions of the conquering race.
+Fulani and Hausas grow up side by side: unions are frequent
+among them, and the well-to-do Hausa enjoys a
+somewhat similar position in relation to the ruling class as
+represented by the Fulani, as did the merchant classes in the
+old days in our own country in relation to the nobility and
+governing classes.</p>
+
+<p>It seems fairly well established that at least a portion of
+the Hausa<a id="FNanchor_30" href="#Footnote_30" class="fnanchor">[30]</a> race inhabited the beautiful and mountainous
+region of Air or Asben, at the time (about 700 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>) when the
+Berbers—the modern Tuareg—driven south by Arab
+invaders, crossed the desert into Air and made themselves
+masters of that region.<a id="FNanchor_31" href="#Footnote_31" class="fnanchor">[31]</a> These Asben Hausas belonged to
+the family or clan of Gober. They were the Goberawa, who
+claim to be the oldest and noblest branch of the Hausa race.
+This claim is very generally admitted by Arabic historians,
+and is expressly mentioned in the curious Fulani history of
+the Sudan communicated to Clapperton by Sultan Bello, son
+of Othman Fodio, in 1828.<a id="FNanchor_32" href="#Footnote_32" class="fnanchor">[32]</a> Bello says of the people of
+Gober that they are “free born, because their origin was
+from the Copts of Egypt who had emigrated into the interior
+of the Gharb or Western countries.” This statement is
+particularly interesting as regards the possible Semitic or
+Eastern origin of the Gober family of the Hausas. Dr.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_54"></a>[54]</span>
+Barth, whose authority in all matters relating to the ethnology
+of Western Central Africa still remains uncontested,
+although fifty years have now elapsed since his wonderful
+series of travels was accomplished, attributed to the Goberawa
+an original relationship with North Africa. The theory is
+borne out by the traditions of the Hausas themselves, who
+trace back their descent to a Diggera mother, the Diggera or
+Deggara being a Berber tribe which, at some remote period,
+was predominant in the city of Daura, one of the oldest
+centres of Hausa influence. To this day some of the Hausa
+Mallams speak vaguely of a former relationship with the
+East, and Canon Robinson during his stay in Kano was
+informed by “the most learned man in that city” that the
+Hausas migrated in early times from the Far East, beyond
+Mecca.<a id="FNanchor_33" href="#Footnote_33" class="fnanchor">[33]</a> It is much to be deplored in this connection that
+the national records of the Hausas should have been destroyed
+by the Fulani at the taking of Katsena. Nevertheless,
+we may reasonably hope, now that the relations of
+Northern Nigeria with the outside world are bound to
+become more frequent, some further light may be shortly
+forthcoming which will help to elucidate a problem fraught
+with great attraction to all students of West Africa.</p>
+
+<p>After their expulsion from Air by the inflowing tide of
+Berber immigration, the Hausas gradually spread west and
+south, and in course of time formed themselves into seven
+states, viz. Gober, Daura, Biram, Kano, Rano, Katsena and
+Zeg-Zeg.<a id="FNanchor_34" href="#Footnote_34" class="fnanchor">[34]</a> In Hausa mythology each of these States represented
+one of the seven legitimate children, offspring of
+the Diggera mother already alluded to, to each of whom was
+respectively given a task to perform. Thus Gober was the
+warrior <i>serki-n-yaki</i> (<i>serki</i>, Prince: <i>n</i>, of: <i>yaki</i>, fighting);
+Kano and Rano the dyers <i>saraki-n-baba</i> (from the abundance
+of indigo <i>marinas</i> or dyeing pits which represent one
+of the most considerable national industries of the Hausas);<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_55"></a>[55]</span>
+Katsena and Daura the traders <i>saraki-n-Kaswa</i>, and Zeg-Zeg
+the purveyor of slaves <i>serki-n-bay</i> which, by the way, affords
+incidental proof, if any were needed, that in the matter of
+slavery the Hausas can hardly claim superior moral characteristics
+over their Fulani conquerors. Disputes between
+these various States were frequent, and although peopled
+by the same race, they were constantly in open warfare
+against one another. So great, indeed, was their mutual
+antagonism, that when the Fulani uprising took place in
+Gober, a considerable number of Hausas, principally from
+the province of Zanfara, rallied round Othman’s standard,
+fighting shoulder to shoulder with the Fulani against their
+own compatriots.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp53" id="illus02" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus02.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>A PURE-BRED KANO MAN (HAUSA)</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Prior to their more or less forced conversion by the Fulani
+early in the nineteenth century, the Hausas were Pagans.
+True, the Hausa King of Katsena embraced Islam about the
+seventeenth century, Katsena at that period being the most
+flourishing city of Hausa—the “Florence of the Hausas,”
+as Richardson<a id="FNanchor_35" href="#Footnote_35" class="fnanchor">[35]</a> calls it—in regular communication with
+Arabs from the East, and where the Hausa language attained
+its greatest richness and purity of form. But the great mass
+of the Hausa people were unaffected by the event. The
+precise nature of their rites before the conquest remains
+obscure. It appears possible however that, at one time, the
+Hausas, Songhays, and other tribes of the Niger Basin were
+snake worshippers. The Arabic historians Ahmed-Baba,
+Edrizi and El-Bekri state that in the time of the first Songhay
+king—placed at 679 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> by Dr. Barth, at 776 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> by
+others—the natives rendered homage to serpents. Colonel
+Frey,<a id="FNanchor_36" href="#Footnote_36" class="fnanchor">[36]</a> in his interesting and ingenious study, suggests that
+this worship may have extended to the <i>manatus</i> or <i>manatee</i>,
+that curious and somewhat uncanny creature being an
+inhabitant of the Niger River.</p>
+
+<p>Be that as it may, with the dawn of the nineteenth century
+a higher ideal and a purer faith rose up in Hausaland, and
+gained ground with marvellous rapidity. No doubt the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_56"></a>[56]</span>
+result was not obtained without bloodshed, without cruelty,
+without what Joseph Thompson called “the terrible clamour
+and dread accompaniments of war.” Nevertheless, it was
+accomplished, and none but the wholly fanatical will deny
+that the Hausas have greatly benefited thereby. To an
+unbiased mind it must appeal as little short of marvellous
+that, in a period comparatively so short, a whole race should
+not only have been converted to Islam, but have remained
+devoted to its precepts when a lapse into Paganism would
+have been easy and, in a sense, natural. Apart from the
+added dignity which the acceptance of Islam imparts to
+individuals in their intercourse with their fellows in a pagan
+country, the explanation is probably to be found in the fact
+that, after the Fulani had unquestionably established their
+political domination over the Hausas, they none the less
+persistently continued their religious propaganda by peaceful
+means, and that, although a sense of security seems to
+have temporarily dulled their political instincts, it has
+had, on the contrary, a vivifying effect upon their religious
+ideals. It is, in any case, notorious that Islam, through
+the medium of Fulani preachers, is steadily sweeping down
+the River Niger, penetrating into pagan villages, amid the
+swamps and forests. The pagan Igarras whom the Niger
+Company long thought would constitute a solid bulwark and
+a sort of buffer-state against the invading tide, are now being
+fast won over to Islam, and Fulani <i>fikis</i> are even met with
+behind Akassa, a few miles from the seaboard itself.</p>
+
+<p>It is no easy matter to correctly estimate the Hausa population
+in Nigeria, but of true Hausas there must probably
+be five or six millions, besides the numerous half-breeds of
+mixed Hausa and Fulani, Hausa and Kanuri, Hausa and
+Songhay, or Hausa and Tuareg blood, the latter of whom
+are chiefly to be met with in the northerly districts of the
+Sokoto Empire, and are of less muscular build than the
+true Hausas. The Hausas are incontestably the traders of
+Africa. Their commercial aptitude is renowned from the
+borders of the Mediterranean to the Gulf of Guinea; from
+the Gulf of Guinea to the Shari; from the Shari to the Red<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_57"></a>[57]</span>
+Sea. They are great travellers and have even been met
+with on the Sangha, the Ubanghi, and the Congo. Every
+North African port has its colony of Hausas. The same
+may be said of the West African Coast ports. There is not
+an important trading centre in the Niger bend but shelters
+a family or two of Hausas. Every year numerous Hausa
+caravans leave Nigeria for the countries lying at the back of
+the Gold Coast, the Ivory Coast, and Liberia, to gather the
+far-famed Kola or <i>guro</i> nut, the fruit of <i>Sterculia acuminata</i>,
+which they convey with infinite care—delicately wrapped
+in leaves—and sell at an enormous profit in Kano, Gando,
+Zaria, &amp;c., from whence the nuts are again transported to
+Bornu, Wadai, and even as far as Khartoum.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="illus03" style="max-width: 29.6875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus03.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>A HAUSA FROM YOLA</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>If the trading instincts of the Hausas are remarkably
+developed, their industrial enterprise is still more so. It
+may with safety be declared that the product of their looms
+and dye-pits constitutes the most extensive article in the
+internal commerce of the Dark Continent. Kano is the head
+and centre of this intrinsically native industry, which is unparalleled
+in Africa, and Kano is, and in all human probability
+will continue to be, Manchester’s great rival for the African
+interior markets. Kano has been termed the Manchester
+and Birmingham of the Sudan, and having due regard to local
+circumstances and conditions, the comparison is strictly just.</p>
+
+<p>The number of Europeans who have visited Kano may
+still be counted upon the fingers of both hands. Arab
+merchants from North and East Africa have, however, been
+regular frequenters of the city since the conquest of Hausa
+by Othman Fodio, and for some considerable time past
+Kano has sheltered an Arab Colony with a recognised
+“Consul” who enjoys considerable influence. Its resident
+population has been variously estimated at thirty thousand
+to sixty thousand and its floating population at sixty thousand
+to two millions,<a id="FNanchor_37" href="#Footnote_37" class="fnanchor">[37]</a> including the most varied elements, Hausas,
+Fulani, Kanuri, Baghirmis, Wadaiens, Arabs, Tuaregs, and
+Jews; merchants from Egypt, Tunis, Tripoli and Fezzan,
+from the Niger Bend, Adamawa and the Eastern Sudan.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_58"></a>[58]</span>
+The city itself is of enormous extent, containing within its
+encompassing wall, which is reputed to be no less than
+fifteen miles in circumference, large tracts of land under
+cultivation. This immense wall played an important part in
+the periodic wars with Bornu at the beginning and middle
+of the past century. If the citizens of Kano did not think
+themselves sufficiently strong to meet their aggressors in the
+open, they simply shut the gates of the city and lined the
+walls, and the Bornuese hosts, deeming discretion the better
+part of valour, never attempted an assault. The situation of
+Kano is fairly elevated and otherwise good, but is unhealthy
+owing to the presence of large pools of stagnant
+water into which refuse of all kinds is indiscriminately
+pitched. The city is divided into different quarters, the
+Fulani quarter, Arab quarter, Hausa quarter, and so forth.
+The market is held daily and the most bewildering diversity
+of articles are always on sale: native cloths, silk embroidered
+<i>tobes</i>, leather and brass ware, ivory, weapons, rough agricultural
+implements, silver and brass ornaments and trinkets,
+antimony, ostrich feathers, live stock—cattle, horses and
+sheep—and foodstuffs innumerable. Long files of asses
+pass through from the distant Chad laden with natron for
+Nupe, and arrive from the Niger Bend weighed down with
+kolas. Camels are permanently in evidence, whether carrying
+on their sturdy backs salt-cakes from Bilma or European
+merchandise from Tripoli. Brilliantly attired Ghadamseen
+and Arab traders caracole on gaily caparisoned steeds,
+and the fierce-eyed, black-lithamed Tuareg of the desert
+(many of whom, by the way, are extensive property owners
+in Northern Nigeria) scowls darkly from the back of his
+swift-footed <i>mehari</i>. In this great city throbs and vibrates
+an industrial vitality unequalled in Africa.<a id="FNanchor_38" href="#Footnote_38" class="fnanchor">[38]</a></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_59"></a>[59]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE HAUSAS AND THEIR EMPORIUM—(<i>cont.</i>)</span></h3>
+
+<p>“Travellers who have been in the country tell us that Kano, which is the
+Manchester of Nigeria, has an attendance annually at its market of over one
+million persons.”—<i>Extract from a speech by</i> Mr. <span class="smcap">Chamberlain</span>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The reputation of Kano as a manufacturing city is of comparatively
+recent growth, and although the Hausas have
+manufactured cotton for a considerable time (how long is
+uncertain, but we do know that their leather-ware<a id="FNanchor_39" href="#Footnote_39" class="fnanchor">[39]</a> was
+widely sought after as far back as the beginning of the
+sixteenth century), the importance of Kano as a trading and
+manufacturing emporium only dates from the Fulani conquest
+and the destruction of Katsena by Bello. The Hausa
+cottons of Kano are in demand throughout the whole of the
+Islamic world of North, West, and central Africa. Lieutenant-Colonel
+Monteil, one of the few Europeans who
+have visited Kano, gives it as his opinion that the inhabitants
+of two-thirds of the Sudan, and nearly all the inhabitants of
+the Central and Eastern Sahara, clothe themselves in Kano
+cottons; while Dr. Barth estimated the annual export of
+cotton from Kano to Timbuctoo alone to amount in value
+to some £5000. The principal cotton articles manufactured
+by the Hausas at Kano are the <i>Tobe</i> or shirt for men; the
+<i>Turkedi</i> or women’s dress; the <i>Zenne</i> or plaid; and the black
+veil or litham invariably worn by the Tuareg and very often
+by the Fulani, Kanuri, and Arab. The <i>tobes</i> are dyed various
+colours, while the <i>turkedi</i> are always of that deep, dark blue
+obtained by repeated washings in indigo-pits for which the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_60"></a>[60]</span>
+province of Kano is famous. Of the plaids a large selection
+is produced, varying in colour and in texture, some being
+composed of a mixture of silk and cotton, others of cotton
+only, others again of pure silk. Dr. Barth, speaking of this
+cotton industry of Kano, and remarking that the Province
+which produces it is also able to supply the corn necessary for
+the sustenance of its population, and possesses besides splendid
+pasture land, says: “In fact, if we consider that this industry
+is not carried on here as in Europe, in immense establishments,
+degrading man to the meanest conditions of life, but
+that it gives employment and support to families without
+compelling them to sacrifice their domestic habits, we must
+presume that Kano ought to be one of the happiest countries
+in the world; and so it is, so long as its Governor, too often
+lazy and indolent, is able to defend its inhabitants from the
+cupidity of their neighbours, which, of course, is constantly
+stimulated by the very wealth of their country.” What the
+lazy Fulani Governor of Barth’s days could not do, British
+power can, and indeed has; and having done so, is also
+able to ensure that by judicious management the national,
+social life of this interesting country shall continue in that
+state of happiness which struck the great German traveller.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to its cloths, Kano produces excellent leather
+work, principally sandals, sword-scabbards, riding-boots,
+shoes, despatch-bags, water-bottles and saddles, and annually
+exports large quantities of tanned hides. The people of
+Kano also produce iron weapons, rough agricultural implements
+and sword-hilts for German blades, which are, or used
+to be, imported from the north. The following estimate of
+the total trade of Kano, carefully compiled from Dr. Barth’s
+calculations, will give some idea of its extent and value at
+the time (1851) of the German explorer’s stay in the city.
+The sterling is arrived at by reckoning one million <i>kurdi</i> or
+cowries—the chief currency in Kano—at £100.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_61"></a>[61]</span></p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Exports.</span></th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Cloths</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£30,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Slaves</td>
+    <td class="tdr">20,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Sandals</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Miscellaneous leather-work</td>
+    <td class="tdr">500</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">Total</td>
+    <td class="tdr total">£51,500</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <th colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Imports.</span></th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Kola nuts (from West Coast hinterlands)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£10,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Ivory (from Adamawa)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Salt (from the interior)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">8,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Coarse silk (<i>viâ</i> Tripoli)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">7,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Arab dresses (from Tunis and Tripoli)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Beads (Italy, <i>viâ</i> Tripoli)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Sword-blades (from Germany, <i>viâ</i> Tripoli)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Manchester goods (<i>viâ</i> Tripoli)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">4,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Muslins (England, <i>viâ</i> Tripoli)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">4,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Rose oil (<i>viâ</i> Tripoli)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Copper (from Wadai and Bahr-el-Ghazal)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Woollen cloths (<i>viâ</i> Tripoli)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,500</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Spices and cloves (<i>viâ</i> Tripoli)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,500</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Sugar (from France, <i>viâ</i> Tripoli)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,200</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Tin</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Egyptian dresses</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Needles (from Germany, <i>viâ</i> Tripoli)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">800</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Common paper, ditto</td>
+    <td class="tdr">500</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Razors (from Syria)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">300</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">Total</td>
+    <td class="tdr total">£71,800</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="noindent">To which might be added a transit trade in natron, passing
+through Kano from Bornu on its way to Nupe, yielding
+about £1000 “passage-money.” The remarkable total of
+£123,300 is thus arrived at.</p>
+
+<p>Of late years the trade of Kano, both in respect to imports
+and exports, has undergone some change, and is bound to
+become still more modified as time goes on. For instance,
+the buying and selling of slaves is a thing of the past, or
+soon will be. The imports of ivory from Adamawa are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_62"></a>[62]</span>
+nothing like what they were in Barth’s time. The internal
+salt trade has largely been extinguished, the native article
+being unable to compete with European salt. But with this
+exception—salt—the increased importation of European
+goods into the Niger and Binue since 1880, that is to say,
+since the spread of British commercial enterprise in the
+Upper River and its tributary, does not appear to have
+affected the caravan trade of Kano with the Tripolitan ports,
+<i>viâ</i> the oases of Bilma, Fezzan, and Murzuk. In 1897, for
+instance, the British Consul for Tripoli estimated the goods
+sent to Sokoto (for Sokoto read the State of Sokoto, of which
+the city of Kano is the commercial and industrial centre and
+the terminus of the Tripoli caravans, the trade of the city of
+Sokoto being insignificant) by caravan across the desert at
+£46,000. These figures compared with Barth’s tables of
+Tripoli imported goods are actually more considerable than
+the total value as estimated by Barth half a century ago. This
+is a very important fact, and by bearing it well in mind we shall
+avoid falling into an error which might have unfortunate
+consequences. Then, again, a comparison of the articles
+imported in 1851 and 1897 is instructive as affording proof
+of the conservatism of the African and the old-established
+nature of this trade.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Dr. Barth’s Enumeration, 1851.</span></p>
+
+<p>Coarse silk, Arab dresses,
+sword-blades, Manchester goods,
+muslins, rose oil, woollen cloths,
+sugar, spices and cloves, needles,
+paper.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Foreign Office Report, 1897.</span></p>
+
+<p>Cotton and woollen cloths, silk
+waste, silk yarn, box rings, beads,
+amber, paper, sugar, drugs, tea.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">We may go even farther back than this. According to the
+exceedingly interesting and minute accounts of “Shereef
+Imhammed” and “Ben Ali, a Moorish trader,” given in the
+first published proceedings of the African Association in
+1791, the trade between Tripoli and the Kingdom of
+“Cashna,” <i>i.e.</i> Katsena (Katsena being then in its prime),
+consisted of the following articles:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_63"></a>[63]</span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Imports to Katsena from Tripoli.</span></p>
+
+<p>Red woollen caps, check linens,
+light coarse woollen cloths, baiza,
+cowries, barakans or alhaiks,
+small Turkey carpets, silk (wrought
+and unwrought), tissues and brocades,
+sabre-blades, Dutch knives,
+scissors, coral beads, small looking-glasses.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Exports from Katsena to Tripoli.</span></p>
+
+<p>Cotton cloths, slaves, goatskins
+“of the red and yellow dyes,” ox
+and buffalo hides, gold dust,
+civet.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The “slaves” item is another proof that the Hausa Kings of
+those days were extensive slave dealers. It is curious to
+notice that in the map attached to this old work, <a href="#map1">a reproduction
+of which faces page 38</a>, Kano does not even appear,
+which shows that at that period it had little or no importance
+as an industrial centre.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus04" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus04.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>HAUSA LOOM AND SPOOL</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>The articles imported in 1897 were, therefore, substantially
+the same as in 1851 and even in 1791. Then as now, English
+cotton and woollen goods figured prominently amongst
+them, and it is evident that up to 1897 large profits were to
+be earned by Europeans (indirectly) and Arabs (directly)
+in the caravan business between North Africa and Nigeria.
+Seven years after the opening in regular form of the Western
+fluvial route, Northern Nigeria is seen to have been importing
+from Tripoli more goods than in 1851.</p>
+
+<p>It is not due then to commercial development from the
+south, but to another reason, that the caravan traffic with
+Tripoli has fallen off since 1897. That reason is to be found
+in the internal political convulsions of which the Chad basin
+has been the scene for the last eight years, and to the external
+political confusion brought about by the action of European
+Powers, or rather of one European Power—France. When
+Rabah conquered Bornu in 1893-94, the Ghadamseen merchants
+suffered heavy losses through the sacking of Kuka,
+and trade was entirely stopped for a time. Rabah saw his
+mistake, and endeavoured to remedy it by liberal promises of
+future support and protection. He kept his word, and trade
+revived. Then came the advance of the French down the
+Shari, followed by a renewed period of anarchy in Bornu,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_64"></a>[64]</span>
+as Rabah hurriedly flung himself across the river into
+Baghirmi to arrest the march of the invaders. Under
+Fad-el-Allah, Bornu became a cockpit of internecine strife.
+With the consolidation of French influence in a portion of
+the Chad region the merchants of the north took heart of
+grace once more, but the recent pillage of sundry rich
+caravans by the Kanem Arabs, various confederations of
+Tuareg and other adherents of the Sheik-Senussi, has demonstrated
+that at present the French are unable to ensure the
+safety of caravans, however desirous they may be to do so.
+These repeated blows have played havoc with the Nigerian-Tripoli
+caravan trade, and those merchants who are still
+bold enough to face the risks favour the Wadai route. In
+1900 the caravan trade with Wadai was still important,
+amounting in the aggregate, according to the French Consul
+at Tripoli, to £210,000, imports and exports included. But
+it is quite certain that 1901 and 1902 will show a notable
+decrease of those figures.<a id="FNanchor_40" href="#Footnote_40" class="fnanchor">[40]</a></p>
+
+<p>Are we to conclude, therefore, that Kano’s internal trade
+with the north and east has gone never to return, and that
+the caravan traffic is a thing of the past? That is the view
+which appears to be generally adopted.<a id="FNanchor_41" href="#Footnote_41" class="fnanchor">[41]</a> I confess that I do<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_65"></a>[65]</span>
+not share it, and it would certainly be an immense misfortune
+for Kano and Northern Nigeria generally if such were,
+indeed, the case. The main sources of Kano’s wealth and
+prosperity do not depend upon the influx of trade from the
+south, but upon the industry of its inhabitants in catering
+for the requirements not of Europe but of Africa. It is a
+great <i>dépôt</i> of Negroland for Negroland, and if Kano could
+no longer find purchasers for her cotton and her leather
+work, her prosperity must needs decrease and her wealth
+decline. Now it is obviously in our interest that this should
+not happen. It should be the object of our policy to maintain,
+strengthen and assist the commercial and industrial
+position of Kano, the centre of Hausa activity, the magnet
+which attracts a flow of internal commerce from all points
+of the compass. How can that best be done?</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, it is necessary to understand the main
+caravan system of North-West Central Africa. The accompanying
+map (<a href="#map2">facing p. 84</a>) shows the principal routes, and a
+broad survey of the subject induces the belief that it is the
+interest of both England and France to encourage the
+revival of the caravan traffic between Kano (or, in other
+words, Nigeria) and Kano’s interior markets, or, at any rate,
+to do nothing to still further curtail it. The wider the
+stream of internal trade both in and out of Nigeria the
+greater the prosperity of the country, and it would be as
+equally pedantic for us to object if the French, who are in
+more or less theoretical possession of the majority of Kano’s
+markets, succeed in eventually diverting <i>in toto</i> the caravan
+traffic from the Tripoli route towards Timbuctoo and In
+Salah, as it would be for the French to interfere with a
+possible re-opening of the long-abandoned eastern route
+(not marked in the map) towards the Nile. But there
+should be an understanding between the two Powers on the
+subject of this internal trade, which is centuries old, and
+which certainly cannot be displaced in a day; in fact, never
+can entirely be displaced, except by oppressive and selfish
+interference, either on the part of the French or ourselves.
+Any action tending to compel a diversion of trade in such<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_66"></a>[66]</span>
+or such a direction would prove in the long run to be anything
+but advantageous to the Power which attempted it.
+For instance, if France were to start putting prohibitive
+taxes on exports and imports to and from Kano over the
+frontier in order to forcibly confine the circulation of trade
+to certain channels, it would lead to serious trouble with
+the natives, which would cost more to cope with than any
+prospective profit to be derived from such action. Similarly,
+if the authorities of Northern Nigeria were to actively discourage
+Kano’s trade with the territories under French
+protection, in order to develop Kano’s trade with the south,
+it would only lead to a decrease in the productive capacity
+of Kano, and consequently lessen the prosperity of Northern
+Nigeria as a whole.</p>
+
+<p>Economic changes are bound to occur, especially when
+the British and French railway systems proposing to tap
+the Niger valley are more advanced, but there is plenty of
+scope for both to earn an honourable livelihood, and the
+central fact to be borne in mind is that Kano’s trade is, and
+must be, as previously stated, more of an internal than an
+external one. Before Kano can purchase such cottons,
+woollens and other articles as it absorbs, from the south,
+that is to say, from European merchants, it must be in a
+position to give, in return, articles of African produce that
+will pay the European merchant to buy. To suppose that
+Kano will be able to do so until the iron horse has penetrated
+well over the Kano side of the Niger, or until a
+carriage-road the model of the one the French are building
+from Conakry to Futa-Jallon connects a navigable point
+on the Niger with Kano, is to cherish an illusion. Transport
+charges would kill any chance of profit in a transaction
+which differs in every particular from the nature of Kano’s
+internal trade. The one would be a direct transaction, to
+stand or fall on its merits; the other can best be described
+as a multiplicity of transactions with the purchasing commodity
+represented by native cloth, a useless article so far
+as export to Europe is concerned. In fact, it is no easy
+matter to determine how Kano will be able to feed a railway
+from the coast without the creation of some great industry<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_67"></a>[67]</span>
+suitable for European export, corresponding with the oil-palm
+industry of the coastwise regions. One thing at least
+is certain, that if through extravagance in construction and
+working, or other causes, the section of an eventual railway
+from the coast to Kano, which passes through the oil-palm
+bearing regions cannot be made to pay, the economical
+outlook for the railway when it leaves the oil-palm zone is
+anything but cheerful. Of course, where the main purpose
+is strategic, considerations other than commercial come into
+play, and the matter assumes a different aspect.</p>
+
+<p>To resume, it would seem really desirable that a mutual
+arrangement between England and France should be arrived
+at as regards freedom of circulation for the internal traffic
+of the Chad region. I urged that course in the <i>Pall Mall
+Gazette</i> when the negotiations for the Convention of 1898
+were pending. Recent events suggest that the proposal
+might still be adopted with advantage to both parties concerned,
+and as a measure both just and wise in the relation
+it bears to the legitimate interests of the natives.</p>
+
+<p>It remains to be said in this connection that the principal
+articles imported into the Upper Niger by the Niger Company,
+which up to the present has enjoyed the monopoly of
+the Upper Niger trade, are salt, brass, copper and iron rods,
+white damask cloths, white brocaded cloths, indigo-dyed
+cloths (in imitation of, but inferior to, the cloth produced
+from native looms and dyed in Kano), cowries, rice, yarn
+and gunpowder. The salt which is imported chiefly from
+England has a large sale, being greatly superior to
+native manufactured salt from Bilma and the shores of
+Lake Chad. The copper, brass and iron rods are chiefly
+used for conversion into arrow-heads. As for the cloths,
+they do not equal the products of the Kano looms, and
+unless of the finest white damask, are rejected by the Mohammedans.
+They find, however, a ready sale among the
+Pagans. These cloths are, as a rule, exchanged against
+ivory, gum, bees-wax or rubber, bought by Hausa traders,
+who in turn take them to Kano and there exchange them
+for native-made cloth.</p>
+
+<p>I have entered rather fully into the trading and industrial<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_68"></a>[68]</span>
+statistics of Kano because, apart from the interest naturally
+attaching to the commercial life of one of the most flourishing
+cities of Africa, the centre of a great industrial and
+agricultural district, a knowledge of these particulars enables
+one, I think, the better to realise what are the distinctive
+characteristics of the Hausa race—Kano being pre-eminently
+Hausa. The Hausa is primarily and essentially the business
+man of Africa. He is not and never will become a governing
+personality. His aims are commercial, and he neither
+seeks nor desires any other state. Of political ambition he
+has none, and although strongly attached to the Mohammedan
+faith, and good-humouredly contemptuous of his
+pagan customers, he is quite content that they should
+remain pagans to the end of the chapter, willingly resigning
+the attractions of proselytism into the hands of the Fulani.
+Withal he is a cheerful, happy-go-lucky sort of person,
+generally kind to his slaves, and content to gang his own
+gait in his own way. That is the natural state of the Hausa.
+If we take him away from his business habits and fashion
+him into a soldier, we perforce place him in the midst of
+artificial conditions of life, where his individuality become
+lost. He is then merely interesting in the sense that our
+other African levies are interesting, that is, from an exclusively
+military point of view.</p>
+
+<p>The Hausa can be drilled into a good soldier, and under
+decent treatment will show much patient endurance and
+bravery. Like all Negroes, if adequate supervision be
+lacking, he will take advantage of the prestige attaching to
+his uniform to tyrannise over the aborigines among whom he
+is quartered.</p>
+
+<p>In his military capacity the Hausa has rendered good
+service in the Benin and Ashanti campaigns; in the course
+of innumerable skirmishes on the lower Niger, throughout
+the operations so admirably carried out by Sir George
+Goldie against Nupe and Ilorin, and so on. It should, however,
+be remembered that on those occasions where the
+Hausa soldier has fought under the British flag, he has
+gone into battle with the consciousness of possessing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_69"></a>[69]</span>
+weapons which gave him an incontestable superiority over
+his antagonist. He has never been called upon to face a
+native force officered by Europeans, and armed with quick-firing
+rifles similar to his own. His capacity to rise to the
+occasion if necessity demanded it need not be queried.
+That is a matter upon which military men personally
+acquainted with the Hausa’s qualities and defects as a
+fighting unit are alone competent to give an opinion.<a id="FNanchor_42" href="#Footnote_42" class="fnanchor">[42]</a>
+But until the Hausa has been put to the test, it may be well
+not to found too high an estimate of his military abilities,
+bearing in mind that, unlike the French West African
+recruits, he does not come of a fighting stock.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus05" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus05.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>HAUSAS DRILLING</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>As already stated, it is in his natural sphere of commerce
+and industry that the Hausa shines. In that respect he
+stands without a rival on the continent in which he lives.
+His manufacturing skill is not only remarkable for Africa:
+it puts Europe to the blush. For closeness, durability and
+firmness of texture, the products of his looms and dye-pits
+eclipse anything that Manchester can produce. In a land of
+reputed indolence, his activity is as conspicuous as his enterprise.
+He makes an ideal commercial traveller, peddling his
+wares over enormous distances, and seldom failing to secure
+a considerable profit on his transactions.</p>
+
+<p>The Hausa has so identified himself with the commercial
+requirements of a vast region that his language has, throughout
+it, been adopted as the necessary vehicle of inter-communication
+for all that appertains to trade and commerce.
+The Hausa language is <i>per se</i> specially well fitted for extensive
+propagation among African races. Reclus<a id="FNanchor_43" href="#Footnote_43" class="fnanchor">[43]</a> has said of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_70"></a>[70]</span>
+it that by its fine sonorousness, the richness of its vocabulary,
+the simplicity of its grammatical structure, and the
+graceful equilibrium of its phrases, Hausa deserves to rank
+among the foremost languages of the Dark Continent; and
+Sir Harry Johnston includes it with English, French, Italian,
+Portuguese, Arabic and Swahili among the great languages
+of New Africa.<a id="FNanchor_44" href="#Footnote_44" class="fnanchor">[44]</a></p>
+
+<p>The first vocabulary of Hausa was compiled by Mr. James
+Richardson, who, in company with Dr. Barth and Dr. Overweg,
+crossed the desert to Lake Chad in 1850-51.<a id="FNanchor_45" href="#Footnote_45" class="fnanchor">[45]</a> Upon his
+return from Africa, Dr. Barth himself published a work upon
+the Hausa, Fulfulde and Kanuri<a id="FNanchor_46" href="#Footnote_46" class="fnanchor">[46]</a> languages. Messrs. Schön<a id="FNanchor_47" href="#Footnote_47" class="fnanchor">[47]</a>
+and Krause subsequently devoted much study to the subject,
+and the former issued a remarkable book on the Hausa language
+in 1876, of which there appeared a revised edition in
+1885. Later on, Mr. John A. Robinson, M.A., a scholar of
+Christ College, Cambridge, made further researches into
+Hausa during his stay at Lokoja. After his death the Hausa
+Association was formed (1891) with the object of continuing
+his labours, and in 1894 the Reverend Charles Henry
+Robinson, M.A.—now Canon Robinson of Ripon—was
+despatched by the Association to Kano. Canon Robinson
+and his companions Dr. Tonkin and Mr. Bonner spent three
+months in Kano, and in due course the former published an
+account of his experiences<a id="FNanchor_48" href="#Footnote_48" class="fnanchor">[48]</a> which excited much attention,
+coming as it did so soon after Lieutenant-Colonel Monteil’s
+remarkable journey from St. Louis to Tripoli through Kano
+had revived the world’s interest in the famous Hausa city.
+Since then the Hausa Association has published four works
+on the Hausa<a id="FNanchor_49" href="#Footnote_49" class="fnanchor">[49]</a> language. In 1897 the Cambridge University
+appointed a University Lecturer in Hausa, and the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_71"></a>[71]</span>
+authorities of Christ’s College established a Hausa scholarship
+open to graduates of the University or others who have
+passed an examination in at least one Semitic language. The
+initiative thus displayed by the Hausa Association<a id="FNanchor_50" href="#Footnote_50" class="fnanchor">[50]</a> and by
+Canon Robinson is worthy of all praise, and it is greatly to
+be hoped that further efforts may be forthcoming which will
+extend so useful a field of inquiry to the other great languages
+of Northern Nigeria, Fulfulde and Kanuri.</p>
+
+<p>The Hausa language appears to belong to the Hamitic
+group, although it contains numerous Semitic idioms, and
+also a large number of words borrowed from the Arabic.</p>
+
+<p>Some controversy exists as to whether Hausa can be
+properly considered a written language or not. Canon
+Robinson stoutly maintains that it is, and even goes so far
+as to assert that there is no race north of the Equator, nor
+indeed in all Africa outside Egypt and Abyssinia, which has
+reduced its language to writing, or made any attempt at the
+production of a literature.<a id="FNanchor_51" href="#Footnote_51" class="fnanchor">[51]</a> That is, as Americans say, a tall
+order, and I beg leave to doubt the accuracy of the statement.
+Sufficient interest attaches to the point to merit a
+cursory examination.</p>
+
+<p>In the introductory remarks to his “Magana Hausa”
+already referred to, Mr. Schön speaks of himself as the writer
+of a “previously unwritten language”—meaning, of course,
+Hausa. Commenting upon that passage in the preface to
+the “Hausa-English Dictionary,” Canon Robinson infers
+that, when Schön wrote the words quoted above, he was
+probably unaware that the Hausa possessed any kind of
+literature at all. That seems to me a gratuitous assumption,
+for Barth, who came before Schön, and whose works Schön
+would naturally have consulted, more than once declares<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_72"></a>[72]</span>
+categorically that the Hausa language is <i>not</i> a written
+language. Yet Barth knew perfectly well that the Hausa
+had possessed historical manuscripts, since he lamented
+their destruction by the Fulani at the capture of Katsena,
+which was then, as Kano is to-day, the seat of culture
+of the Hausa race. It may therefore be asserted with
+every probability of exactness that Schön spoke <i>en pleine
+connaissance de cause</i> when he referred to himself as
+the writer of a previously unwritten language. Now, can
+the existence of a certain number of manuscripts in the
+Hausa language, and written in Arabic characters, be considered
+sufficient proof that Hausa itself is a written
+language? If so, then Fulfulde is a written language,
+because Bello committed to writing in the language of his
+race, and in Arabic characters, a history of the Sudan; and
+Kanuri is a written language, because Koelle<a id="FNanchor_52" href="#Footnote_52" class="fnanchor">[52]</a> published in
+1854 a Kanuri grammar founded upon a collection of
+manuscript literature in the tongue of the Kanuri and in
+Arabic characters. In that case it follows that, contrary to
+what Canon Robinson affirms, the Hausas are not the only
+African people north of the Equator, outside Egypt and
+Abyssinia, who have reduced their language to writing or
+aimed at producing a literature. If the first claim is tenable,
+if, that is to say, Hausa is a written language, then the second
+claim put forward is not tenable. I do not propose to
+continue this appreciation into more technical channels,
+which would probably be wearisome to the reader, and will
+content myself with quoting from a letter received by me
+some little time ago from a British Officer then in charge of
+the Military Intelligence Department of Northern Nigeria,
+whose knowledge of Hausa has been officially declared to be
+“unique.” Being unable to reconcile Canon Robinson’s statements<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_73"></a>[73]</span>
+that it was a written language, with the facts as they
+presented themselves to me, I finally turned to my correspondent,
+whose competency I was well aware no one would
+venture to dispute. This is what he says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“Robinson’s Hausa Grammar was universally pronounced a failure
+by all officers of the West African Frontier Force, and they could make
+no progress by using it. I have already told you that the natives say
+they could not understand him. Moreover, one hardly talks the same
+class of Hausa to any two Hausas consecutively; but after a couple of
+minutes’ conversation with a native one knows his dialect, and what
+words to use, and how to pronounce those words, the pronunciation
+varying considerably.<a id="FNanchor_53" href="#Footnote_53" class="fnanchor">[53]</a> The Hausa writing, very little of which exists,
+is simply Hausa written phonetically in Arabic characters, there being
+no recognised way of spelling one word, which fact alone proves how
+little the written language is used. Nowadays Hausa is scarcely ever
+written, except isolated words, such as ‘Sariki’ and ‘bature.’ The
+Hausa writing is called ‘Ajumi,’ and when such words are used in an
+Arabic letter, it is usual to prefix the word ‘Ajumi,’ in order to warn
+the reader that the following words are Hausa, not Arabic. The
+Arabic used is primitive, but correct. As the Hausa vowel sounds
+cannot always be correctly represented by the Arabic vowel marks,
+there is only the context to guide one in many Hausa written words,
+and the task of spelling out every word phonetically is a laborious one,
+especially when the proper sound cannot in all cases be represented.
+I have seen some of the most learned Mallams in Nigeria experience
+great difficulty in reading Canon Robinson’s specimens of Hausa literature.
+Canon Robinson attaches much too much importance to the
+Hausa writing. The few specimens that exist are interesting as
+curiosities, but the language is useless as a means of communication.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_74"></a>[74]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE NATIONAL INDUSTRY OF SOUTHERN NIGERIA</span></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The palm-oil tree is the staple product of the whole of
+the coastwise regions of West Africa from Sierra Leone<a id="FNanchor_54" href="#Footnote_54" class="fnanchor">[54]</a>
+right down to the Lower Congo. The Niger Delta may be
+considered as the central region of its production. Since
+regular administration was set up in the rivers,<a id="FNanchor_55" href="#Footnote_55" class="fnanchor">[55]</a> the output
+of the oil and kernels of the palm-oil tree has been as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Oil.</span></p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th>Year.</th>
+    <th>Quantity.</th>
+    <th>Value.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1892-93</td>
+    <td>10,079,039 gallons</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£482,803</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1893-94</td>
+    <td>12,207,658 <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">637,625</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1894-95</td>
+    <td>Not ascertainable</td>
+    <td class="tdr">505,637</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1895-96</td>
+    <td>10,672,106 gallons</td>
+    <td class="tdr">514,303</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1896-97</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;9,350,559 <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">465,583</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897-98</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;8,476,955 <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">410,134</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898-99</td>
+    <td>&nbsp;&nbsp;8,113,820 <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">397,870</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900<a id="FNanchor_56" href="#Footnote_56" class="fnanchor">[56]</a></td>
+    <td>Not stated in C. O. report</td>
+    <td class="tdr">491,131</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The great majority of the oil is sent to England, but
+France takes a considerable quantity (£70,880 out of the
+total of £491,131 in 1900), and Germany also purchases a
+fair amount (£28,094 in 1900).</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Kernels.</span></p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th>Year.</th>
+    <th>Quantity.</th>
+    <th>Value.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1892-93</td>
+    <td>34,710 tons</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£301,483</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1893-94</td>
+    <td>39,224 <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">334,144</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1894-95</td>
+    <td>Not ascertainable</td>
+    <td class="tdr">295,313<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_75"></a>[75]</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1895-96</td>
+    <td>36,640 tons</td>
+    <td class="tdr">296,397</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1896-97</td>
+    <td>38,043 <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">290,125</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897-98</td>
+    <td>39,529 <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">295,545</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898-99</td>
+    <td>40,528 <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">305,791</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900<a id="FNanchor_57" href="#Footnote_57" class="fnanchor">[57]</a></td>
+    <td>Not given in C. O. report</td>
+    <td class="tdr">430,016</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>The output of kernels seems to be steadily on the increase.
+Germany is far and away the largest purchaser of Nigeria’s
+kernels. In 1900 she took more than two-thirds—to the
+value of £346,997—of the total for that year.<a id="FNanchor_58" href="#Footnote_58" class="fnanchor">[58]</a> Thus in
+eight years the fruit of the palm-oil tree in Nigeria is seen
+by these figures to have yielded no less than £6,453,900.
+The production has certainly been greater, as the Niger
+Company’s exports of oil and kernels are only included for
+1900, the quantities and values for the preceding years not
+being publicly accessible.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus06" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus06.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>MAKING PALM-OIL</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>The chief centres of palm-oil production in the Niger
+proper as distinct from the Delta, or, in other words, in the
+territories formerly under the administrative sway of, and
+still almost entirely tapped in a commercial sense by, the
+Niger Company are Ogute Lake, Atani, and Onitsha. The
+Ogute Lake produces about 4500 casks of oil annually; it
+is connected by the Orashe River, for small craft drawing
+four feet in the dry season and eight feet in the rainy season,
+with Degama, but is only open from the Niger River during
+the rainy season (for craft drawing seven feet) or say from
+August to the end of December. It is about seventy hours
+distant from Burutu. Atani yields about 6000 casks per
+annum. It is open from the sea <i>viâ</i> Burutu or Akassa all
+the year round. Distance from Burutu about two and a
+half days. Onitsha will probably exceed before long the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_76"></a>[76]</span>
+other two districts mentioned as a productive centre, the
+population being very dense; distance from Burutu, three
+days. For kernels, Assay is the chief centre, producing
+about 6000 tons annually. It is open all the year round
+from Burutu for craft drawing about five to five and
+a half feet, and between July and October the rains permit
+of navigation for craft drawing up to twelve feet; passage
+from Burutu, twenty-four hours. Illushi, Idah, Lokoja,
+Egga, Jebba, and Shongo are other important centres.</p>
+
+<p>The commerce derived from the oil-palm tree, apart from
+its paramount importance in a commercial sense, has many
+and varied features of interest. It was, for example, so far
+as the oil is concerned, the trade which first took the place
+of the slave traffic. The beverage extracted from it is
+mentioned in some of the oldest references to the Dark
+Continent—thus we know that Cambyses “delighted” in
+its flavour, and Herodotus tells us that amongst the gifts
+with which he despatched the mission of the Ichthyophagi
+to Ethiopia was “a cask of palm-wine.” Collecting the
+palm-tree’s fruit may also be said to be the national industry
+of the West African Negro almost all along the coast—certainly
+in Southern Nigeria.<a id="FNanchor_59" href="#Footnote_59" class="fnanchor">[59]</a> It is an industry which permanently
+employs hundreds of thousands of Negroes, men,
+women, and children, and gives work to many thousands
+of white men, from the merchant to the steamship owner,
+from the manufacturer to the chemist. Often in watching
+the long files of carts conveying the bulky barrels in which
+palm-oil is shipped home from the west coast, passing along
+the Liverpool streets, or the rows upon rows of these casks
+and heaps of palm-kernel bags piled up on the dock’s side,
+have I marvelled at the ignorance of those persons who
+inform us that the native of West Africa will not <i>work</i>.
+Not work, with this testimony to his labours! Not work,
+when hundreds of English workmen are busy unloading,
+rolling and carting these proofs of the Negro’s industry every<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_77"></a>[77]</span>
+month in the year, every week in the month, every day in
+the week almost! Not work, when it is borne in mind that
+this brilliant yellow stuff with the penetrating smell, shipped
+in hundreds of thousands of gallons from West Africa, is
+brought down to the coast bit by bit, in small receptacles,
+often from considerable distances inland, on the heads of
+these idle and lazy people; that the kernels in those greasy,
+dirty-looking bags have each been extracted with infinite
+trouble from an extremely hard shell, that 400 of them are
+required to make a single pound of kernels, and that the
+market value in Southern Nigeria of those 400 kernels, to
+the native, is the maximum sum of one penny! A stone-breaker’s
+job in this country is not looked upon as a sinecure,
+but I beg leave to doubt whether the stone-breaker
+would be content with one penny per every 400 stones
+he breaks.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus07" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus07.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>DUKE-TOWN, OLD CALABAR, SOUTHERN NIGERIA</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>There is not another tree in the whole world which
+produces money with so little expense as this particular
+crop. In Nigeria the oil is prepared usually in small
+quantities, in the small villages scattered over the country.
+After being prepared, it is in many instances carried
+by women and children to some central native market,
+situate as a rule on the edge of a waterway. There
+it is bought by the middlemen so called, who are really
+the carriers of the country, and put by them into the casks
+previously supplied by the European merchants. The
+casks are packed away in canoes, and the middlemen paddle
+down through the creeks for distances varying with the
+length and character of the waterways, to the merchant’s
+factory at the mouth. The merchant then pays for the
+oil, gives the middleman an empty cask in exchange for the
+full one, and ships the latter by the first steamer that comes
+along, the middlemen coopering it up and making it as
+sound as possible before starting off on their homeward
+journey. Palm-oil is used in the manufacture of soap and
+candles.<a id="FNanchor_60" href="#Footnote_60" class="fnanchor">[60]</a> It is also employed in South Wales and the States<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_78"></a>[78]</span>
+in the preparation of tin plates, the plates when white hot
+being dipped in palm-oil, which gives them their smooth and
+glassy surface. The demand for palm oil increases annually,
+and for many years to come is likely to keep up with
+the supply.</p>
+
+<p>The transaction which takes place between the merchant
+and the middleman native is the simplest feature of the
+trade. Before that stage has been reached there are ramifications
+innumerable. A middleman chief, for instance, will
+send ten or twelve canoes up the creeks with goods which
+he has purchased on trust<a id="FNanchor_61" href="#Footnote_61" class="fnanchor">[61]</a>—a large proportion of the trade
+is still carried out on the trust system, credit being given as
+between the merchant and the middleman, the middleman
+and the producer, and again the producer with other producers
+further afield, the nearest producer becoming thus a
+middleman or carrier for his more distant countrymen—each
+of the canoes being in charge of one of his “boys,”
+with enough men to convey the craft to a certain market.
+There that particular canoe remains until the goods it has got
+on board are sold and the canoe is full of oil. The same thing
+occurs in the case of every market in the district, and so on
+all over the country, the canoes sometimes remaining several
+weeks away.</p>
+
+<p>Apart from the porterage, purchase, putting into casks,
+conveying by water, final sale and shipment, which employs
+such numbers of natives in their respective <i>rôles</i>, there is the
+collection and preparation to be taken into account before a
+complete idea can be formed of the varied stages the palm-oil
+industry goes through until the product is landed on our
+shores. There is, first of all, the process of climbing the
+tree to get the fruit, which, of course, is at the top. After
+removing the fruit the natives are able, when the nut is
+properly ripe, to shake it out of the spiky casing in
+which it grows. The nut is something like a plum-stone,
+only bigger, and contains the oil to the thickness of about<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_79"></a>[79]</span>
+one-eighth of an inch. Inside is the kernel, itself enclosed
+in a very hard shell. To extract the oil the outer skin or
+shell has to be split or peeled off. The nuts are usually
+flung into an old canoe, the natives trampling upon and
+crushing the outer skin, and then put into boiling water,
+which brings the oil to the surface. But there are a good
+many ways of preparing the oil, and its different characteristics
+were at one time supposed to be due to different ways of
+preparation on various parts of the coast. That does not
+appear to be the opinion now, for the theory is hardly
+sufficient to account for the extra quantity of glycerine such
+as is met with in Bonny and Old Calabar oil, and the larger
+proportion of stearine<a id="FNanchor_62" href="#Footnote_62" class="fnanchor">[62]</a> which exists in the hard kinds of
+Brass and New Calabar. We have now come to an end of
+the history of the collection of palm-oil, and the second use
+to which the oil-palm lends itself arrives upon the scene.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus08" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus08.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>FILLING PALM-OIL BARRELS, SOUTHERN NIGERIA</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>With the breakage of the nut and the extraction of the oil,
+there is left the kernel in its covering. The kernel trade did
+not become general<a id="FNanchor_63" href="#Footnote_63" class="fnanchor">[63]</a> until a few years ago, the kernel being
+usually either left to decay or to reproduce, and for a considerable
+time it was pointed out that hundreds of thousands
+of pounds were annually lost in this way. But within a
+comparatively recent time the natives have been induced to
+break the hard shell in which the kernel is enclosed, and the
+latter are shipped home in yearly increasing quantities from
+Nigeria by the merchants, who dispose of them to the
+African Oil Mills<a id="FNanchor_64" href="#Footnote_64" class="fnanchor">[64]</a> or some other seed-crushing establishment
+in Liverpool, or send them to Hamburg: Germany, as
+already stated, being the largest buyer. The kernel yields an<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_80"></a>[80]</span>
+oil which in its concrete form is white in contrast with the
+yellowy-red or deep red or ochre colouring of the oil in the
+nut itself, and is the principal ingredient in Sunlight and
+other soaps of a similar character. In its chemical properties
+it is almost identical with the oil pressed from the inside of
+the cocoa-nut—<i>i.e.</i> copra—which is known as “cocoa-nut
+oil.” It is exclusively used in the manufacture of soap.</p>
+
+<p>Owing to the very great labour entailed in cracking the
+shells, a task generally performed by putting the nut on a
+stone and breaking it with a stone or stick, and the immense
+amount of time wasted by so primitive a method,
+it cannot but be a matter for astonishment that some
+mechanical contrivance has not been devised and put to
+general usage whereby the process might be accelerated
+and facilitated. It is certainly not due to any fear of
+exhausting the supply by too rapid production, for, so far
+as any conclusions can be based upon the quantity of
+oil brought down to the factories, Nigeria is still a long
+way off producing anything like the full quantity of kernels
+available. The fact is that several attempts have been made
+in this direction, but with one exception<a id="FNanchor_65" href="#Footnote_65" class="fnanchor">[65]</a> they have failed,
+and the failure has discouraged further efforts. Cracking
+machines of various kinds have been imported, but through
+neglect, the deadly effect of the West African climate upon
+machinery of any kind—more especially perhaps in so very
+humid a part as the Niger Delta—and other causes, they
+have speedily become “old iron.”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus09" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus09.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>A PALM-KERNEL MARKET IN SOUTHERN NIGERIA</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Although it may seem presumptuous for an outsider to
+make such a suggestion, I cannot but think that something
+more might be done, in a systematic and concentrated way,
+to bring about so great a reform as the cracking of the
+kernel-shells by machinery could not fail to be; quadrupling<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_81"></a>[81]</span>
+as it would the total production, and releasing a large
+amount of labour, which could be turned into other
+channels. In view of the very meagre remuneration which
+the native is willing to accept per pound’s weight of kernels
+cracked by hand, it is difficult to understand how any
+real trouble, that decent wages and tactful management
+were capable of overcoming, could be apprehended in the
+utilisation of sufficient labour to keep the requisite steam-power
+at work, more especially as, it is known, the shells
+would provide a fairly efficient fuel ready to hand. Moreover,
+would machinery elaborate enough to necessitate
+steam-power be absolutely essential? Could nothing be
+invented in the way of importing automatic hand-cracking
+machines, the cracking taking place under white supervision
+at the factories, and the middlemen carriers bringing
+in the undecorticated nut, instead of, as at present, the
+kernel itself?<a id="FNanchor_66" href="#Footnote_66" class="fnanchor">[66]</a></p>
+
+<p>There seems to be much need in this great oil-palm
+industry, as in other native industries in West Africa, of
+co-operation among the official and commercial classes,
+which make up the white population—missionaries excepted—for
+the adoption of some thorough and comprehensive
+plan of teaching the natives more scientific methods
+of production. It is no use saying the thing cannot be
+done. It can be done, and has been done. The most
+notable example is provided in the history of ground-nut
+cultivation in Senegal, which has by no means reached perfection,<a id="FNanchor_67" href="#Footnote_67" class="fnanchor">[67]</a>
+or anything like it, and yet is now realising a
+million sterling per annum. That striking result was
+attained by patient, continuous and unflagging perseverance
+on the part of the Bordeaux merchants, coupled with the
+friendly support and assistance of the Government, without
+coercion of any kind. It took some time, of course, but
+the results have thoroughly justified the policy pursued,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_82"></a>[82]</span>
+and Senegal to-day<a id="FNanchor_68" href="#Footnote_68" class="fnanchor">[68]</a> is the foremost vegetable-oil producing
+country in the world. We hear a great deal about technical
+education in West Africa, carpentering, brick-making, and so
+forth, all very admirable in their way, but the time and money
+spent in these directions could be more profitably engaged by
+perfecting the <i>existing native industries</i> of West Africa, and by
+creating new ones, which would do more than anything else
+to increase the prosperity of the country, and at the same
+time be based upon sound science, for the natural instincts
+and aptitude of the Negro are pre-eminently agricultural.
+Far more lasting good could be achieved thus.</p>
+
+<p>Officials and merchants working side by side for a
+common aim, and science—that is what West Africa needs.
+What a reflection it is upon our Administration in West
+Africa, that the commercial position of Sierra Leone, for
+instance, should be declining, year by year, largely owing
+to a passion for keeping up a form of taxation which is
+repugnant to the natives, and does not even pay the cost of
+collection, when thousands of pounds annually are wasted
+in the Sherbro district alone by the natives merely collecting
+the kernels, leaving the oil to rot off—all for want of encouragement,
+and the teaching of scientific methods of production,
+while acres upon acres of rubber-producing land in
+Lagos have been impaired by a similar absence of preliminary
+common sense. Perhaps the most curious feature of the
+whole business is that which consists in turning round and
+blaming the native for wilful destruction which—in the
+latter case mentioned—he was never taught how to avoid.
+If the oil-palm industry were taken in hand in practical
+fashion, there is no possible doubt that an enormous
+development would ensue. But while the want of sympathy
+and combination, one might almost say the latent opposition,
+between the official and merchant class continues,
+I cannot see that matters will be different to what they are.
+The remedy lies very largely with the Authorities.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_83"></a>[83]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE ADMINISTRATION OF NORTHERN NIGERIA</span></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The Empire has few more experienced servants in the
+Tropical African field than Sir Frederick Lugard. Like
+every other man who has become prominent, he possesses
+critics, and no doubt, like every one else, has made mistakes,
+but, speaking generally, he is very highly thought of.
+Whether General Lugard, with his military instincts and
+training, is the right man in the right place, is a matter
+upon which opinion may differ. Among military men who
+have served England in Equatorial Africa, no one more
+distinguished could have been chosen. The only reflection
+which his appointment gave rise to was an impersonal
+one. Nobody doubted his capacity, but it was suggested
+that the delicate problems of internal politics existing in
+Northern Nigeria required civilian rather than military
+habits of mind to cope with.</p>
+
+<p>Those problems are infinitely complex. Seldom did a
+situation call for greater display of tact, sympathy and wise
+discernment. Seldom was there a more abundant supply
+of combustible material ready to take fire upon the initiation
+of a policy which should lack these qualities. Never a field
+more promising of desirable results to reward a just and
+humane stewardship, whose highest aim should be the
+contentment and prosperity of the people committed to
+its charge, and whose guiding spirit should be patience,
+and, as Sir Andrew Clarke puts it, “use of the power of
+imagination.”</p>
+
+<p>Northern Nigeria, it need hardly be observed, differentiates
+absolutely from the southern province, in the nature
+of its soil, configuration, altitude, vegetation: in its ethnologic<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_84"></a>[84]</span>
+material, in religion, culture, social condition, political
+organisation. We have passed out of the pagan belt, and
+are in contact with a more advanced type of civilisation;
+we have left the forest and merged into the plain, into open
+park-like country, sparsely timbered as a rule when compared
+with the southern regions; pasture land, agricultural
+land covered with fields of waving millet and <i>masara</i>,
+peopled by splendid herds of cattle, where horses and long-nosed
+sheep are reared. Animism or fetishism no longer
+predominates; a revealed religion has replaced it. Semitic
+infusion is now everywhere apparent. It is a new world we
+have entered—a strange jumbling of two continents, an
+amalgam of cross-migratory currents severally attracted by
+the fertility of the soil; an industrialism at once remarkable,
+deeply interesting and of great promise. A rough feudalism,
+a loose central authority, a barbaric splendour in the midst
+of primitive surroundings, a system of rule superior to
+anything we have yet encountered, and of which the
+strongest binding cord is religious faith; large cities, extensive
+cultivations, tanneries, dye-pits, looms. A number
+of States, owning allegiance—more religious and racial
+than political—to a supreme chief, and appointing their
+own district governors, treasurers, war ministers, judges;
+controlling their own armies, managing their own exchequers.
+Society divided into two distinct classes—the
+aristocrats and the plebs—which correspond to divergencies
+of race, each class confined to its own quarter, rarely
+mingling in licit intercourse, perhaps more so than formerly,
+yet perpetuating a strain of pure stock which must have
+existed in Africa for at least two thousand years. Away
+from the towns, in favoured districts, herdsmen of Semitic
+blood; planters, agriculturists. In the towns, statesmen,
+warriors on the one side; on the other, manufacturers and
+traders. Riven through the country, highways of commerce,
+centuries old, branching to north, east and west, over which
+the tramp of feet and hoofs resounded when Rome held
+North Africa, and built her forts to the desert’s edge—aye,
+and beyond what man and nature have made the desert’s<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_85"></a>[85]</span>
+edge—oxen and mules carrying natron, and asses bearing
+kola, camels with salt, Eastern spices, and bales of cotton
+from far-off Benghazi, cotton brought from Manchester,
+silks from France, needles and writing-paper from Germany,
+beads and looking-glasses from Venice; richly
+caparisoned steeds with their gaily-clad riders, <i>meharas</i>
+swift of foot, with the <i>lithamed</i> Tuareg bestriding them;
+the Fulani shepherd driving along his flocks. Over there
+by the lake, herds of elephants roam untroubled, while the
+Shuwa, with his hair trimmed <i>à l’Egyptienne</i>, wanders
+restlessly, as though seeking to pierce the mystery of his
+origin.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp88" id="map2" style="max-width: 62.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/map2.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>SKETCH MAP OF NORTHERN NIGERIA SHEWING DIVISION INTO PROVINCES</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Into that country the white man has come in accordance
+with the ancient prophecy, descendants of the white man
+who first visited it. The same race, the dominating race,
+which ever aspires after empire, and which, on occasion,
+forgets that the sword untempered by the plough has proved
+disastrous to many Empires.</p>
+
+<p>As before stated, two years elapsed between the advent of
+the Crown Colony system in Northern Nigeria and the
+publication of the first report by Sir Frederick Lugard.
+With no official data available whereby the Commissioner’s
+policy or the Government’s intentions could be gauged, the
+public were only able to judge of the trend of both one and
+the other through the scanty information communicated by
+the news agencies, or by the vehicle of private letters from
+Europeans resident in Northern Nigeria. It cannot be said
+that such news as did filter through the thick veil in which
+Northern Nigeria lay wrapped prior to the belated publication
+of Sir Frederick Lugard’s report in February 1902 was
+of a reassuring nature. On the contrary, while necessary
+police-work in Bornu was so entirely neglected that the
+French found themselves compelled by a combination of
+local circumstances to practically run that country for us,
+to give sanctuary to its lawful ruler, to beat off and finally
+track to his lair the man who, following his father’s evil way,
+was creating a desert wherever he passed; events in Sokoto,
+which had been in constant treaty relations with Great<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_86"></a>[86]</span>
+Britain’s representatives since 1884, seemed to justify the
+worst fears, and to corroborate the late Mary Kingsley’s
+prediction that “three months of Crown Colony form of
+government in the Niger Territories will bring war, far
+greater and more destructive than any war we have yet had
+in West Africa, and will end in the formation of a debt far
+greater than any debt we now have in West Africa, because
+of the greater extent of territory and the greater power
+of the native States, now living peacefully enough under
+England, but not England as misrepresented by the Crown
+Colony system.” The news received was exclusively of a
+military nature. It recorded the exploits of numerous
+expeditions against native rulers, the “smashing” of this
+Chief and the other, foreshadowed a large increase in the
+Frontier Force, and a further extension of the area of
+punitive undertakings. Every steamer for Burutu had its
+complement of officers on board for Nigeria, and the military
+element appeared to reign supreme. At the same time the
+propagandist efforts of Bishop Tugwell at Kano, which
+should never have been allowed, resulted in what was predicted
+of them when started, viz. failure, utter and complete.
+Disappointment had its inevitable sequel in the shape of a
+strengthening of the repressive theory for Nigeria by the
+apostles of peace. Bishop Tugwell’s chief assistant, the
+Rev. J. A. E. Richardson, on his return hastened to get
+himself interviewed by Reuter, described “the Emir of
+Sokoto and the King of Kano as the chief opponents of
+civilisation in this part of the world,” and expressed his
+hope that the former would be speedily “dealt with.” In
+the same interview, this youthful and enthusiastic reformer
+was fain to admit the existence in the territories of the
+aforesaid “opponents of civilisation” of “fields upon fields
+of cultivated land,” houses “splendidly made,” “broad
+thoroughfares,” “big, beautiful gardens,” &amp;c. The existing
+“civilisation,” although not of the Exeter Hall pattern, had
+at least something to recommend it! The theme was taken
+up at home by another bishop, who delivered a sermon
+which was simply an appeal to brute force in Northern<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_87"></a>[87]</span>
+Nigeria, and provoked a good deal of comment. Observers
+noted an almost exact parallel between Northern Nigeria
+and East Africa, where the havoc wrought by the unchecked
+forces of militarism and religious bigotry is of public
+notoriety.</p>
+
+<p>When Sir Frederick Lugard’s report appeared its pages
+were eagerly scanned, and it was with intense relief that a
+clear, definite line of action was traced therein, and that an
+apparently determined intention was noted to make a stand
+against certain undesirable features of policy which had
+already become conspicuous. In fact, so outspoken were
+some of Sir Frederick Lugard’s remarks that it was permissible
+and legitimate to suppose that many of the things
+which had occurred did not meet with his approval.
+Another reflection suggested itself from a perusal of the
+report, viz. that the Commissioner was being hampered in
+the pursuance of his task by the absence of the right type
+of political assistants. Events subsequent to the report have
+tended to confirm rather than weaken that impression,
+which, however, is, after all, but an impression, and cannot
+at present be asserted as a fact.<a id="FNanchor_69" href="#Footnote_69" class="fnanchor">[69]</a></p>
+
+<p>The chief points to be gathered from the report, as bearing
+upon the Commissioner’s policy, were (1) maintenance of
+Fulani rule, (2) necessity of taking in hand the affairs of
+Bornu, (3) advisability of accepting with great caution mere
+accusations of slave-raiding, (4) harm perpetrated by crude
+information, (5) recognition that more good can be effected
+“by getting into touch with the people” than by “a series<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_88"></a>[88]</span>
+of punitive expeditions and bloodshed,” (6) no compulsory
+religious training.</p>
+
+<p>A programme such as this cannot fail to command
+universal approval, and if Sir Frederick Lugard is determined
+to unflinchingly carry it out he can count upon the
+thorough-going support of every single person in this
+country who takes a lively interest in British West Africa.
+Nay more, he can rely with confidence upon receiving the
+most strenuous backing should it at any time become
+apparent that, in his attempt to get his own way, he is not
+being sufficiently seconded by the Home Authorities, or
+that the policy of Downing Street in specific directions
+makes the attainment of that programme difficult if not
+impossible. Having said so much, it is to be hoped that
+any criticism directed to the affairs of Northern Nigeria
+may not be misunderstood in the quarter where one would
+greatly desire it to be looked upon in the light of a friendly
+attempt to assist, and not as criticism is so often regarded
+on West African matters, as being due to a carping desire
+to find fault on the part of those who, while fully entitled to
+speak their minds, are distant from the scene of action, and
+have none of the worry and trouble involved in actual
+contact with, or direct responsibility for, the questions upon
+which they write.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_89"></a>[89]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE FINANCES OF NIGERIA</span></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On June 30, 1899, a Treasury Minute informed the Royal
+Niger Company of the intention of her Majesty’s Government
+to revoke their charter. At the end of 1899 Sir
+Frederick Lugard proceeded to Africa to take over the Niger
+Company’s territories in the name of Great Britain. On
+January 1, 1900, Crown Colony Administration was established
+in the Niger Company’s territories, following its
+similar establishment in the Delta, which had taken place
+some years previously.<a id="FNanchor_70" href="#Footnote_70" class="fnanchor">[70]</a> In February 1902 the Government
+condescended for the first time—in the face of public pressure—to
+publish a report by Sir Frederick Lugard, <i>dated
+London, May 1, 1901</i>. The report, which is very interesting,
+but in many respects incomplete, notably as regards finance,
+only brings us down to March 31, 1901, so that, although we
+are now well on in the third year of Crown Colony Administration
+in Northern Nigeria, this single report is the
+measure of the confidence which the Government sees fit to
+repose in the British people, concerning the direct responsibilities
+they have acquired over some twenty-five million
+natives of Africa.</p>
+
+<p>There are several reasons why the public should not rest
+content with such meagre information. The first reason
+is financial. The expenditure of the two Protectorates—Northern
+and Southern Nigeria—is assuming very large
+proportions, a heavy load of debt weighs over them, and
+not only is there not the slightest sign of an effort to wipe
+off that debt, but almost every month that passes sees
+an extension of liabilities. The present condition of our<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_90"></a>[90]</span>
+national finances does not justify a continued attitude of
+indifference towards the expenditure of public funds on an
+increasing scale in Nigeria. On the other hand, our main
+object in West Africa being what it is, viz. commercial in
+nature, there is extreme unwisdom, from the ordinary
+business point of view, in neglecting to ascertain how the
+largest and most important of our estates in West Africa is
+being managed, and if the outlay is giving now, or is likely to
+give in an appreciably near future, those returns which the
+public is justified in expecting.</p>
+
+<p>What, then, are the facts as to the financial situation of
+Northern and Southern Nigeria? In the first place, there is
+the debt of £865,000 incurred by the Government in buying
+out the Niger Company. This debt is, while it exists, a bar
+to progress, and at a Conference held in London on September
+20, 1900, we find Sir Ralph Moor, Commissioner for
+Southern Nigeria, admitting the fact. When a speaker at
+that Conference urged that more should be spent on technical
+education in the Protectorate, and that the necessary
+amount might be paid out of the surplus revenue, Sir Ralph
+Moor quickly retorted that they had no surplus revenue, but
+were “in the unenviable position of owing her Majesty’s
+Treasury £800,000.” So much for the debt, and the
+obstacle to desirable improvements which its existence
+entails.<a id="FNanchor_71" href="#Footnote_71" class="fnanchor">[71]</a></p>
+
+<p>The debt notwithstanding, the administrative expenditure
+of Southern Nigeria steadily increases. In the year 1899-1900<a id="FNanchor_72" href="#Footnote_72" class="fnanchor">[72]</a>
+it reached the figure of £176,128,<a id="FNanchor_73" href="#Footnote_73" class="fnanchor">[73]</a> being an increase
+of £29,383 over the preceding year, and exceeded the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_91"></a>[91]</span>
+revenue by £12,000. No figures are yet available of the
+expenditure of Northern Nigeria since the substitution of the
+Crown for the Niger Company in the <i>rôle</i> of Administrator,
+but a reference to the estimates of March 31, 1902, shows
+that Northern Nigeria received a grant-in-aid of £88,800 in
+1900-01, and another of £280,000 in 1901-02, which includes
+the provision of £200,000 for the West African Frontier
+Force voted in 1900-01. We are, therefore, confronted with
+a minimum expenditure for Northern Nigeria in two years
+of £368,800. At this rate it is difficult to see how Nigeria
+is ever to become self-supporting. Such an enormous
+expenditure could only be warranted by an extraordinary
+development in trade, or by the creation of means of communication
+for that development, to be looked upon in the
+light of expenditure on capital account. It is all very well
+to call it “Imperial expenditure.” Of course it is “Imperial”
+expenditure, and so is every penny spent in the furtherance
+of British trade abroad “Imperial.” What we have to
+try and form an opinion upon is whether the administrative
+expenses of Nigeria are in any way proportionate to the
+interests which the Administration is supposed to be promoting
+there. If it is, well and good; if it is not, reform
+is required.</p>
+
+<p>The relation of the expenditure to the trade of Nigeria is
+comparatively easy to establish. The total trade (excluding
+specie) of the Niger Coast Protectorate in 1898-99 amounted
+to £1,477,398, and the total trade of Nigeria—that is, the
+Niger Coast Protectorate plus the territories of the Niger
+Company—in 1900 (excluding specie) was £2,113,878. If
+we deduct, therefore, the one set of figures from the other
+we can arrive at a close approximation of the trade done in
+the former Niger Company’s territories included since 1900
+in the Protectorate of Nigeria. The trade of the Niger
+Company’s territories in 1901 was, therefore, roughly
+£650,000, of which it is quite safe to assume that Northern
+Nigeria did not produce more than one-third, if it produced
+that, the bulk of the trade being confined to the Niger
+Company’s territories in the Lower River. The trade of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_92"></a>[92]</span>
+Northern Nigeria would thus be represented by some
+£216,660 out of the total of £650,000. Assuming, for the
+sake of argument, that it rose in 1901 to £250,000, the total
+for the two years 1900 and 1901 would be £466,660. Now
+Northern Nigeria, as already stated, received for the same
+period £368,800 from the Imperial Exchequer. Pursuing
+the same method of illustration for the export trade as for
+total trade, the export trade of the Niger Company’s territories
+works out at some £360,000, of which, say, one-third
+from Northern Nigeria, or £120,000. Putting it down at
+£140,000 in 1901 gives a total of Northern Nigeria’s export
+trade, or, in other words, Northern Nigeria’s producing capacity
+for the two years mentioned of £260,000, so that
+Northern Nigeria is in the disastrous financial situation of
+spending more than it produces. The one-third basis of
+calculation is a large and generous one, and Northern
+Nigeria’s share of responsibility in the debt is not included
+in the reckoning. The position then, so far as Northern
+Nigeria is concerned, is unmistakably clear. Northern
+Nigeria is at present a financial burden to the Empire.
+Eight years’ experience of Crown Colony Administration in
+the Niger Delta, where the machinery set up is not nearly
+so elaborate as in Northern Nigeria and where the natural
+exploitable riches are far greater, is hardly calculated to
+cause feelings of confidence as to what eight years of a
+similar system will lead to in Northern Nigeria. In the
+three years ending December 1899 the Niger Delta (excluding
+therefrom the Niger Company’s territories) produced
+a trade which averaged in value £1,800,000, of which over
+£1,000,000<a id="FNanchor_74" href="#Footnote_74" class="fnanchor">[74]</a> represented exports. Under the Crown Colony
+system, with its expensive machinery necessitating taxation
+to keep up, its military expenditure, and the absence of all
+commercial co-operation in the Administration, the value of
+exports has only once (1893-94) managed to rise above
+£1,000,000, while with that one exception the highest and
+lowest figures have been £844,333 and £750,223 respectively,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_93"></a>[93]</span>
+and the total volume of trade for any given three years has
+never reached the average figure of £1,800,000. The totals
+of the three years prior to 1900 were respectively £1,441,383,
+£1,389,922, and £1,507,288. Making every allowance for
+the fall in the market price of certain products during recent
+years, which, by the way, has been to some extent counterbalanced
+by the increased export of new articles, the conclusion
+to be derived from these figures is that the Crown
+Colony system in Southern Nigeria has not yielded results
+which the country has the right to expect, and the moral is
+that, whatever may be the position of affairs in other British
+possessions in West Africa, Englishmen should really pull
+themselves together and seriously consider whether the
+brilliant future which Nigeria should have in store for it is
+to run the risk of being compromised just for want of a
+little courage in facing the facts as they are.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_94"></a>[94]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII<br>
+<span class="smaller">MOHAMMEDANS, SLAVE-RAIDING, AND DOMESTIC SERVITUDE</span></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It has been truly remarked that more permanent good can
+be accomplished “by tact and gold with Mohammedan
+chiefs in West Africa than by the Maxim and the rifle.”
+That is a policy which has had much to do with our great
+and striking success in India. Its application to Afghanistan
+has within recent years been amply justified by results.
+Why should it not be followed in Northern Nigeria?
+Which is cheaper, an output of £5000 per annum in subsidies,
+or the expenditure of much larger sums in military
+operations? What is more likely to conduce to the prosperity
+of a vast densely populated tropical estate where the
+white man cannot settle, to gain your own ends peaceably,
+albeit not so speedily as might be desired, or to use force
+and face the dislocation of the existing social system which
+violent measures entail? Few people, if they will but
+calmly consider the matter, can fail to endorse the quotation
+given above. In Northern Nigeria the question is
+not merely one of expediency; it affects the honour of
+England.</p>
+
+<p>When MacGregor Laird started on his pioneering expedition
+up the Niger which laid the foundations of British
+trade in the Upper River, his instructions from the Government
+ran as follows: “It is most desirable to impress upon
+the chiefs that you are there as traders, not as colonists,
+not as acquirers of land, but simply as traders and for the
+protection of trade.” When Lord John Russell despatched
+Captain Trotter and Commander William Allen up the Niger
+in 1840, he recognised the advisability of subsidising the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_95"></a>[95]</span>
+native chiefs: “he himself (the chief) shall have for his own
+share, and without any payment on his part, a sum not exceeding
+one-twentieth part value of every article of British
+merchandise brought by British ships and sold in his
+dominions.” When Mr. Joseph Thomson concluded in 1884,
+on behalf of the National African Company, a treaty of
+amity and friendship with Umoru, Emir of Sokoto, “King
+of the Mussulmans of the Sudan,” he undertook on behalf of
+the Company to pay the Emir 3000 bags of cowries (roughly
+£1500) per annum. When that treaty was confirmed with
+the Emir on behalf of the Royal Niger Company (the
+designation of the National African Company when it received
+its charter) in 1890, and again with the Emir’s
+successor in 1894, the payment of the annual subsidy was
+confirmed. It was distinctly stipulated in those treaties
+that the Royal Niger Company “received” its power from
+the Queen of Great Britain and that “they (the Company)
+are her Majesty’s representatives to me.” In the eyes of the
+Emir, therefore, the Company was just as much “Great
+Britain” as a consular representative, or a High Commissioner.
+In exchange for this annual subsidy, the Emir
+of Sokoto transferred “to the above people (the Company)
+<i>or other with whom they may arrange</i>, my entire rights to
+the country on both sides of the River Benue and rivers
+flowing into it throughout my dominions for such distance
+from its and their banks as they may desire.” The Emir
+also bound himself not to “recognise any other white nation,
+because the Company are my help.” In a letter dated
+April 27, 1894, the Prime Minister of Sokoto repudiated
+any intention of treating “with any other from the white
+man’s country except with the Royal Niger Company,
+Limited.” Separate subsidies were also paid by “her
+Majesty’s representatives (the Niger Company)” to Gandu,
+as well as to the rulers of Nupe, Adamawa, and other important
+vassals of the Emir of Sokoto. That, at any rate,
+was a well-defined political relationship. By it the Royal
+Niger Company were able to secure this vast and populous
+country to Great Britain, and by it peace was, with the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_96"></a>[96]</span>
+exception of Nupe<a id="FNanchor_75" href="#Footnote_75" class="fnanchor">[75]</a> and Ilorin, preserved. Whatever may
+be said of the merits and demerits of the Royal Niger
+Company as an administrative body, it must be readily
+granted that a coherent policy was here applied, and that its
+results were, from the Imperial standpoint, exceedingly
+satisfactory. The nature of the bargain was precise. The
+Emir of Sokoto and his vassals conferred extensive rights
+upon England’s representatives and agreed to treat with no
+other country but England on the basis of a subsidy of
+£1500 per annum in the case of Sokoto, and sums varying
+in importance in the case of Sokoto’s vassals. The
+bargain was—according to the terms of the treaty—binding
+upon the Niger Company and its successors. The Emir of
+Sokoto kept to his share of it, and at a time when France
+endeavoured, through Colonel Monteil, to upset the Company’s
+treaty, the Emir loyally observed his obligations.<a id="FNanchor_76" href="#Footnote_76" class="fnanchor">[76]</a>
+The Company no less loyally observed theirs. It is
+humiliating to have to confess it, but the British Government
+has been less loyal than the Company, and less loyal
+than the African chief whose loyalty enabled England at a
+critical moment to uphold the claims of her representatives
+to political influence over Sokoto. The Crown, it seems,
+has declined to fulfil the obligations imposed on England
+by these treaties, while reaping to the full the advantages
+which the existence of the treaties confers. The first public
+intimation that the Imperial Government had broken faith
+with the Emir of Sokoto was made by the Rev. J. A. E.
+Richardson, already alluded to. His statement ran as
+follows: “The yearly payment in form of gifts which was
+made to the Emir of Sokoto by the Niger Company has not<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_97"></a>[97]</span>
+been continued by the Imperial Government, and quite
+recently the Emir flatly refused to allow the erection of a
+British telegraph line.” No official announcement has been
+made on the subject, nor has any member of Parliament
+taken the trouble to inquire. But there is not, I think, any
+doubt whatever that the Imperial Government has, in point
+of fact, done this thing. I have made careful inquiries in
+quarters likely to be well informed, and it seems that it was
+considered <i>infra dig.</i> for a Government to politically subsidise
+a West African chief. That is an extraordinary doctrine.
+Since when has it been considered <i>infra dig.</i> for Englishmen
+to keep their word with native potentates? Since when has
+it been thought a criterion of Imperial rule to show native
+rulers that England’s promise is not worth the paper upon
+which it is written? Is that what has been called the “new
+Imperialism”? Is it astonishing that the Emir of Sokoto
+should, in the face of such a repudiation of treaty obligations,
+“flatly refuse” to allow the erection of a telegraph-line
+or anything else? Is it not a terrible handicap upon
+the professed intentions of the most well-meaning administrator,
+to be confronted at the outset with so powerful a
+cause of native suspicion and hostility?</p>
+
+<p>Let us observe, for a moment, how the successive stages
+of British action on the Niger must appear to the native
+rulers of the country. We start off by saying that we have
+come to the country as merchants and nothing more, not as
+acquirers of land, but simply as traders. In 1870 the Emir
+of Nupe, Maroba, is found co-operating with Bishop Crowther—an
+earnest and godly man—to facilitate the operations
+of merchants at Lokoja. In 1884 Mr. Joseph Thomson is
+able, without any show of pomp or power, to induce the
+Emir of Sokoto, supreme ruler of the whole country, to
+sign a treaty of enormous importance, which practically
+amounts to a Protectorate, in exchange for a yearly subsidy.
+Sixteen years later a British Government ceases the subsidy,
+and follows up that performance by initiating a policy
+of active interference in the Emir’s dominions. As this
+costs money, the next step will very probably be that the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_98"></a>[98]</span>
+Emir and his subjects will be expected to contribute towards
+the up-keep of the Administration, and England, having
+agreed through her representatives to subsidise the Emir in
+return for advantages conferred, will end by making the
+Emir pay for permission to remain in his own country.
+“It seems really incredible,” remarked the <i>Morning Post</i>
+the other day, commenting upon the fighting with the Emir
+of Kontagora,<a id="FNanchor_77" href="#Footnote_77" class="fnanchor">[77]</a> “that a great Empire administering savage
+countries should have no other weapon save an appeal to
+arms.” It has other weapons, and the most potent of them is
+the one upon which the Indian Empire has been reared. That
+weapon may be described thus, “Keep to your plighted word.”</p>
+
+<p>The cause of the repeated military expeditions of which
+Northern Nigeria is the scene, is said to be slave-raiding.
+“Slave-raiding” is an evil which no one can possibly defend.
+It leads to great misery, to depopulation and devastation.
+Its agency is violence. To suppress it is the duty of every
+European Government. On those points there can be no
+difference of opinion. The difference comes in when the
+means adopted to do away with “slave-raiding” are examined.
+At present but one remedy has been devised and put into
+practice in Nigeria. It consists in opposing violence by
+violence. It has the merit of simplicity, but at best it is but
+a crude way of procedure, and its efficacy as a reforming
+agent is open to doubt. “The very foundation,” says Carl
+Schurz, “of all civilization consists in the dispensation of
+justice by peaceable methods, instead of the rule of brute
+force,” and he adds a sentence well worth thinking over:
+“Although a course of warlike adventure may have begun
+with the desire to liberate and civilise certain foreign
+populations, it will be likely to develop itself, unless soon
+checked, into a downright and reckless policy of conquest
+with all the criminal aggression and savagery such a policy
+implies.” It is impossible not to feel the force and the truth
+of this sentence when the history of British East Africa
+is studied. These “nigger hunts,” to use the term, not of a
+“deluded philanthropist” or “impracticable sentimentalist,”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_99"></a>[99]</span>
+two of the many choice epithets with which people who do
+not believe in the practical advantages of “nigger hunts”
+are consistently assailed, but of a specially gifted officer, have
+worked incalculable mischief, and have put back the hands
+of the clock for many years. “Some of the wars and the punitive
+expeditions of the past few years,” remarks Professor
+Gregory in his admirable and impartial work,<a id="FNanchor_78" href="#Footnote_78" class="fnanchor">[78]</a> “have been
+no doubt inevitable and just. They have been the ‘Cruel
+wars of peace.’ But some of the military expeditions in
+East Africa have been simply criminal in their folly and
+thoughtlessness.” Yet the Home Authorities defended all
+these expeditions, and covered the perpetrators of blunders
+with its sheltering wing, to the detriment not only of the
+general interests of the Empire, but of the efficiency of the
+public service, by discouraging officials who had a different
+conception of the duties of their position, but who saw, by
+experience, that to get up a row with the natives, to fight
+some brilliant action and get their “heroism” talked about,
+was the surest way to obtain promotion. That, I am afraid,
+is in West Africa also a motive power to advancement.</p>
+
+<p>In his report Sir Frederick Lugard shows that he is alive
+to the abuses which a too constant “appeal to arms” may
+give rise to, and how the designation of “slave-raiding”
+can be converted into a mere excuse to justify acts of
+injustice and oppression. “Though force,” he says, “must
+be occasionally applied to bands of recalcitrant robbers, I
+am convinced that a few such lessons will suffice, and that
+the district officer, with tact and patience, aided by sufficient
+civil police, can achieve the pacification of the country
+effectively, and that parsimony in the appointment of these
+officers, and of their native staff of police, &amp;c., would be a
+policy of false economy, resulting in unnecessary bloodshed.”
+And again, “It is my conviction that throughout Africa—East
+and West—much injustice and oppression have been
+unwittingly done by our forces acting on crude information,
+and accusations of slave-raiding, &amp;c., brought by enemies
+of the accused to procure their destruction.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_100"></a>[100]</span></p>
+
+<p>What is the genesis of this slave-raiding we hear so much
+about? In the first place, it must be obvious to all who
+have studied the history of inland Western Africa with any
+degree of attention, that a great deal of what is called
+“slave-raiding” is not “slave-raiding” at all, but military
+operations undertaken by the rulers of Mohammedan
+States for the suppression of risings against their authority,
+rendered weak by ineffective organisation, and by
+the absence of adequate means of communication. Sir
+Frederick Lugard has thrown useful light upon other
+circumstances which may lead to wrongful accusations of
+slave-raiding.<a id="FNanchor_79" href="#Footnote_79" class="fnanchor">[79]</a> But, taking the first case, how often may
+not an expedition entered upon by a Mohammedan Emir
+against his pagan subjects in West Africa be as justifiable,
+if reckoned by the same standard, as the chastisement of a
+tribe by the representatives of a European Power for resisting
+a tax enforced by that Power, and considered by the
+tribe excessive and unjust? The only fair and rational interpretation
+of slave-raiding, properly so-called, is the incursion
+of an armed band, without previous provocation of
+any kind, into a peaceful district, followed by the capture
+of a number of prisoners of war who are subsequently
+sold into slavery by the victors. That is a condition of
+affairs by no means peculiar to West Africa. It prevailed
+in Europe and in Great Britain at a period when civilisation
+was infinitely more advanced than it is at present in West
+Africa.</p>
+
+<p>The motive forces to which slave-raiding is due in Nigeria
+are: (1) economic necessities, or, in other words, the revenue
+needs of native rulers, requiring many prisoners of war
+who, as has been well said, serve the double purpose of
+cheque-book and beast of burden; (2) the incidental effect
+of conquest; (3) the direct incitement given to intertribal
+wars by white men on the West Coast of Africa for a
+period extending over several centuries, a system which,
+by the way, prevailed not farther back than slightly over
+fifty years ago on the Niger; witness Richardson’s and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_101"></a>[101]</span>
+Barth’s representations to the Government of the day.
+Those three causes are common to, or have been common
+to, West Africa as a whole. To them must be added, in
+the case of Northern Nigeria and other countries in West
+Africa converted to Islam by the sword, religious zeal.
+Let us take those causes severally one by one and examine
+them.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus10" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus10.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>A MOHAMMEDAN CHIEF AND HIS STANDARD-BEARER</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>With regard to the first, it must be patent to all who can
+look at the matter with unprejudiced eyes that, until native
+rulers in Northern Nigeria are able to count upon a source
+of revenue replacing that which they lose by the disappearance
+of raiding operations for slaves, and until a portable
+currency can be introduced into the country to take the
+place of the human currency—that is, slaves—the economic
+<i>raison d’être</i> of raids will remain; and that is why, apart
+from any other considerations, a subsidy to the native rulers
+on the part of the European “over-lord” cannot but prove
+itself an instrument for good, pending the slower but
+certain modifications which the creation of roads, railways,
+the development of trade which should ensue from their
+creation, and the introduction of an easily portable currency—such
+as silver coinage—cannot fail to bring with
+them. When in course of time such development takes
+place, matters should be so arranged that the rulers of the
+country benefit by the growth of trade in their respective
+districts, or, in other words, that a portion of the revenue
+derived by the Administration from trade in a given district
+should accrue to the ruler of that district, and be expended
+in the improvement of that district.</p>
+
+<p>In all communities where the ethical standard of the
+people has not been influenced by the Christian ideal, the
+enslavement of prisoners of war has existed from time
+immemorial. The moral standard of the Fulani Chieftains
+of to-day is not lower than that of Imperial Rome, and for
+many, many centuries after the tragedy of Golgotha, men
+enslaved one another in England and in Europe as the
+natural sequel to warfare.</p>
+
+<p>As for the heavy load of responsibility which England<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_102"></a>[102]</span>
+shares—and to a very large extent—with other Powers
+towards the native of West Africa in her actual <i>rôle</i> of
+inculcator of the higher principles of morality, it cannot
+too often be called to mind. It is not so very long ago—a
+mere nothing in the history of nations—that Englishmen
+hounded on these native chiefs against one another,
+supplied them with arms and ammunition, excited their
+fiercest passions, pandered to their worst vices, and all
+for what? To secure, under circumstances of cruelty more
+aggravated because more protracted, those very slaves
+which Englishmen to-day are but too ready to liberate,
+by killing the descendants of the chiefs who formerly
+supplied them with the objects of their desire!</p>
+
+<p>Religious fanaticism has ever been attended with outrages
+upon humanity, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly.
+In considering the case of the Fulani conquerors of Nigeria,
+we must, if we are just, recollect how relative good and
+evil are in matters of this kind, how dependent upon those
+hundred and one things which make up hereditary instincts
+and environment. Have the Fulani committed more atrocities
+than Christian Europe (although far behind Christian
+Europe of those days) perpetrated upon the Jews? Can
+we turn over the pages of Gibbon and condemn to the
+death penalty these wanderers in Darkest Africa, when we
+read of the deeds of Christians amid “civilised” surroundings,
+where art and crafts, the ease and luxuries of life,
+culture and refinement had reached, comparatively, so high
+a stage—a stage which West Africa had never known? Are
+the episodes of Saint Bartholomew and the persecutions of
+“bloody” Mary not vividly within our recollection? Do
+not the lessons of history suggest that “civilisation” would
+best fulfil its mandate, and rise to the level of its claims, by
+drawing upon an abundant store of patience in dealing with
+the evil of “slave-raiding” in Nigeria and elsewhere in
+West Africa? And if there be a fair prospect, as there
+undoubtedly is, of removing the causes, economical and
+otherwise, which produce slave raids, by peaceful methods,
+to employ the ways of peace rather than the sword, although<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_103"></a>[103]</span>
+the process be a slower one, we can have made but very few
+real strides in the last two thousand years if statesmanship be
+not equal to the task. This is sentimentalism, you will say.
+Well, it is easy to call names, but the following passage indicates,
+at least, that a British Government was not ashamed
+once upon a time to preach much the same doctrine:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“While you describe the power and wealth of your country, you will,
+in all your interviews with the African chiefs and with other African
+natives on the subject of the suppression of the slave trade, abstain
+carefully from any threat or intimidation that hostilities upon their
+territory will be the result of their refusal to treat.... You will allow
+for any hardness of feeling you may witness in them on the subject of
+the slave trade, a hardness naturally engendered by the exercise of that
+traffic, and in some cases increased by intercourse with the lowest and
+basest of Europeans. You will endeavour to convince them by courtesy,
+by kindness, by patience, and forbearance of your most persevering
+desire to be on good terms with them.”<a id="FNanchor_80" href="#Footnote_80" class="fnanchor">[80]</a></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>At what period, and under what circumstances, has this
+persevering desire to establish friendly terms, as a basis
+upon which to work to do away with the internal slave-trade
+of Nigeria by the exercise of courtesy, kindness,
+patience, and forbearance been consistently applied, or been
+given a fair chance? We should be hard put to it to supply
+even one instance, in a given district.<a id="FNanchor_81" href="#Footnote_81" class="fnanchor">[81]</a></p>
+
+<p>So much for the moral aspect of the question. There is
+another aspect to which the most unsentimental of mortals
+will not deny the attributes of severest practicability. I refer<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_104"></a>[104]</span>
+to the effect of these wars, nominally undertaken for the
+suppression of slave-raiding and the upsetting of priestly
+theocracies in West Africa, upon the well-being of the
+inhabitants and upon the prosperity of the Colonies themselves.
+Those who may be inclined to look into the matter
+may peruse with advantage that very able volume, “Ashanti
+and Jaman,” by Dr. Richard Austin Freeman, one time
+Assistant Colonial Surgeon and Anglo-German Boundary
+Commissioner of the Gold Coast.<a id="FNanchor_82" href="#Footnote_82" class="fnanchor">[82]</a> Sir Frederick Lugard in
+his report writes: “Already, with the removal of the fear of
+the Fulani, each petty village is claiming its ancient lands,
+or raiding those of its weaker neighbour, and interminable
+feuds are the result.” That passage entirely confirms Dr.
+Freeman’s opinion with regard to the forcible splitting up
+of the Ashanti confederation after the Wolseley expedition.
+The latter part of it is almost word for word that of a letter
+which lies before me at the present moment, and which I
+received from an Englishman in the Niger shortly after Sir
+George Goldie’s brilliant but inconclusive campaign against
+Nupe. “The whole country is confused”—wrote my correspondent—“the
+central authority having been suppressed;
+each man raids on his own.” In point of sober fact, almost
+every war waged in West Africa has a deteriorating effect,
+unless it be followed immediately by constructive action,
+which in the vast majority of cases is impossible owing to
+the vastness of the country. We read of a chief falling foul
+of the British Authorities and being deposed. If captured,
+he is marched off to the coast and deported; if he succeeds
+in escaping, the chances are he will rally some followers
+round him and prove a source of trouble for a considerable
+time. However that may be, he is at any rate replaced by
+some other individual who may or may not have, according
+to local custom, a right to the chieftainship. A resident
+with a small escort may or may not be left in the capital.
+Now, bearing in mind that in Nigeria a district over which
+a particular chief holds at least a nominal sway is sometimes
+as large as Wales or larger, no great amount of imagination<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_105"></a>[105]</span>
+is required to picture what but too often happens. Let us,
+for the sake of argument, consider Wales an inland kingdom,
+and imagine it under the feudal system, the King aided by
+his barons ruling the country, with many abuses no doubt,
+but still ruling it after a fashion and able to make his power
+felt. At a given moment the King quarrels with a neighbour.
+The neighbour enters the country, defeats the King’s armies,
+marches on the capital, captures it and the King together.
+The King is taken away a prisoner and the conqueror
+remains in the capital with a small force, ignorant of the
+language of the people, of their history, traditions, customs
+and laws. He will not be attacked because it is known that
+his soldiers possess weapons which kill easily at 300 yards,
+which mow down men in heaps, and which it is as futile to
+attempt to face as it is to stand against the roaring tornado
+hurtling through the forest. But for obvious reasons it is
+also known that he cannot effectively hold the country.
+Result number one: all semblance of authority within gun-shot
+of the capital has disappeared. Result number two:
+every ambitious baron develops schemes of aggrandisement,
+starts foraging in the property of his neighbours, who do
+ditto with religious unanimity; another party remains
+faithful to the deposed King and intrigues to get him back;
+another may take the part of the dummy appointed by the
+conqueror, presuming that step to have been adopted.
+Sequel: disorganisation, widening of area of disturbance,
+social chaos, impoverishment of the country.</p>
+
+<p>This is not, indeed, the exception but the rule in West
+Africa. The facts are on record. I have quoted two
+eminent authorities in specific instances and mentioned
+one other case. But the examples are numerous, and were
+it necessary one might amplify them considerably. Sometimes
+the effect is chiefly commercial, as in the case of
+Nana, ex-chief of Lower Benin.<a id="FNanchor_83" href="#Footnote_83" class="fnanchor">[83]</a> Since his removal after
+the war in that district the volume of trade has fallen considerably,
+which has been a bad thing, of course, all round,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_106"></a>[106]</span>
+from the point of view of both revenue and commerce.
+Speaking generally, the only logical outcome of a punitive
+expedition in West Africa is the replacing of what has been
+pulled down by something else which shall answer to the
+needs of the people in the same way, or a military occupation
+of every yard of the country. West Africa being what
+it is, the thing cannot be done, and the consequence of
+punitive expeditions in that part of the world, no matter
+what the motives, alleged or real, may have been, is ninety
+times out of every hundred reactionary, sterile, and morally
+destructive. Hence, whether it be a matter of slave-raiding
+or fetishism, or disputes about land, or difficulties about
+trade, punitive expeditions are things to be avoided, and the
+Administrator who avoids them is the type of man which
+West Africa needs most.</p>
+
+<p>A reference to the question of slave-raiding in Nigeria
+would be incomplete without mention being made of
+domestic slavery, or more properly termed domestic servitude.
+I remember assisting, not so long ago, at a lecture
+by a missionary on Northern Nigeria. With great impressiveness
+the lecturer announced that a large proportion,
+four-fifths I think he said, of Hausas in Nigeria are slaves.
+There was no doubt of the effect of the statement upon the
+audience, composed of benevolent, well-meaning people,
+who conjured up at once the most horrible visions. The
+mere enunciation of the fact, or alleged fact—because, from
+what I have been able to ascertain, the estimate is widely
+exaggerated—is calculated to horrify a public ignorant of
+the nature and characteristics of domestic slavery in West
+Africa, and there can be as little doubt that such is the
+deliberate and perfectly sincere intention of the individuals
+who make these bald statements, as that their after consequences
+upon the public mind are harmful. All are agreed
+that the intestine warfare which results in the capture of
+many prisoners and their conveyance over large distances
+always involves great hardships and sorrow, and very often
+fearful sufferings upon the victims. But the weight of
+evidence is decidedly against the supposition, still so widely<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_107"></a>[107]</span>
+entertained, that domestic slavery in West Africa is what
+the unscientific advocates of its hasty abolition, regardless
+of the obvious political objections to such a course, would
+have the public believe.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus11" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus11.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>MANDINGO MUSLIMS</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Nay more, while it may be fully admitted that a condition
+of servitude is indicative of a state of society which we
+happily have grown out of, and which in itself is essentially
+opposed to the moral law, no impartial student will be prepared
+to deny that the condition of tens of thousands of
+toilers in this country is infinitely worse than anything
+which prevails under the West African native system, where
+poverty at least is normally non-existent. The latter, it is
+true, are technically free, but to them actual freedom would,
+if exercised, lead to starvation pure and simple. They are
+bound in chains more enduring than any forged by native
+blacksmiths in Nigeria. The “White Slaves of England”
+was an appropriate title to a series of terrible articles published
+a short time ago in a popular London magazine, the
+absolute accuracy of which has since been acknowledged.
+“The West African slave”—a celebrated French explorer
+and administrator has said—“is not so unhappy as many
+people who live round us and whom <i>we will not see</i>.” That
+is the simple truth. Between the domestic servitude of
+Nigeria—where any form of paid labour is unknown as a
+native institution—and plantation slavery under European
+supervision there is all the difference in the world. Compared
+with the latter, the former is relative bliss. Degradation
+was the keynote of the one. The other permits and
+frequently leads to equality between the owner and the
+servant. Under the European system the slave was a dog
+and worse than a dog; under the West African system the
+slave is part and parcel of the social life of the people, a
+member, and not unfrequently an honoured member, of
+the family.<a id="FNanchor_84" href="#Footnote_84" class="fnanchor">[84]</a> With the second generation, the distinction<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_108"></a>[108]</span>
+between the owning and serving class in West Africa is less
+pronounced, and with the third generation, if it has not
+already been practically effaced, the distinction is simply
+theoretical. Slaves then own slaves of their own, while still
+theoretically remaining slaves themselves. Once a slave is
+incorporated in a household he usually remains a fixture, is
+decently treated, and, if his conduct is good, his material
+prosperity rapidly increases. It is the commonest thing in
+the world for a slave to rise high in his master’s favour, and
+even to hold lucrative and responsible positions. All the
+relations of domestic life in three-fourths of the Niger territories
+are based upon the system of domestic slavery, and
+there is no question which requires to be approached by the
+authorities with greater breadth of comprehension, with
+greater largeness of views, with a more sincere resolve to
+resolutely set aside all appeals, by whomsoever uttered, to
+bigotry, passion, or prejudice.</p>
+
+<p>The harm which hasty legislation tending to violently
+interfere with the entire social fabric of a people and with a
+custom centuries old entails cannot be exaggerated. It
+spells utter disorganisation, and has already worked incalculable
+mischief in the British West African possessions by
+destroying the authority and influence of the chiefs and
+breaking up the whole labour of the country. The lesson<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_109"></a>[109]</span>
+has been learned rather late in the day, and there is hope
+that it will bear fruit, but the influences on the side of error
+are very strong at home, and it never seems to occur to those
+amongst us whose profession in life is the inculcation of
+the moral virtues, that we have no greater right to destroy
+or abolish domestic slavery without compensation of some
+sort, if only that of substituting railway transport and portable
+currency in West Africa, than we had in the West Indies or
+in South Africa. Why should West Indian planters and
+Cape Colonists receive compensation for the loss of their
+slaves, and the African chief nothing—except bullets? The
+policy of the sword and the application of twentieth-century
+legislation to twelfth-century conditions, however good the
+intentions, are, in the main, Imperial mistakes, for which
+England may indirectly pay, but whom the present generation
+of natives and the generations which come afterwards
+do—and will—suffer in their persons. “It is understood”—cabled
+Reuter’s agent on the Binue on September 21, 1901,
+subsequent to the capture of Yola—“that Government will
+not interfere for the present with domestic slavery, the evil
+effects of such a policy being still felt in the provinces of
+Nupe and Ilorin. It upset the internal economy of the whole
+country, and the male slaves, instead of working on their
+master’s farms, became rogues and vagabonds, and the
+women something worse.” What a biting satire upon the
+notion that immemorial customs can be changed by a stroke
+of the pen without breeding disorder and social chaos! The
+question of domestic slavery in Nigeria may best be
+approached by once again recalling that great truth, “God’s
+design in the perfecting of man’s mind is evolutionary and
+not revolutionary.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_110"></a>[110]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE PRINCIPAL PRODUCTS OF NIGERIA</span></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The difficulty in estimating the producing capacity of the
+enormous territory of Nigeria is not in stating what <i>natural</i>
+products of economic value grow there, but what do not.
+Nigeria is the tit-bit of West Africa, and practically every
+form of vegetable growth peculiar to West Africa, or shared
+by West Africa with other and less favoured tropical portions
+of the globe, is to be found within its extensive limits. A
+soil of surpassing richness; numerous waterways, a prolific,
+industrious population—all the elements are there to
+make of Nigeria under wise management a second if smaller
+India, but an India unvisited by drought, or those fearful
+scourges which are so terrible a drawback to the internal
+prosperity of India; perchance a happier, richer India.</p>
+
+<p>With the exception of the oil-palm industry, everything
+is in its earliest stages in Nigeria. Development is
+rudimentary. Deducting palm oil and kernels, the value
+of the whole of Nigeria’s exports in 1900—the only year
+available—amounted to the relatively small sum of
+£212,457. Rubber, ivory, timber, ground-nuts, fibres,
+coffee, cocoa, gum copal and shea butter are amongst
+the other products exported. The white sweet-smelling
+flowers of the rubber vine are one of the commonest
+sights in the forests of Nigeria. The tree, shrub and vine
+rubber are all met with. The value of rubber exported
+from Nigeria in 1900 was £137,289. It may increase to
+almost any figure if the authorities will but take warning by
+the sad experience of Lagos, enlist a brigade of trained
+rubber-workers to instruct the chiefs in the science of
+collecting, and prevent—which they can easily do—grossly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_111"></a>[111]</span>
+adulterated rubber from leaving the country, and so preserve
+a high standard of quality, for, in the present sorry condition
+of the rubber market, low-class rubbers are almost unsaleable.
+Here, again, one is compelled to preach, if it be for
+the fiftieth time, co-operation between the officials and the
+merchants. In French Guinea, the evils of adulteration
+(for which, by the way, the merchants were, I am afraid,
+primarily responsible) have been successfully combated by
+a working partnership, so to speak. It is not necessary to
+impose restrictions upon the freedom of the native in collecting
+this product in his forests, but it is essential to
+maintain a <i>permanent</i> staff of native rubber-collecting
+instructors. It would cost very little, and the experiment,
+if patiently and intelligently pursued, would give magnificent
+results.</p>
+
+<p>Next in importance to rubber comes ivory, which, however,
+must be regarded as a temporary commerce. Almost
+the whole of the ivory trade of Nigeria hails from the Binue
+region, and for many years Yola was the principal buying
+depôt of the Niger Company, as much as forty tons being
+sometimes purchased there in the course of the year. The
+consequences of the Anglo-German Agreement of 1893 and
+the Franco-German Convention of 1894 are calculated to
+greatly diminish the trade. The ivory business is entirely
+in the hands of Hausa traders, who make, or used to make,
+most of their purchases in the famous markets of Banyo,
+N’Gaundere, and Tibati, carrying the teeth overland to the
+Binue and then conveying them across the river, to dispose
+of either at the Niger Company’s pontoon at Yola or
+factories at Ibi, Lake Bakundi, Lau, and Amageddi, or at
+Kano, where it was sold for cloth and found its way eventually
+to Europe, <i>viâ</i> the desert route and Tripolitan ports.
+This is still done, but, for the reason stated, the volume of
+trade is almost certain to diminish as the years go on.
+When the ivory is sold to the Niger Company, English
+manufactured cloths are purchased in exchange, and this
+again is bartered by the Hausa traders against the superior
+article of native make in Kano. Sometimes salt, tobacco,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_112"></a>[112]</span>
+copper-rods, and gunpowder are in request by the ivory
+traders, instead of cloth. It is always an open question
+with Hausa traders which pays them best, the single transaction
+if they sell direct at Kano, or the double transaction
+involved by sale to the Niger Company. The chief currency
+of these regions is now the cowry shell, and cowries have
+a native market price just like anything else; for example,
+a hundredweight of salt will equal 25 heads of cowries, or
+roughly 12<i>s</i>. 6<i>d</i>. When a tusk is brought to the factory it
+is weighed on a butchers’ steelyard. The tariff per pound
+is 10 heads of cowries. If the tusk weighs, say, 28 lb., it
+fetches 280 heads of cowries, about £7, or £560 per ton in
+barter goods, but the price actually paid for mixed ivory in
+the Binue has been under £500 per ton for many years
+past. The arrival of an ivory caravan is always the occasion
+for a great deal of excitement. Some of these caravans
+stretch over a mile in length. First comes the trader and
+his friends on horseback, followed by the trader’s wives
+and the various members of his household. Behind them
+come the slaves, weary and footsore (slaves of Hausas be it
+noted—not of Fulani), struggling under their valuable loads.
+The tusks are carried sometimes on the heads and sometimes
+upon the shoulders. Of course, these caravans can only
+travel in the dry season, for during the rains the long marches
+would be attended with enormous difficulty. There are
+plenty of tricks in the ivory trade, and our Hausa friend is
+very fond of putting heavy substances in the hollow of the
+tusks, knowing well that if he is undetected the increased
+weight will add to his profit. The Hausas call ivory “owry”<a id="FNanchor_85" href="#Footnote_85" class="fnanchor">[85]</a>
+and elephants “giwa.” They very often bring the flesh of
+the animal, which fetches higher prices in the native markets
+than beef or mutton.</p>
+
+<p>Gums, of which there exist many different kinds in Nigeria,
+also constitute a source of future riches. There is gum
+arabic (<i>Acacia senegalensis</i>) which oozes from the bark—much
+like sap from a venerable cherry—and the “copals”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_113"></a>[113]</span>
+found in solidified, translucent lumps, by digging at the
+roots of acacias, and which sometimes fetch as much as £80
+per ton on the European markets. Very beautiful some of
+these specimens are, varying in colour from pale lemon to
+deep orange-yellow, and clear as the finest amber. These
+graceful gum-trees form in many places a notable feature of
+Binue scenery, and abound in many parts of Bornu, and it
+is not an unusual circumstance for a Bornuese cavalcade,
+including several individuals wearing the old-world surcoats
+of chain armour which has so excited the interest and
+curiosity of travellers in that country, to arrive at a trading-station
+on the Upper Binue with a load of gum arabic for
+sale. The natives of Hamarua (Muri), too, are noted gum-collectors.
+As in the case of almost all Nigerian products,
+the absence of competition among European purchasers
+(the Niger Company, it must always be remembered, has
+been the sole trader in these regions) has hitherto prevented
+the natives from bringing in very large quantities of gum,
+and where ivory is to be got, it is hard to induce Hausas to
+go in for laborious gum collecting and picking. There can
+be little doubt whatever that the gum trade is susceptible
+of being increased to thousands of tons per annum. The
+supplies must be almost inexhaustive. After many years of
+assiduous collection, the Kauri pine forests of New Zealand
+still furnish 8,000 to 10,000 tons per annum of fossil gum,
+more or less similar to the West African “copals.” It can
+be said without fear of exaggeration that there are hundreds
+of thousands of tons of this valuable product in West Africa
+waiting to be dug up. One fine day the fact will be better
+realised than it is at present, and we may then expect to see
+a remarkable development in the product. Among other
+valuable trees freely growing in Nigeria, but of which the
+economic aspects have not yet been thoroughly studied, two
+at least deserve special attention. They are the Kedenia
+(Kedenya) or Shea-butter tree (<i>Butyrospermum</i> or <i>Bassia
+parkii</i><a id="FNanchor_86" href="#Footnote_86" class="fnanchor">[86]</a>—the <i>beurre de Karité</i> of the French), sometimes, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_114"></a>[114]</span>
+erroneously, called the tallow-tree, and the papain or paw-paw
+(<i>Carica papaya</i>). Shea butter has of late appeared as
+a regular if small export from the Niger.<a id="FNanchor_87" href="#Footnote_87" class="fnanchor">[87]</a> Large forests of
+it are to be found in the Lagos hinterland, and also in
+Dahomey, where the French hope to exploit it when their
+railway enters the zone of production. Shea butter fetches
+about £24 to £26 per ton in Europe. It contains certain
+medicinal properties of a purgative nature, I believe, and is
+said to form a component part of the well-known Elliman’s
+Embrocation. By the inhabitants of Nigeria the butter of
+the Kedenia is held in high esteem, and is put to a number
+of varied uses: medicinally, for cooking purposes, &amp;c. The
+Fulani dose their horses internally with it, and also rub it
+on the sores which the cumbrous high-peaked saddles of the
+country frequently produce on the backs of their steeds.
+The Kanuri, or Bornuese, use it to light their lamps with,
+and other tribes believe it to be a sure cure for rheumatism.
+There seems to be a possibility of the shea-butter tree being
+put to a second use; recent experiments have shown that
+the latex furnished by this tree contains properties similar
+to gutta-percha.<a id="FNanchor_88" href="#Footnote_88" class="fnanchor">[88]</a> The butter- or tallow-tree (<i>Pendatesma
+butyracæ</i>), which is often confounded with the shea-butter
+tree, is an entirely different tree, belonging to the genus
+<i>Guttifera</i>, whereas the shea butter is of the genus <i>Sapotacæ</i>.
+The French appear to have been the first to make any
+economic use of this tree, and for the first time last year,
+when a trial shipment of nuts was forwarded from Conakry
+to Marseilles by the leading French firm of merchants in
+the former place. The nuts when crushed were found to
+yield a valuable oil possessing ingredients which render it
+particularly applicable for the manufacture of candles.
+That wise and brilliant administrator, the late Dr. Ballay,
+Governor-General of French West Africa, left a legacy of
+priceless worth behind him in the shape of officials reared
+in his school and imbued with his sentiments, and M.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_115"></a>[115]</span>
+Cousturier, the present very able Governor of French Guinea,
+has taken up this subject of the tallow-tree nut—“lamy” as
+it is called—most energetically, in co-operation with the
+council of merchants established in that Colony. My latest
+information on the subject is that further shipments of
+“lamy” nuts from French Guinea have taken place to
+Marseilles, Hamburg, and Bremen, and that the prospects
+of disposing of the nuts to seed-crushers at remunerative
+prices is assured. It remains to be seen whether the nut
+can be produced in adequate quantities in French Guinea.
+I have not been able to positively ascertain whether the
+tallow-tree occurs in Nigeria, but there is every probability
+that it does, and if so, it will be another vegetable product
+of value to be added to Nigeria’s long list.<a id="FNanchor_89" href="#Footnote_89" class="fnanchor">[89]</a></p>
+
+<p>Seldom is it that on village market-days in Nigeria the
+golden pear-shaped fruit of the <i>paw-paw</i> does not appear
+for sale. The natives look upon paw-paw fruit in the
+double light of a delicacy and article of considerable utility.
+The juicy milk of the fruit, and the large, handsome leaves
+contain the singular property of making hard meat tender,
+a peculiarity which has given rise to many “travellers’ tales”
+on the coast. The toughest steak is rendered soft and
+agreeable to the palate by being rubbed with the juice of
+the paw-paw, or wrapped round in its leaves. The active<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_116"></a>[116]</span>
+principle of the dried juice of the paw-paw is somewhat
+akin in nature to pepsin, and is regularly used as a substitute
+for the latter in France and Germany. So far, the
+demand is small, but there seems every likelihood that it
+will increase. In connection with the future development
+of the paw-paw in Nigeria, it is interesting to note that a
+small factory for the preparation of pepsin from this fruit
+has been established within recent years in the Island of
+Montserrat. In addition to the trees already mentioned,
+the kola (<i>Sterculia acuminata</i>, sometimes termed the <i>Sterculia
+cola</i>), the gutta-percha, the giant baobab (<i>Adansonia
+digitata</i>) or monkey bread-fruit tree, and the bamboo palm
+(<i>Raphia vinifera</i>) must be briefly touched upon. The kola-nut
+is to the Fulani, the Hausa, the Kanuri, the Songhay,
+&amp;c., what coffee is to the Arab and opium to the Chinese—a
+never-failing panacea. So indispensable is the kola to the
+daily existence of the native of Northern Nigeria, so
+enormous the demand, that the Hausa journeys thousands
+of miles to the districts of the Niger bend (the Gold Coast
+hinterland chiefly), and even to the Gambia hinterland and
+the valley of the Senegal, to barter his blue cottons for this
+much-sought-after fruit. European science will, no doubt,
+eventually succeed in so improving the quality of the Nigerian
+kola as to make these long journeys yearly less necessary.
+Kola plantations should then become a lucrative feature of
+Nigerian industry.</p>
+
+<p>Gutta-percha is as valuable an article of commerce, and
+as greatly in demand for European manufactures, as rubber
+itself. In Nigeria gutta-percha is collected immediately the
+rainy season is over, the sap at that time of year flowing
+more freely from the tree. In coagulating, the milk assumes
+a reddish tinge.</p>
+
+<p>The baobab has been aptly termed the monarch of the
+African vegetable kingdom. From the bark of the <i>kuka</i>, as
+the Hausas call it, excellent ropes and strings for musical
+instruments are fashioned, while the fruit, when crushed
+and dried, furnishes the natives with an excellent substitute
+for sponges.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp61" id="illus12" style="max-width: 35.9375em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus12.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>A BAOBAB<br>
+  <span class="smcap">The Giant of West African Flora</span></p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_117"></a>[117]</span></p>
+
+<p>Vast groves of the bamboo palm (<i>R. vinifera</i>) exist in
+many parts of Southern Nigeria, and although but little
+utilised at present, experiments have demonstrated that the
+fibre derived from the branches of this palm is capable of producing
+an excellent and durable bass<a id="FNanchor_90" href="#Footnote_90" class="fnanchor">[90]</a> somewhat similar in
+quality to that which is obtained from the allied spices, the
+<i>Raffia ruffia</i> of Madagascar, the demand for which on the
+European market is already extensive.</p>
+
+<p>Date palms, dum palms, and cocoa-nut palms, lemons,
+bananas, plantains, sweet potatoes, yams, sugar-cane, hemp,
+tobacco, benni seed,<a id="FNanchor_91" href="#Footnote_91" class="fnanchor">[91]</a> pepper, cassada, castor seed, capaiva—Nigeria
+produces all these in more or less abundance,
+according to the locality, and also ground-nuts and large
+quantities of capsicums (red pepper). The valuable indigo
+plant is widely cultivated by Hausas and Fulani, and Kano
+owes much of its wealth to the dyeing industry carried on
+by the natives. The native-woven Kano cloth, dyed a deep
+indigo blue, is renowned all over Northern, Western and
+Central Africa. With European skill, the cultivation of
+indigo in Nigeria may possibly have a future before it,
+although the present outlook is not encouraging.</p>
+
+<p>The cotton shrub grows luxuriantly in Northern Nigeria,
+and the cloth manufactured from it by the natives can
+favourably compare, for durability and fineness of texture,
+with the best Manchester article. There may yet be a great
+cotton industry in Nigeria, but the subject of cotton cultivation
+in West Africa is sufficiently large to justify a special
+chapter.</p>
+
+<p>Ebony, mahogany and other valuable cabinet woods
+abound in the enormous untapped forests of Southern
+Nigeria, and if no peddling restrictions are placed upon the
+development of the timber industry, it should reach large
+proportions. Sapelli is beginning to have some importance
+as the foremost port of shipment for Southern Nigeria timber.</p>
+
+<p>Nigeria also produces cereals in plenty, such as maize or<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_118"></a>[118]</span>
+Indian corn, millet, rice, barley, guinea corn, gero, &amp;c., and
+on the high plateaux coffee, tea, and perhaps vanilla could
+be grown.</p>
+
+<p>As far as minerals are concerned, silver,<a id="FNanchor_92" href="#Footnote_92" class="fnanchor">[92]</a> tin, antimony
+and stone potash<a id="FNanchor_93" href="#Footnote_93" class="fnanchor">[93]</a> are known to exist in several parts of
+Nigeria, but none of them, save the latter, have been
+worked. When the country has been better explored and
+surveyed, gold and copper may also be found (small quantities
+of gold dust are sometimes sold by the Kanuri to
+Fezzan and Ghadamseen merchants), but their presence in
+any extent is at present problematical.</p>
+
+<p>Tin is known to exist up the Binue, and an English Syndicate
+has been formed to explore and report upon the tin-bearing
+possibilities of certain districts. The Niger Company
+are about to start prospecting operations, and the
+Germans are also said to be studying the same subject at
+Garua.</p>
+
+<p>Such, briefly enumerated, are the chief natural products
+of Nigeria, the most fertile and prolific portion of the
+Central African Continent, towards which has gravitated
+a commercial movement from north, east and west for
+centuries past. Such eminent authorities, in their respective
+ways, as Barth, Nachtigal, Monteil, Thomson, &amp;c., speak in
+terms of unbounded admiration of the fruitfulness and the
+beauty of these regions, and all the information brought
+by travellers and explorers of lesser importance only tends
+to confirm the assertion of the great geographer Reclus,
+that the countries of the Chad Basin are the richest in
+Africa.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_119"></a>[119]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV<br>
+<span class="smaller">RUBBER-COLLECTING IN NIGERIA</span></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I have already briefly alluded to the vegetable products of
+Nigeria. The collection of rubber, however, presents many
+features of interest, and deserves more extended treatment.</p>
+
+<p>Of late years the West African rubber industry has grown
+enormously. In some cases the increase has been phenomenal.
+The Niger Coast Protectorate and the Gold Coast
+have within the space of six years more than doubled their
+rubber exports. The performance of Lagos has been still
+more remarkable, although unfortunately the wastefulness,
+or perhaps it would be fairer to say the lack of scientific
+knowledge on the part of the natives in tapping the trees and
+vines, has led to a notable falling off in production during
+the last three years. It seems evident that Western Africa
+may in time rival Brazil as the rubber-producing country of
+the world.</p>
+
+<p>The rubber found in West Africa is of various kinds. The
+place of honour, so far as our own Colonies are concerned,
+may be given to the rubber-tree properly so-called, <i>Kickxia
+Africana</i> (the “Ere” or “Ireh” of the natives), and a beautiful
+tree it is, springing up clean and smooth to a height of
+sixty feet. Then come various species of <i>Ficus</i>, and last,
+but not least, the <i>Landolphias</i>, or rubber-vines.</p>
+
+<p>In Nigeria rubber is found, roughly speaking, from
+Abutshi, 120 miles up the river Niger, as far as Jebba on the
+Niger and Yola on the Binue. We will suppose that a
+rubber-collecting expedition has been decided upon by the
+inhabitants of some village fifteen or twenty miles from the
+river side (rubber in Nigeria is scarce on the actual river
+banks).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_120"></a>[120]</span></p>
+
+<p>Soon after dawn all the available men and women gather
+together—a light-hearted, jabbering crowd. Extraordinary
+animation reigns throughout the village. The ground is
+strewn with the implements necessary to the rubber-collector’s
+art, and with the victuals essential to the sustenance of
+his body while the work is being pursued. They include
+such varied articles as calabashes, “matchets,” knives, dried
+yam in bags, and fresh water in bottles which once contained
+that delectable, throat-peeling liquid known as Hamburg
+gin. Mingled with them, in apparently hopeless confusion,
+numerous spears and flint-lock guns lie scattered. There is
+generally something or other on the prowl in an African
+forest in the shape of leopards, or “humans,” or spirits—and
+it is just as well to be prepared for any emergency.
+Hence these warlike accompaniments, calculated to deceive
+the inexperienced into a belief that raiding and not rubber
+is in question.</p>
+
+<p>Through the village and beyond it, passing plantations of
+millet, yams, Indian corn and cassava, winds the caravan,
+until the fringe of the forest looms near. Then, abruptly
+parting with the bright sunlight and the waving fields, we
+plunge headlong into an atmosphere of gloomy, fantastic
+weirdness, and disappear amid the silent shadows of the
+giant trees. By this time the caravan is reduced to single-file
+formation. It has stretched out for a mile or more along
+the narrow curling path, which often takes the form of an
+almost complete circle, those who compose its extreme rear
+being within hailing distance of the leaders, while between
+the two extremities and the centre is a broad belt of impenetrable
+bush. And what a solemnity broods over all!
+Everything is hushed. The bare feet of the natives sink
+noiselessly on generations of fallen, rotting leaves. The air
+is damp, humid, and enervating. We glide along in the
+semi-religious light as though oppressed by some vast, undefined,
+awesome presence. It is a world of great black
+shadows and mysterious depths; and within it the soul
+shrinks and falters beneath a weight of indescribable, all-potent,
+unnerving melancholy. A hot breath, laden with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_121"></a>[121]</span>
+sickly and overpowering perfume, rises in stifling gusts till
+the brain reels, and you long with a great yearning for air
+and light and waving fields. And then, suddenly, a glimpse
+of Paradise. Shattered by lightning, or perchance, riddled
+by the larvæ of some monstrous coleoptera, a forest giant
+has tumbled headlong, tearing by the impetus of his fall a
+great rent in the sombre dome above, through which, though
+chastened and subdued, the sun’s rays filter down upon the
+path beneath. There, in that temporary clearing, Nature
+seems to have lavished all her gifts. Festoons of glorious
+orchids stretch out their capricious blooms, asking to be
+plucked. The wild tamarind, with its exquisite, plum-coloured,
+plush-like fruit, invites the touch. Round flowers
+and fruit flutter countless brilliantly coloured butterflies,
+and the glimpse of a deep tropical blue, far, far overhead,
+completes the fairy sight. No palm-fringed oasis among
+shifting sands can be more blessed to the traveller than these
+gem-like clearings amid the sullen gloom of the tropical
+forests of Western Africa.</p>
+
+<p>But to return, with apologies for this digression, to our
+rubber-collectors. No sooner has the member of a caravan—every
+one acts, as a rule, independently of his fellow—pitched
+upon a spot which seems propitious, than down
+comes the load off his head. A little preliminary in the
+shape of refreshment is ever conducive to good labour, so recourse
+is had to the <i>ci-devant</i> gin-bottle and the dried yams.
+These inner cravings having been satisfied, the rubber-collector
+makes with his “matchet” a number of transverse
+incisions in the bark of an adjacent rubber-tree, or vine,<a id="FNanchor_94" href="#Footnote_94" class="fnanchor">[94]</a>
+as the case may be; hangs his calabashes (empty gourds)
+beneath the cruel rent, sees that the sap is running; looks
+round for more trees, makes more incisions, hangs up more
+calabashes; and then, feeling fully satisfied with his labours,
+casts himself down upon the ground and lies there awhile,
+heedless of the crawling legions of the insect fraternity.
+Every now and then he will lazily rise and make the round<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_122"></a>[122]</span>
+of the trees he has tapped, to assure himself that the sap is
+flowing freely into the calabashes. A really good workman
+will collect three or four pounds of rubber a day, so that,
+taking an average of, say, two pounds for each individual, a
+caravan numbering one hundred and fifty souls will gather
+a considerable quantity of the stuff in a comparatively short
+time. The sap is then boiled in an iron pot to make it
+coagulate, salt and lime being sometimes added to help the
+process of solidification. It is then rolled into balls. When
+the calabashes are full the homeward march begins.</p>
+
+<p>The home-coming of the caravan is marked by congratulations
+on the part of those who stayed behind, and every
+proud owner of a calabash or two of rubber recounts to the
+members of an admiring household the wild and terrible
+adventures (in the shape of spooks, leopards, and what not)
+which have befallen him in the forest.</p>
+
+<p>The last stage in the business, so far as the native is concerned,
+has then to be carried out. The rubber having been
+collected, it must be sold. So off goes the collector to the
+nearest trading station with the spoil. Now, if the commercial
+ways of the Heathen Chinee are dark, the ways of the
+Heathen son of Ham are much the same on occasion. The
+rubber, he knows, is bought by weight. Primitive reasoning
+convinces him that if he rolls his rubber round a stone or
+bullet, not only will the ball weigh more, but he will be able
+to make more balls out of the rubber he has collected. The
+consequence is that the European trader, when he cuts the
+rubber ball in two (being used to these little pranks), frequently
+comes across a stone, bullet, or other heavy substance
+embedded in the centre, to the unbounded astonishment,
+needless to remark, of our friend the collector,
+who cannot for the life of him understand who placed
+it there, and asserts, with much emphasis and gesticulation,
+that only a ju-ju or spirit of the most depraved
+character could have played an honest man so low-down a
+trick.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus13" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus13.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>WASHING RUBBER</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>When the rubber has finally passed into the white trader’s
+hands, after the preliminary native preparation, it is still<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_123"></a>[123]</span>
+found to contain a large proportion of water (about 10<a id="FNanchor_95" href="#Footnote_95" class="fnanchor">[95]</a> per
+cent.) and emits a most disagreeable odour. This water has
+to be ejected before the rubber is fit for the European
+market. The balls or cakes are therefore placed in a pressing
+machine, resembling an ordinary mangle, then cleaned of
+the impurities which may still remain, and finally cut into
+strips, soaked in sea-water to prevent “sweating,” and
+shipped in wooden casks.<a id="FNanchor_96" href="#Footnote_96" class="fnanchor">[96]</a></p>
+
+<p>The rubber trade of Nigeria is only in its infancy, and the
+advent of competitive private enterprise into the Niger
+territories should have the effect of stimulating the industry
+to a notable extent.</p>
+
+<p>The unfortunate destruction of the rubber trees and vines
+in the Lagos forests has been instrumental in producing a
+<i>furor</i> of restrictive legislation on the part of the authorities.
+There is grave doubt as to whether this method of approaching
+the subject is not mistaken and likely to defeat its own
+ends. It is incongruous, to say the least of it, to first of all
+encourage the native to exploit a new product, to give him
+no scientific instruction or training in the process, and then,
+when the inevitable happens, to express great indignation at
+his villainous capacity for mischief, and frame legislation
+calculated to interfere with his free use of his own property!
+It is not the general custom of the native to destroy a product
+out of which he makes money. In the case of the oil-palm,
+in the usage of which they have been long accustomed,
+the native chiefs themselves legislate against over-tapping,
+witness the “porroh” of the Mendis. It is a matter of instruction.
+It is notorious that the crisis in the Lagos rubber
+industry is entirely attributable to the gross foolishness displayed
+by the authorities in the first instance in not taking
+the necessary means to teach the natives the art of rational
+production. What is wanted is the creation of small centres
+of instruction in every district, where the natives could come
+for information, where various products could be shown,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_124"></a>[124]</span>
+tested and commented upon. The official in charge would
+have no powers whatever conferred upon him in a political
+sense, but would be connected, of course, with the Government.
+His duty would be that of instructor, supervisor,
+guide, and assistant. He would certainly be welcomed by
+the chiefs, so long as they were assured that his <i>rôle</i> was
+entirely divorced from political designs. The experience
+would cost very little, and the benefits accruing therefrom,
+both as regards the perfecting of existing native industries
+and the stimulation of new ones, would be considerable, and
+would do away with the necessity, or alleged necessity, of
+subsequent legislation of an irritating character. A little
+more of that sort of thing and a little less blood-letting and
+“murder of native institutions,” as Miss Kingsley used to
+put it, in order to improve them, would be very desirable.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_125"></a>[125]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE FULANI IN NIGERIA</span></h3>
+
+<p>“Remember that Paradise is found under the shadow of swords. These
+wretches are come to fight for an impious cause. We have called them into
+the right way, and to reward us they threaten us with arms. Meet this attack
+with courage and be certain of victory for the Prophet has said, ‘Even if a
+mountain is guilty against another mountain, it is swallowed up in the
+earth.’”—The speech of <span class="smcap">Othman</span>, the Fulani conqueror of Hausa, to his
+soldiers on the outbreak of war.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>“The King of Gober took many of their cows. The Phulas
+said nothing. He returned again to seize their cows. The
+Phulas said, ‘Is it right on us to take vengeance?’ But
+the King of Gober took some of their cows and returned
+them to them, saying, ‘Let there be peace between us; you
+leave this place and return to some place near me.’ They
+replied they would not go. In the morning he commenced
+fighting with them, with one thousand horse soldiers to seize
+the Phulas; but they drove him back with great force. From
+that time he did not make open war with them again; but
+he brought poison, put it into the water, and all who did
+drink of it died. After this the Phulas made war with him,
+and when they had conquered his people, they caught many
+of them and made them slaves; in this way it was that the
+Phulas got possession of Gober. In the same way it was
+that they sent their people to all parts of Hausa and fought
+with the Pagans.”<a id="FNanchor_97" href="#Footnote_97" class="fnanchor">[97]</a> Thus does a native version explain the
+origin of the great Fulani uprising in the Hausa States in the
+early part of last century which started a great wave of
+Muslim conquest, sweeping southwards from the Chad
+Basin almost to the ocean. “We will dip the Koran in the
+sea,” swore the conquering host of white-clad horsemen, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_126"></a>[126]</span>
+but for the concentration of the agricultural Yorubas, which
+checked their advance and led to their overthrow, by a night
+surprise, outside the walls of Osogbo,<a id="FNanchor_98" href="#Footnote_98" class="fnanchor">[98]</a> they would have fulfilled
+their vow.</p>
+
+<p>The story of the Fulani revolution—misnamed by some
+“invasion”—in Hausa has been often told, sometimes correctly,<a id="FNanchor_99" href="#Footnote_99" class="fnanchor">[99]</a>
+sometimes with obvious bias against the reformers,
+and <i>minus</i> several important facts, such, for instance, as the
+co-operation which the revolutionists sought and found
+among the Hausas themselves. To describe it once again
+would be superfluous. Suffice it to say that “victims of persecution,”
+as their own records assert and as Barth confirms,
+and as we are at least as warranted in believing as those
+other accounts which make them out to be the oppressors
+rather than the oppressed; in much the same position of
+social and political inferiority to men whose intellectual
+superiors they are, as their compatriots find themselves
+to-day in Borgu, the pastoral Fulani of Northern Nigeria,
+remembering the performances of other of their brethren
+when similarly situated, and acting under the influence of
+their mallam Zaky, or Othman Dan Fodio, to give him his
+European appellation, flung aside the crook, took to the
+sword, and with the name of “Allah” on their lips completely
+subjugated in a few short years the mutually antagonistic
+Hausa States, made themselves masters of the
+principal cities, converted the natives to Islam, and so ably
+and justly administered the country,<a id="FNanchor_100" href="#Footnote_100" class="fnanchor">[100]</a> that, in Clapperton’s
+words, “The whole country, when not in state of war, was so
+well regulated that it was a common saying that a woman
+might travel with a cask of gold upon her head, from one
+end of the Fellatah<a id="FNanchor_101" href="#Footnote_101" class="fnanchor">[101]</a> dominions to the other.”<a id="FNanchor_102" href="#Footnote_102" class="fnanchor">[102]</a>
+    From cattle<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_127"></a>[127]</span>
+rearers and herdsmen the Fulani temporarily became warriors,
+administrators and statesmen, a minority retaining these
+attributes to this day, while the bulk of the people continue
+their usual avocations. Their capacity for combination
+enabled them to overcome the Hausa States, perpetually
+engaged in intestine quarrels; their statesmanship induced
+them to foster and encourage the caravan trade with the
+Tripolitan ports; their administrative genius was observable
+in a hundred ways, not the least in obtaining their revenue
+by the maintenance of existing forms of taxation.<a id="FNanchor_103" href="#Footnote_103" class="fnanchor">[103]</a> Their
+intense religious zeal has been so communicative that the
+Hausas have never even fractionally relapsed into Paganism.<a id="FNanchor_104" href="#Footnote_104" class="fnanchor">[104]</a>
+When we contemplate the achievements of the Fulani in
+Nigeria we are lost in wonder, and there is no difficulty in
+endorsing what Sir Frederick Lugard has said of them—and
+what many French administrators and officers have said
+before him—“they are born rulers and incomparably above
+the negroid tribes in ability.” What potent allies these men
+can be to the wise administration which makes use of their
+services in Western Africa, which gains their confidence and
+enlists their sympathies!</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus14" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus14.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>FULANI SWORD</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>The wholesale manner in which the Fulani have succeeded
+in stamping their individuality upon the races with
+whom they have come in contact is astonishing. Everywhere
+in their wonderful <i>trek</i> from east to west, and from
+west to south, from the valley of the Senegal to the valley of
+the Binue, new and more virile generations have sprung up
+beneath their fertile tread, destined in the course of time to
+found for themselves separate kingdoms, almost to become<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_128"></a>[128]</span>
+separate nationalities. Thus in Futa Jallon, that mountainous
+region abounding in the fine cattle the Fulani themselves
+introduced in the sixteenth or seventeenth centuries, and
+which before the French occupation supplied the Freetown
+markets with fresh meat, we find the Fulani powerfully
+affecting the ethnic elements of the country by their unions
+with the indigenous Jalonkes and Mandingoes. In Senegambia,
+a well-nigh distinct race has arisen in the Tukulors,
+Fulani crossed with Joloff and Mandingo. Hausas and
+Kanuri of Bornu, Tuareg of the southern confederations,
+and Susus from the Northern Rivers<a id="FNanchor_105" href="#Footnote_105" class="fnanchor">[105]</a> have all received an
+infusion of Fulani blood. And yet the pure Fulani element
+has preserved itself, and while absorbing countless tribes
+and becoming itself greatly modified in certain districts, has
+succeeded in perpetuating the parent strain which has never
+been absorbed.<a id="FNanchor_106" href="#Footnote_106" class="fnanchor">[106]</a> At the present time may be found, scattered
+throughout the Western Sudan, in the Futa Jallon
+highlands, and in the regions abutting upon Lake Chad—in
+Adamawa notably—the same type of nomadic herdsmen,
+refined, hospitable and courteous in demeanour, simple and
+patriarchal in his habits, with clear-cut features and copper-coloured
+or olive-tinged complexion, who tended his hump-backed
+cattle and roman-nosed sheep a thousand years ago
+in the oasis of Tuat and the plains round Timbuctoo. And
+by his side, his wives, rejoicing in a greater degree of liberty
+and authority in the household than any of their African
+sisters, with the charm of another land upon them, soft-eyed,
+spice-loving daughters of the East, from whence they came
+in those dim and distant days shrouded in impenetrable
+mist.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp53" id="illus15" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus15.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>PURE-BRED FULANI GIRL, ADAMAWA</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>The history of the Fulani is not confined to Nigeria.
+Their rise to power in the old Hausa States, and the foundation
+of the Sokoto Empire is, as we have seen, quite a modern
+event, and it is only partially accurate to say that their
+dominating influence in inland Western Africa dated from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_129"></a>[129]</span>
+the Jihad of Othman. The latter’s successes certainly inspired
+the Fulani (but perhaps more especially the cross
+races of Fulani blood) west of the Niger to warlike deeds.
+The Fulani revolution in Hausa was followed by the Fulani
+uprising in Segu against the pagan Bambarras and Soninkes.
+Timbuctoo fell into their power in 1826. Mohammed Lebo
+started a crusade in Massina, directed as much against the
+pagans as against his co-religionists and compatriots, for
+their lack of zeal and the impurities which had crept into
+their religious observances. After Mohammed Lebo, the
+great Tukulor chief, El-Haji-Omar, a man of remarkable
+ability, belonging to the fanatical sect of the Tijaniyah,
+gathered an immense host around him, by means of which
+he waged war on all and sundry, showing particular
+animosity towards the parent stock from which he sprang.
+But his religious zeal was untempered by political purpose,
+his constructive powers appear to have been small, he fought
+entirely for his own hand, and his collision with and subsequent
+defeats by the French resulted in the revolt of those
+who had suffered from his excesses. It is a curious fact
+that he should have finally been driven to desperation and
+suicide, and his power extinguished, by the Fulani themselves,
+notwithstanding the ties of blood which bound them
+to the Tukulors, from among whom Omar naturally obtained
+most of his recruits. Nevertheless, El-Haji-Omar is still a
+name to conjure with in the Western Sudan, and other
+adventurers of his type have from time to time given the
+French a deal of trouble. But the Fulani had been masters
+in a considerable portion of Western Africa long before
+Othman raised his standard in Gober of Hausa. In the
+next chapter endeavour will be made to search the earliest
+records throwing light upon the presence of the Fulani
+in Western Africa. This will help us to approach the
+problem of the origin of a race which constitutes the ruling
+factor in the foremost, in point of size and importance, of
+the British Protectorates in West Africa.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_130"></a>[130]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE FULANI IN WEST AFRICAN HISTORY</span></h3>
+
+<p>“In every kingdom and country on each side of the river there are some
+people of a tawny colour called Pholeys.... They live in hoards or clans,
+build towns, and are not subject to any kings of the country, though they live
+in their territories: for if they are ill-treated in one nation they break up their
+towns and remove to another. They have chiefs of their own, who rule with
+so much moderation that every act of government seems rather an act of the
+people than of one man.... They plant near their houses tobacco, and all
+round their towns they open for cotton, which they fence in together; beyond
+that are their corn-fields, of which they raise four kinds.... They are the
+greatest planters in the country, though they are strangers in it. They are
+very industrious and frugal, and raise more corn and cotton than they consume,
+which they sell at a reasonable price, and are very hospitable and kind
+to all; so that to have a Pholey town in the neighbourhood is by the natives
+reckoned a blessing.... As they have plenty of food, they never suffer any
+of their own nation to want; but support the old, the blind, and lame equally
+with the others; and, as far as their ability goes, assist the wants of the
+Mandingoes, great numbers of whom they have maintained in famines.”—<span class="smcap">Francis
+Moore</span> on the Fulani of the Gambia (1734).</p>
+
+<p>“A race in which self-reliance and colonising instincts are prominently
+developed. Education and mental training are carefully attended to. In
+every town and village are men who devote themselves to the instruction of
+youth. Nearly every man and woman can at least read Arabic. Under the
+enlightened rule of Alimami Ibrahim Suri, life is held in reverence, property
+is sacred, robbery committed in the highway is punishable with death....
+There is a woman in Timbo who knows the whole of the Moallaket by heart,
+an accomplishment in Semitic lore which many an Oriental scholar in Europe
+might envy.”—<span class="smcap">Dr. Blyden</span> on the Fulani in Futa-Jallon.</p>
+
+<p>“They occupy a high place in the scale of intelligence.”—<span class="smcap">Baikie</span> on the
+Fulani of Northern Nigeria.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The earliest mention we have of an Empire existing in West
+Africa is contained in the <i>Tarik</i>,<a id="FNanchor_107" href="#Footnote_107" class="fnanchor">[107]</a> a history of the Western
+Sudan, written in the seventeenth century by one Abderrahman
+ben Abdallah ben Imran ben Amir Es-Sa’di, and
+apparently ascribed by Barth in error to the celebrated
+<i>savant</i> of Timbuctoo, Ahmed Baba. That Empire was the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_131"></a>[131]</span>
+Empire of Ghanata, so called from its capital Ghana, which
+has been identified with Walata or Biru. The spread of the
+Empire was enormous and extended to the Atlantic, embracing
+the valleys of the Senegal and the Gambia. Ghana
+was situate in the central province of the Empire, by name
+Baghena, the modern Bakunu according to Commandant
+Binger. The <i>Tarik</i> states that twenty-two kings had reigned
+in Ghanata prior to the Hejira. Barth approximated the
+foundation of Ghanata to 300 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> It was attacked and
+defeated in the eighth century<a id="FNanchor_108" href="#Footnote_108" class="fnanchor">[108]</a> by a Berber tribe (Zanaga,
+Senhaja?), the invaders subsequently succumbing, at what
+period is obscure, to the Mandingoes—or Mandingo-Fulani,
+<i>i.e.</i> Tukulors—who from its ruins constructed another
+Empire which grew to even larger proportions, that of Melli,
+Melle,<a id="FNanchor_109" href="#Footnote_109" class="fnanchor">[109]</a> or Mali, as it is variously spelt. Who were the
+original founders of the Ghanata or Walata Empire?</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus16" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus16.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>FULANI CHIEF—FUTA JALLON</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Dr. Robert Brown, in his most admirable edition of Pory’s
+translation of Leo,<a id="FNanchor_110" href="#Footnote_110" class="fnanchor">[110]</a> says: “Walata is the Arab and Tuareg
+name, while Biru is the one applied to it by the Negro Azer,
+a section of the Aswanek, who are the original inhabitants
+of the place.” At the time the above was written no complete
+copy<a id="FNanchor_111" href="#Footnote_111" class="fnanchor">[111]</a> of the <i>Tarik</i> was obtainable, and Dr. Brown
+was unable consequently to consult the work, and to observe
+how closely it corroborates Barth’s famous chronological
+history of the Songhay. Had he done so the passage in
+question would, no doubt, have undergone modification, for
+the <i>Tarik</i> distinctly tells us that the name of the original
+founder of the Ghanata (Walata) dynasty was Quaia-Magha,<a id="FNanchor_112" href="#Footnote_112" class="fnanchor">[112]</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_132"></a>[132]</span>
+and Magha, as M. O. Houdas points out, is a Fufulde word
+meaning “great.” Thus it is legitimate to assume, in view of
+the absence of rebutting evidence, that the original founders
+of probably the oldest Empire in West Africa, of the first
+Empire at any rate of which record is left to us, were of
+Fulani blood. In any case, it would appear to point conclusively
+to the existence of the Fulani language, and therefore
+to the presence of the Fulani in the Senegal region of
+West Africa from the very earliest times.</p>
+
+<p>It may be argued that a single word is a slender basis
+upon which to construct a theory. But when it is borne in
+mind (1) that the ensuing historical record of the very same
+region, 1500 years later, viz. the arrival at the court of the
+Bornuese king Biri of two religious chiefs <i>of the Fulani of
+Melle</i>, proves the presence of the Fulani in the country
+which the <i>Tarik</i> asserts was ruled over by a king with a
+Fulfulde<a id="FNanchor_113" href="#Footnote_113" class="fnanchor">[113]</a> affix to his name; (2) that every successive account,
+both Arabic and European, referring to the same region
+corroborates the circumstance, it will be conceded that the
+assumption goes far beyond mere plausibility. There is
+every reason to believe that the Fulani were numerous in
+the Empire of Melle<a id="FNanchor_114" href="#Footnote_114" class="fnanchor">[114]</a> (if, indeed, the rulers of that Empire
+were not of mixed Fulani blood, which seems probable<a id="FNanchor_115" href="#Footnote_115" class="fnanchor">[115]</a>),
+sometimes in the ascendant, sometimes the under-dogs,
+according as their political fortunes rose and fell.<a id="FNanchor_116" href="#Footnote_116" class="fnanchor">[116]</a> In the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_133"></a>[133]</span>
+middle of the fifteenth century they were certainly the ruling
+race in Baghena (the central province, as already stated, of
+the Ghanata Empire, which seems to have preserved its
+name subsequent to the Mellian conquest), having succeeded
+apparently in getting the upper hand. We know this from
+the Songhay records, which tell us that at that period Askia,
+the powerful Songhay king, “conquered Baghena and slew
+the Fulani chieftain Damba-Dumbi.”<a id="FNanchor_117" href="#Footnote_117" class="fnanchor">[117]</a> Thirty years before
+that event the chief of Baghena was also a Fulani, as is
+testified by the records of Askia’s predecessor. About 1450
+Ca-de-Mosto speaks of “el rey dos Fullos” on the banks of
+the Senegal. Later on, John II. of Portugal sends an
+embassy to Tamala, “powerful king of the Fulas.” De
+Barros, the Portuguese historian, refers to a great war,
+“incendia de guerra,” in the Senegal country (1534).
+Masses of Fulani, says de Barros, left the country of
+“Futa”—probably Futa-Toro—in a southerly direction. So
+numerous was the host, he continues, that “it dried up the
+rivers in its passage.” Marmol also refers to this southward
+movement. The Fulani, “who had raised so formidable an
+army in the southern parts of the province of ‘Fura’ (Futa)
+which borders on Mandingo, which they were marching
+against, that they pretended it dried up rivers.”<a id="FNanchor_118" href="#Footnote_118" class="fnanchor">[118]</a> No doubt
+that was the beginning of the Fulani migration into Bondu
+and Bambuk, to be followed at a subsequent period by a
+continuation of the movement into Futa-Jallon. The <i>Tarik</i>
+gives us the story of the foundation of the Fulani State of
+Toro by Salta Tayenda, “the false prophet,” in 1511.<a id="FNanchor_119" href="#Footnote_119" class="fnanchor">[119]</a>
+According to the <i>Tarik</i>, the Fulani were ruling as far eastward<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_134"></a>[134]</span>
+as Masina in the fifteenth century, and Barth’s chronological
+table of the Songhay mentions an expedition by a
+Songhay king against the Fulani of Gurma, still farther east.</p>
+
+<p>Coming to a later period, we have Jobson (1628) talking of
+the Fulani as oppressed by, and in subjection to, the Mandingoes
+in the Gambia region. In 1697 the Sieur de Brüe
+pays his first visit, on behalf of the French Senegal Company,
+to the court of the Fulani ruler on the Senegal River.
+Labat’s description of the event is most picturesque. They
+were the days when African monarchs were treated with
+respect by the European who desired to trade with their
+subjects. Even the cynical prelate to whom we are indebted
+for the relation of Brüe’s voyage, and who chuckles over the
+small villainies practised upon the Fulani by the Company,
+expresses astonishment with the Fulani institutions, the
+judiciary and administrative systems, the agricultural and
+commercial aptitude of the inhabitants. “As far as the eye
+could reach,” he says, quoting from Brüe’s papers, “not an
+inch of ground was left uncultivated or neglected.” Farther
+on he speaks of “vast plains covered with cattle.” “They”—the
+Fulani—he continues, “cultivate the soil with care
+and make abundant harvests of large and small millet,
+cotton, tobacco, peas and other vegetables, and they rear
+prodigious quantities of cattle.” In short, we find the same
+well-defined characteristics in the Fulani Empire in the
+Senegal of the seventeenth century as are observable in their
+Empires of more recent date. Herdsmen and agriculturists
+by nature, they produce, when circumstances have placed
+the government of the countries in which they have settled
+into their hands, a class of statesmen and administrators.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus17" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus17.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>HALF-CASTE FULANI GIRL—FUTA-JALLON</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>I have quoted a considerable number of authorities—the
+list might easily be extended—to show that the Fulani have
+lived in the Senegal and Gambia region from remote times,
+and that their identification by the <i>Tarik</i>, and by Barth,
+with the Ghanata Empire, estimated by the latter to date
+back to <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> 300, is, therefore, inherently probable. From
+the region in which they have alternately been rulers and
+ruled, and where they reside to-day under French domination,
+the Fulani have gradually spread themselves south and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_135"></a>[135]</span>
+east, throughout almost the entire region of inland Western
+Africa. The movement continues and is one of the most
+interesting ethnological factors in Western Africa. On the
+west, the forest belt has prevented the Fulani from reaching
+the ocean, although on two occasions they were very nearly
+doing so, from behind Lagos in the middle of last century,
+as mentioned in the previous chapter; from behind Sierra
+Leone about thirty years before their defeat at Osogbo, their
+cavalry (as in Yoruba) being ineffective against the opposition
+of the forest dwellers, Sulimas and others—the free
+Negroes of the Sierra Leone Protectorate, upon whom
+Downing Street in its wisdom imposed a property tax in
+1898. Ashanti tradition mentions the advent of “red men”
+from the interior as a contributive cause of their migration
+southward.<a id="FNanchor_120" href="#Footnote_120" class="fnanchor">[120]</a> To-day the Fulani have reached the borders
+of the great Congo forest, and according to some accounts
+are present in very large numbers on the Sangha River.<a id="FNanchor_121" href="#Footnote_121" class="fnanchor">[121]</a>
+Will they seek to penetrate the forest or will they turn aside,
+oblique to the north,<a id="FNanchor_122" href="#Footnote_122" class="fnanchor">[122]</a> once more and, as though impelled
+forward by an inscrutable decree of Providence, gravitate
+imperceptibly towards the spot where they crossed into the
+Dark Continent from Asia, and first set foot upon that
+African soil which for some four thousand years has been
+their home?</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_136"></a>[136]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII<br>
+<span class="smaller">ORIGIN OF THE FULANI</span></h3>
+
+<p>“The most interesting of all African tribes.... A distinct race.”—<span class="smcap">Dr.
+Barth</span>, “Travels in Central Africa” (5-volume edition).</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Of all the mysteries which lie hidden, or but half unveiled,
+within the bosom of the still mysterious Continent of Africa,
+there is none that presents a more absorbing or more
+fascinating interest than the origin of the race which has
+infused its individuality throughout inland Western Africa,
+and whose fertilising influence is visible from the banks of
+the Senegal to the Chad.</p>
+
+<p>In the previous chapter it has, I venture to believe, been
+fairly established that the Fulani are indubitably associated
+with our earliest available records of Western Africa, and
+that, with the exception of Hanno’s narrative (touched upon
+presently), every important reference, spread over many
+centuries, to the portion of Western Africa between the tenth
+and twentieth parallels of North latitude, bears witness,
+directly or indirectly, to the presence of the Fulani within
+that region at a remote period.<a id="FNanchor_123" href="#Footnote_123" class="fnanchor">[123]</a> Whence came this people,
+which differentiates so radically in colour, form, habits,
+customs and manners from the Negroes among whom they
+have settled, and which dominated in the valley of the
+Senegal as far back as the fourth century?</p>
+
+<p>Their own legends; their complexion and structure;
+their mental development and physical characteristics, all
+point emphatically to the East as the cradle of the Fulani
+race; a “distinct race,” as Dr. Barth truly says, and not the
+bastard product which some would make out.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus18" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus18.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>LOW-CASTE FULANI, WESTERN SUDAN</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_137"></a>[137]</span></p>
+
+<p>Before attempting to piece together the various threads
+which in the aggregate amount, in my humble opinion, to a
+virtual demonstration, it may be well to state that the
+Eastern theory numbers opponents who, from their position
+and attainments, compel our attention. There are those
+who entertain the belief that the Fulani belong to the
+Berber stock. There are others who think—and this I
+cannot but regard as wildly improbable—that the Fulani
+are of Nigritic extraction. M. Marcel Dubois, the brilliant
+author of “Timbuctoo the Mysterious,”<a id="FNanchor_124" href="#Footnote_124" class="fnanchor">[124]</a> whose treatment
+of the Fulani is anything but impartial, categorically denies
+the Eastern theory. “It was from the West,” he says, “from
+the Senegalese Adrar (Aderer of British maps), from the
+land of sand extending north of the Senegal that they came.”
+“The Foulbes,” he continues, “had been driven towards the
+Sudan, very probably when the Moors, expelled from Spain,
+invaded Adrar.” M. Dubois finds corroboration of his views
+in a passage of the <i>Tarik</i> (which, being written by an Arab,
+is necessarily biased against the Fulani) to the effect
+that the “Foulbes originated in the country of Tischitt.”
+I venture, very respectfully, to differ from M. Dubois.
+According to Leo, the Moors or Berbers conquered Ghanata
+in the eighth century, the ruling caste at that time, as both
+the <i>Tarik</i> and also Barth’s records lead us to infer, being of
+Fulani blood, which in itself casts doubt upon M. Dubois’
+assertion. But the more one endeavours to reconcile
+M. Dubois’ contention with existing records, the less sound
+does it appear. The Moorish power in Spain was not
+finally extinguished until towards the close of the fifteenth
+century. Nevertheless, it may be said that the Moorish
+cause was lost in Europe, and that their expulsion commenced
+with the defeat of Salado in 1340.<a id="FNanchor_125" href="#Footnote_125" class="fnanchor">[125]</a> We can, therefore,
+for the sake of argument, take the middle of the
+fourteenth century as the period, approximately, when the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_138"></a>[138]</span>
+Moors began to be “expelled from Spain.” This would be
+about the time when, in M. Dubois’ view, the Moors were
+driving the pastoral Fulani towards Aderer, “the land of
+sand.” Now, apart from the self-evident contradiction of
+a people whose wealth has ever been in their flocks and
+herds, originating in an arid district (sand not usually being
+associated with pastures), the Fulani were in point of fact
+already considerably farther south. Was not the market
+of Jenne (on which M. Dubois has himself thrown such a
+glamour of interest) attended as early as 1260 by Fulani?<a id="FNanchor_126" href="#Footnote_126" class="fnanchor">[126]</a>
+Did not the King of Bornu receive a Fulani deputation from
+Melle between 1288 and 1306?<a id="FNanchor_127" href="#Footnote_127" class="fnanchor">[127]</a> Is it conceivable that the
+Fulani, compelled to evacuate Aderer in the middle of the
+fourteenth century, would have ruled over vast tracts of
+territory as far south as Gurma, only one hundred years
+later? M. Dubois will have to bring forward a great deal
+of evidence—certainly something more than his own assertion,
+and an obscure passage in the <i>Tarik</i>—to upset the
+Eastern theory of Fulani origin.</p>
+
+<p>Of native traditions among the Fulani attributing an
+Eastern origin to their race we have no end, and although
+too much significance need not be attached to them, they
+must not on that account be overlooked. There is generally
+a foundation of truth in native legends of this kind.
+Anthropometrical studies, or rather craniological studies,
+are, however, extremely valuable. Although carried out to
+a small extent so far, they appreciably strengthen the Eastern
+theory. Dr. Verneau, whose reputation as an anthropologist
+is well known, has recently published<a id="FNanchor_128" href="#Footnote_128" class="fnanchor">[128]</a> the results of an
+examination of five skulls of Fulani chiefs from Futa-Jallon.
+The first three belonged to individuals known, when alive,
+to the French authorities of that Colony. The other two
+were brought home by Dr. Maclaud, who has travelled extensively
+among the Fulani, and to whom I am indebted for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_139"></a>[139]</span>
+several of the photographs here reproduced. None of the
+originals were Fulani of the pure type. The one approaching
+nearest to purity was Alfa-Alliu, who was condemned to
+death for an unprovoked attack upon a French convoy. Of
+this individual’s skull, Dr. Verneau reports: “Alfa-Alliu
+belongs by his cranial and facial characteristics to the sur-based
+(vaulted) pentagonal type which enters into the composition
+of the present population of Erythria and the ancient
+population of Egypt.” Of two other skulls out of the five
+examined, Dr. Verneau remarks: “Their owners, no doubt,
+had a certain amount of negro blood in their veins, which
+resulted in a thickening of the osseous frame and in a
+notable prognathous accentuation....<a id="FNanchor_129" href="#Footnote_129" class="fnanchor">[129]</a> Nevertheless, these
+two chiefs were not negroes; the width of the forehead, the
+prominence of the bones of the nose, the proportions of the
+nose itself, and the form of the chin, preclude any connection.”
+Of the two remaining skulls, Dr. Verneau concludes
+thus: “I will not further insist upon the cephalic character
+of these two deeply crossed Fulani. I would merely observe
+that, notwithstanding the mixed breed, they present two
+cranial forms which we find wherever the influence of the
+Ethiopians has been felt.” It is necessary to add that by
+“Ethiopian,” Dr. Verneau—as he is careful to explain in the
+opening lines of his paper—designates the Abyssinian type,
+holding that the synonymy given to the terms “Negro” and
+“Ethiopian” is a popular confusion. Élisée Reclus, in his
+great geographical work, also states that the formation of the
+Fulani cranium has affinities with the Egyptian type. To
+this testimony may be added, that the most recent studies
+in Berber anthropometry tend to divorce the Berbers from
+the ancient Egyptian and the Eastern stock.<a id="FNanchor_130" href="#Footnote_130" class="fnanchor">[130]</a></p>
+
+<p>Dr. Blyden, who visited Timbo (the capital of Futa-Jallon,
+one of the most important Fulani centres in West Africa)
+in the seventies, and who, like Dr. Bayol and others, was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_140"></a>[140]</span>
+immensely impressed with what he saw, remarks in a report
+to the Government of the time (to which I have been able,
+through the doctor’s kindness, to have access): “On entering
+a Fulah town the first thing which strikes a stranger is the
+Caucasian cast of features, especially among the older
+people; yet every now and then, in the children of parents
+having all the physical traits of the Semitic family, there
+recurs the inextinguishable Negro physiognomy.”<a id="FNanchor_131" href="#Footnote_131" class="fnanchor">[131]</a> “It is
+evident,” the doctor goes on to say, “that while there is a
+large infusion of foreign blood among the people, there is
+still the influence of a powerful race-stock which has
+thoroughly assimilated the alien elements, and this may be
+judged from the strong pride of ancestry which they possess,
+their respect for the past and their care for posterity.”</p>
+
+<p>D’Eichtal sought to trace in the Hovas of Madagascar a
+relationship with the Fulani, which would, obviously, connect
+them with the Malays—the object of d’Eichtal’s treatise. The
+sole basis of the theory was a chance similarity in certain
+words; but were d’Eichtal right, we should have to admit a
+complete reversal of the cycle of Fulani migration, which is
+quite impossible. Fulfulde cannot as yet be definitely
+classed among the languages, but, so far as our knowledge
+extends, it has Semitic antecedents. When we endeavour
+to find some other links, connecting the Fulani with the
+East, several circumstances arrest our attention. The first
+is provided in a passage of Hanno’s “Periplus”; the second,
+in the invasion of Lower Egypt by the Hyksos; the third, in
+the Hebraic tendencies and peculiar familiarity with Hebrew
+legends observed among the Fulani; the fourth, in an attachment
+to their cattle so remarkable as to suggest a far-off
+bovine worship. These points may be severally examined.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp53" id="illus19" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus19.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>PURE-BRED FULANI GIRL—FUTA-JALLON</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>When, towards the close of the sixteenth century <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>,
+the rulers of Carthage conceived a scheme of over-sea colonisation
+which should redound to the glory of the Empire
+and free it at the same time from a portion at least of the
+undesirable elements of the population, they despatched an
+armada of sixty ships containing some thirty thousand souls,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_141"></a>[141]</span>
+under the command of a worthy magistrate of the name of
+Hanno, with instructions to pass through the Pillars of
+Hercules (the Straits of Gibraltar) and to lay the basis of
+a colony somewhere beyond them. The fleet appears to
+have navigated the West Coast of Africa until it reached the
+Senegal, the Carthaginians proceeding for some little distance
+up that river, subsequently pushing southward to the Gambia
+and farther still to the “Southern Horn,” which it has been
+sought to identify with Sherbro Sound.<a id="FNanchor_132" href="#Footnote_132" class="fnanchor">[132]</a> This meeting of
+Phœnician culture with aboriginal primitiveness on the
+West Coast was, as Sir Harry Johnston has strikingly put it,
+“The first sight that civilised man had of his wild brother
+since the two had parted company in Neolithic times.”
+And yet in one respect this general statement is open to
+doubt. It was not only Negroes with whom the Carthaginian
+navigator came in contact.</p>
+
+<p>On his return, Hanno wrote an account of his wanderings,
+in the Punic tongue, termed a Periplus or circumnavigation,
+which he dedicated to Moloch, the deity of the Carthaginians,
+in the Temple of Cronos. Through the enterprise of Greek
+scientists, the relation of Hanno’s voyage has been preserved
+to us. About three centuries after its completion,
+Ptolemæus Claudius, a Greek geographer and historian,
+published eight volumes of geographical research. The
+portion relating to Africa was mainly founded upon Carthaginian
+material and included a translation of Hanno’s
+“Periplus.” From Ptolemy’s description, we gather that in
+the neighbourhood of the Gambia (Stachir) the Carthaginians
+came across a people of a lighter hue than the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_142"></a>[142]</span>
+Negroes. These people the author calls “Leucæthiopes.”
+Pliny also speaks of the “Leucæthiopes,” placing them,
+however, a couple of degrees farther north. Thus five
+hundred years <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, Carthaginian navigators reported in West
+Africa the existence of a people to whom the epithet of
+“black” did not apply, in the same region in which eight
+hundred years later—that being the first reference to West
+Africa which has come down to us—we hear of an Empire
+whose rulers were “white,” founded by a monarch with a
+Fulfulde affix to his name.</p>
+
+<p>Who could those light-complexioned “Africans” have
+been? Not, assuredly, Arabs; still less Bantus. With the
+Berber tribes the Carthaginians were in touch everywhere,
+in Mauritania, Numidia, Cyrenaica. From the Berbers,
+Carthage drew her mercenaries, who often enough proved
+more dangerous than useful. The colonists would have
+recognised the type had they met with it in West Africa,
+and if the “Leucæthiopes” had been Berbers they would
+have been differently described in the “Periplus.” Indeed,
+there is some ground for believing that the colonists numbered
+Berbers among their ranks. Moreover, the Berber
+occupation could not at that time have extended as far
+south, by at least fifteen degrees, as the Senegal-Gambia
+region. There is not, so far as I am aware, any record
+extant suggesting the presence of the Berbers in the valley
+of the Senegal until the eighth century <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> To what race,
+then, could the “Leucæthiopes” have belonged? To what
+race but the Fulani, to whom the description given by
+Hanno could alone—bearing in mind the period of the
+expedition—by any possibility apply? That is link one.<a id="FNanchor_133" href="#Footnote_133" class="fnanchor">[133]</a></p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus20" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus20.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>FULANI HOUSE—FUTA-JALLON</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>The invasion of Lower Egypt by the Hyksos or Shepherd<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_143"></a>[143]</span>
+Kings from the East is one of the obscurest stages of
+Egyptian history. Professor Lepsius believed that the
+invasion of the Shepherds occurred during the thirteenth
+dynasty (which, according to the same authority, began in
+2136 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>), and ended about 1626 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> with the expulsion of
+the Shepherds. About 2000 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> then—a little earlier or a
+little later, according to other authorities—Egypt, being at
+that time under the Theban dynasty, was invaded by vast
+hordes of Asiatics, who brought with them enormous
+quantities of cattle and sheep.<a id="FNanchor_134" href="#Footnote_134" class="fnanchor">[134]</a> It would seem as though
+some great internal convulsion, the cause of which can only
+be conjectured, had precipitated into the fertile valley of the
+Nile a number of nomadic pastoral tribes, by nature herdsmen,
+shepherds and agriculturists, but converted for the
+time being either through famine, scarcity of pastures,
+pressure of other tribes behind them, or spontaneous race-expansion,
+into a warlike and conquering people which
+swept onward in irresistible strength until they reached
+a land suitable for their herds—their only wealth. The
+distinctive character of their occupation is preserved in their
+name—Hyksos or Shepherd Kings. After a sanguinary
+struggle, the invaders succeeded in fairly establishing themselves
+in Lower Egypt, and gradually extended their
+influence over Upper Egypt, where, however, they were
+unable to gain complete mastery. Their supremacy lasted
+about five hundred years. They were finally overthrown
+and driven out of the country by the representatives of the
+old Theban dynasty under Misphragmuthosis and Thoutmosis,
+somewhere about 1636 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, if we adopt the estimate
+of the celebrated Egyptologist, Professor Lepsius. What
+became of them? The Egyptian scribe, Manetho, contends
+that they crossed back into Asia, but the statement is very
+doubtful, and his further assertion that they occupied Judea
+and founded Jerusalem is scouted by the learned.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_144"></a>[144]</span></p>
+
+<p>Is it not legitimate to suppose that a portion, at any rate,
+of so enterprising and courageous a people, which must
+have been extraordinarily numerous to have held sway over
+Egypt for so considerable a period, should have preferred
+to plunge into the unknown West, in search of fresh territories
+where their herds might find sustenance, rather than
+ignominiously return in the direction from whence they
+came? For five hundred years Africa had been their home.
+Africa offered them extensive pastures for their cattle.
+They must have largely mingled and intermarried with the
+Egyptians. Family and historical ties bound them to the
+African soil. They had become adopted children of that
+Continent, which in all ages has exerted a peculiar fascination
+over the various immigrant peoples that have entered it.
+History, I believe, contains not one single instance of a people
+which, having once settled in Africa, has left it again. The
+Shepherds had risen in Africa to a position of paramountcy.
+Out of the undisciplined host which spread itself like a
+torrent over the Nile Delta, a race of statesmen had evolved
+capable of ruling what was perhaps the mightiest Empire of
+the then civilised world. It is incredible to imagine that a
+whole people could have been driven in a fixed direction,
+as Manetho would have us believe. Tens of thousands
+must have been employed, as their compatriots the Hebrews
+were employed, by the victorious Thebans, in raising those
+mighty monuments of stone whose ruins to-day provoke
+the wonder of all men. Many more must have escaped
+westwards, and gained with their belongings the fertile
+plains of inland Cyrenaica, and, through the ages, pushed
+on and on, ever seeking pastures new, until in the course of
+a thousand years the Carthaginians found their descendants
+in the rich valleys of the Senegal and Gambia—with their
+national characteristics preserved, their “powerful race
+stock” unimpaired, their “strong pride of ancestry” remaining,
+their ways adapted to their new environment.</p>
+
+<p>Others again may have migrated south and have largely
+influenced the composite ethnic elements of Erythria, of
+which the nomadic cattle-rearing Wahuma of Uganda would<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_145"></a>[145]</span>
+appear to be an offshoot—the Asiatic origin of the latter
+being generally admitted. So much for link number two.</p>
+
+<p>The advent of the Hyksos in Lower Egypt was approximately
+contemporaneous with Hebrew emigration from
+Mesopotamia to Palestine. Three hundred years later, in
+1700 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span> according to Biblical records, when a grievous
+famine lay upon the land, the famous Israelitish <i>trek</i> into
+Africa began, upon the direct invitation of Egypt’s ruler, in
+whose employ Joseph had risen to a position of great
+influence. The new-comers established themselves in the
+fertile province of Goshen,<a id="FNanchor_135" href="#Footnote_135" class="fnanchor">[135]</a> east of the Nile, where the river
+branches as the prongs of a fork. Who was the reigning
+Pharaoh at the time? The gap in Egyptian history unfortunately
+prevents an answer. But that, unless the most
+competent Egyptologists are hopelessly wrong, he was one
+of the Shepherd Kings, cannot be doubted. And, apart from
+the similarity of dates, there are inherent reasons which still
+further fortify what may almost be said to be a certainty.
+The Hyksos were a conglomeration of Asiatic herdsmen
+whom circumstances had forced into the valley of the Nile.
+The <i>rôle</i> of warriors and administrators which they assumed
+was probably an accident, the result of finding a powerful
+nation in occupation of the land they coveted, and whom
+they had to subdue before being able to occupy. That they
+succeeded is proof, not only of their courage but of their political
+genius and power of organisation—qualities for which
+the Fulani are to-day conspicuous, notwithstanding the demoralising
+tendency of contact with intellectually inferior races.
+It was their political genius which led the Hyksos to invite
+an influx of Israelites, Asiatics like themselves, of the same
+Semitic origin and the same Monotheistic leaning. The
+wisdom of the policy is apparent. The Hyksos knew well
+that their rule was unpopular, that the Princes of the overthrown
+Theban dynasty were continually intriguing against<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_146"></a>[146]</span>
+their domination in the southern provinces, and that their
+hold upon the country depended upon the number of their
+adherents in the north. They set themselves, therefore, to
+encourage Asiatic immigration. Inversely, it was but natural
+that, when the representatives of the old Theban dynasty
+once more came into their own, the Israelites should have
+been specially marked out for resentment.</p>
+
+<p>The administrative seat of the Hyksos was Memphis, the
+city sacred to the worship of the bull Apis. At first the
+Hyksos replaced the worship of Apis, incarnation of the
+divine Osiris, by their own divinity Set, but they were compelled
+by the pressure of public opinion to allow the revival
+of the national cult. After suffering a temporary eclipse,
+bull-worship continued as before. It is, indeed, open to
+question whether the Shepherds themselves, and their compatriots
+the Israelites, did not end by adopting, partially at
+least, the divinities of the conquered. Can we not trace, for
+instance, in the incident of the golden calf erected by Aaron
+in the wilderness, and the employment of golden calves by
+Jeroboam, in order to symbolise the deity, the strong hold
+which bull-worship had taken upon the imagination of those
+pastoral Semites, the Israelites, whom the Hyksos, pastoral
+Semites like themselves, had invited to reside with them in
+the land of Goshen? What more natural that, being herdsmen,
+and taught by long years of experience to look upon
+cattle-rearing as their natural avocation, the Semitic invaders
+of Egypt and their allies should have been predisposed, and
+insensibly drifted, towards the adoption of the religion which
+they found existing in the country they had conquered, and
+of which the chief symbolical deity was a bull?</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus21" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus21.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>FULANI CATTLE-PEN</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Now is it not a very singular fact that the Fulani should be
+the only people in Western Africa whose former religious
+beliefs have been associated, by those who have lived amongst
+them, with an ancient bull-worship, the former cult of
+Egypt? The unusual regard they have for their cattle, even
+after Islam has been established among the great bulk of
+them for upwards of nine centuries, is singled out for special
+notice on the part of numerous observers. Reclus deems<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_147"></a>[147]</span>
+the circumstance to be worthy of notice: “The scrupulous
+care,” he says, “which they devote to their cattle-pens has
+something in it of a religious nature.” Here and there, in the
+Western Sudan, tribes of Fulani are met with, whose members
+have remained pagan, and their paganism, in so far as it has
+been observed, consists in a superstitious reverence for their
+cattle, almost amounting to adoration. Among the Mohammedan
+Fulani the <i>bororo</i><a id="FNanchor_136" href="#Footnote_136" class="fnanchor">[136]</a> is still pre-eminently the national representative
+of the race, and the purest types are found among
+the <i>bororoji</i>, rather than amidst those of their countrymen
+who have become over-lords, administrators and land-owners
+on a large scale. “The Foola nation,” says Winterbottom,
+“is the only one in this part of the coast to whom the title of
+<i>armentarius afer</i> can be justly applied.”<a id="FNanchor_137" href="#Footnote_137" class="fnanchor">[137]</a> Many and various
+are the stories told by French officers serving in the Western
+Sudan of the curious affinity between the Fulani and their
+cattle, an affinity which is a perpetual subject of comment
+among their Negro neighbours.<a id="FNanchor_138" href="#Footnote_138" class="fnanchor">[138]</a> Clapperton tells us how the
+cattle respond at long distances to the shrill cry of the
+Fulani herdsman, who, by the way, is said never to employ
+a dog.<a id="FNanchor_139" href="#Footnote_139" class="fnanchor">[139]</a> One of the most remarkable French stories is that
+related by an officer operating in the Baol district of the
+Western Sudan. In the course of a day’s work the officer had
+commandeered some cattle from the natives; among the
+animals was a fine black bull obtained from a group of
+wandering Fulani herdsmen. When night fell, the cattle
+were duly penned and a <i>Spahis</i><a id="FNanchor_140" href="#Footnote_140" class="fnanchor">[140]</a> posted as sentry over them.
+Towards midnight the officer was roused from sleep by the
+<i>Spahis</i> informing him with much solemnity that it would be
+necessary to slaughter the black bull at once. “Are you<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_148"></a>[148]</span>
+mad?” cried the astonished Frenchman. “Not at all,
+Lieutenant,” replied the soldier imperturbably; “it is the
+cattle that are mad, for the Fulani are calling the bull—listen.”
+Stepping out into the moonlight the officer listened.
+Presently from a neighbouring hill came the sound of a
+plaintive chant. At the same moment a violent disturbance
+took place among the cattle. The officer hurried towards
+the pen followed by the sentry, the chant meanwhile continuing
+in a cadence of inexpressible melancholy. The
+commotion in the pen increased, and before the Frenchman
+could reach it, one of the beasts was seen to clear the
+enclosure at a bound and crash through the bush, following
+the direction of the sound and bellowing loudly the while.
+It was the black bull. He had broken the halter which
+bound him and leapt a palisade five feet high! With the
+disappearance of the bull the chant abruptly ceased. Next
+morning the Fulani were nowhere to be found.<a id="FNanchor_141" href="#Footnote_141" class="fnanchor">[141]</a></p>
+
+<p>The Hebraic flavour—if one may put it so—which seems
+to permeate many of the Fulani customs, especially among
+the less contaminated elements of the race, has been recorded
+by careful observers. A friend, an officer in the
+employ of the Northern Nigeria administration, who was
+intimately acquainted with the Fulani, whose language he
+spoke, and who possessed considerable erudition, had prepared
+a number of notes for me on the subject, which,
+unfortunately, I never received, owing to his death while
+serving in Africa. One custom which had specially impressed
+him among the pure Fulani was the habit of setting aside
+the firstborn. He found that the Fulani woman of unmixed
+blood in the Binue region never suckled her firstborn, but
+consigned it to the care of friends, and completely disinterested
+herself from its future career, while bestowing
+upon the second child, and subsequent children, the usual
+motherly solicitude. He connected this singular custom
+with a distorted rendering of the punishment visited upon
+the Egyptians in the time of the Captivity.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp53" id="illus22" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus22.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>A HALF-CASTE FULANI GIRL AND A SUSU</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>The lecture delivered in 1886 by Captain de Guiraudon<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_149"></a>[149]</span>
+(who published a Fulfulde manual, and who resided for
+several years in the Fulani country in Senegambia) before
+the seventh Congress of Orientalists contains some interesting
+references to the subject under discussion. In the
+course of his relations with the Fulani, De Guiraudon was
+particularly struck with their peculiar knowledge of Jewish
+history. So familiarly did they speak of the chief Hebrew
+personalities of the Old Testament, and so well posted were
+they with the principal events related in it, that they could
+not, argued De Guiraudon, have acquired their knowledge
+merely through Arabic sources. They referred to those
+times as though dealing with their own national records.
+Moses and Abraham might have been individuals of the
+same race as themselves. “In their oral legends Moses
+plays a very important part, and although certain passages
+of the Scriptures are transformed or rather assimilated, they
+have so intense a Biblical and Hebraic tone as to exclude all
+Arabic influence.” De Guiraudon noted, however, that their
+Israelitish chronicles ceased after Solomon. “What they
+knew of the miracles of our Saviour was so distorted and
+erroneous as to prove that the New Testament had reached
+them from afar, in a vague and fragmentary condition.” De
+Guiraudon’s conclusions are best given in his own words.
+“It would seem as if the Puls (Fulani), if they themselves
+did not profess the Jewish faith, which I would rather be
+disposed to affirm than deny, were at least in permanent
+contact with the Jewish people in remote times, and that,
+influenced at one time or another by the Israelites, they
+received Old Testament legends directly from them.”</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Blyden also testifies in an indirect way to the close
+acquaintance of the Fulani with the history of ancient
+Hebraic personalities. “They hold the language of the
+Koran,” he remarks, “in the greatest veneration, affirming
+that it is the language which was spoken by Adam, Seth,
+Noah, Abraham, and Ishmael. The descendants of Ishmael,
+they contend, have never been in bondage to any man;
+and that during the bondage of Isaac’s descendants in
+Egypt the language lost its purity and copiousness.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_150"></a>[150]</span></p>
+
+<p>It is significant that the son and successor of Othman Dan
+Fodio, sultan Bello of Hausa, second Fulani ruler over the
+Hausa States, in the history of the Sudan written in Arabic
+characters which he gave to Clapperton, describes the
+“Tow-rooths,” who may, I think, be identified with the
+Torodos (a sect of Fulani greatly looked up to), as “having
+originated from the Jews.”<a id="FNanchor_142" href="#Footnote_142" class="fnanchor">[142]</a> Mungo Park, when writing of
+his experiences among the Mandingoes—who appear to
+have been converted to Islam by the Fulani, with whom they
+have been in close relationship, amiable and the reverse, for
+many centuries—observed a similar widespread knowledge
+of incidents in Old Testament history, such as the death of
+Abel, the lives of the Patriarchs, Joseph’s dream, and so on.
+Winterbottom is equally emphatic. “The customs of these
+people (the Fulani),” he says, “bear a striking resemblance
+to those of the Jews described in the Pentateuch, and after
+Mohammed, Moses is held by them in the highest estimation.”
+There is some uniformity, too, between the following
+descriptive passages. The first is from Kenrick (American
+edition), the second from Laing’s history of the Sulima
+people and their relations with the Fulani:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“The Jews were commanded, on the day of the Atonement, to provide
+a goat to carry the sins of the people, and the high-priest was to
+lay his hand on the head of the goat and confess the national sins. So
+among the Egyptians whenever a victim was offered, a prayer was
+repeated over its head, if any calamity was about to befall either the
+sacrifices or the land of Egypt, ‘it might be averted on this head.’”</p>
+
+<p>“Musah Bah (a Fulani chief), shortly after his installation, ordered
+a great feast to be held, and, inviting to it all the head-men of Jallon
+Kadoo, explained to them the nature of the Mohammedan faith and told
+them that the Foulahs had come to settle in their country with a desire
+only to do them good and to show them the true road to happiness.
+He then ordered a large wafer of country bread and a bleeding sheep
+to be placed before him, and invited all those who wished to be
+instructed by the priests of Futa-Jallon to place their hands upon the
+bread and touch the sheep, which all the head-men did.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The motives were different, but the Fulani ceremonial<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_151"></a>[151]</span>
+savours greatly of the Old Testament. So much for the
+remaining links.</p>
+
+<p>Enough has been said, I think, to show that there is a vast
+field open to systematic inquiry and investigation, which
+may possibly lead to discoveries of a most interesting and
+important kind. Having examined the links one by one,
+let us see how they look when riveted together and what
+conclusions they suggest. The straight-nosed, straight-haired,
+relatively thin-lipped, wiry, copper or bronze complexioned
+(“pale-gold” as one writer puts it) Fulani male,
+with his well-developed cranium, and refined extremities;
+and the Fulani woman, with her clear skin, her rounded
+breasts,<a id="FNanchor_143" href="#Footnote_143" class="fnanchor">[143]</a> large eyes,<a id="FNanchor_144" href="#Footnote_144" class="fnanchor">[144]</a> antimony-dyed eyebrows, gracefulness
+of movement, beauty of form, coquettish ways and
+general attractiveness—are Asiatics. They are the lineal
+descendants of the Hyksos, having migrated westwards with
+the overthrow of the Shepherd conquerors. Their customs
+bear record to their progenitors having been influenced both
+by the cult of ancient Egypt and by the Israelites, whose
+presence in the Nile Delta was contemporaneous with
+Hyksos rule. Their presence in West Africa dates back at
+least 2500 years. To dogmatise on such a subject would be
+foolish; to claim having evolved an original theory would
+be impertinent. But I am not aware that the Eastern
+theory of Fulani origin has been hitherto worked out with
+any attempt at consecutiveness, or an endeavour made to
+amalgamate and give in connected form—however imperfectly—the
+chief factors for further study which may be<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_152"></a>[152]</span>
+usefully followed up by some one more competent than the
+author.</p>
+
+<p>And what is to be the policy of Great Britain, of France
+and of Germany towards this wonderful race? Surely it
+should be dictated in the first place by a desire to preserve.
+With their faults—and what race is devoid of faults?—the
+Fulani have admirable qualities which can fit them to be
+worthy and reliable co-builders and assistants in the task
+which the Powers have undertaken in Western Africa.
+Their virility has hitherto been equal to all the calls upon it.
+They retain “the strong pride of race.” They possess in
+the highest degree the attributes of rulers. It would be a
+misfortune indeed if, with the advent of the European,
+possessed of those swift engines of destruction he is at times
+so prompt to use in the name of civilisation, the Fulani
+should disappear from the regions they have leavened with
+their intelligence.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_153"></a>[153]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_III">PART III</h2>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII<br>
+<span class="smaller">SANITARY AFFAIRS IN WEST AFRICA</span></h3>
+
+<p class="center">(By Major <span class="smcap">Ronald Ross</span>, F.R.C.S., F.R.S., C.B., Liverpool School
+of Tropical Medicine.)</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The first question which any one who has studied the
+history of West Africa will ask, is this—Why has the country
+developed so slowly? It is actually nearer to Europe and
+more accessible than several tropical countries, which
+have certainly progressed far more towards civilisation—such
+as the West and East Indies, Central America and
+the seaboard of China; it is, generally speaking, a rich
+country; with a fertile soil, sufficient rainfall, large rivers,
+good harbours, fine, well-watered plains, a vast population,
+and a climate not excessively hot. One would expect to
+find here flourishing settlements, large cities, a prosperous
+agriculture and a great commerce; but what we really have
+is a series of second-rate, if not third-rate, settlements which
+are just able to hold their own in the midst of the forests
+and marshes which surround them; and a native population
+which can scarcely be considered other than barbarous
+beyond a short distance from the settlements referred to.
+The discrepancy between the expectation and the fact is remarkable.
+India, for example, with her vast tracts of well-cultivated
+lands, her cities, her ports, her universities, her
+thousands of miles of railway, her society, and her well-organised
+Government is far indeed above West Africa. If
+the best West African province could be transferred bodily<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_154"></a>[154]</span>
+to the East and placed alongside even such outlying parts
+of India as Assam and Burma it would look very shabby in
+comparison. The principal West African towns seen by me,
+Lagos, Accra, and Freetown, cannot for a moment be compared
+with the great Indian capitals and stations such as
+Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Rangoon, Secunderabad, Allahabad,
+Delhi, Benares, Pindi, Lahore. In general appearance,
+construction, and style of living they are on a
+level with such “benighted” spots as Moulmein in Burma,
+Nowgong in Assam, or Masulipatam in Southern India.
+West Africa possesses no Simla, Bangalore, Darjeeling or
+Ootacamund.</p>
+
+<p>The whole country reminds one chiefly of the derelict
+Coromandel Coast minus its principal city. Yet it may
+perhaps be doubted whether in extent, fertility and natural
+resources West Africa is really far below India. Europe
+has been trading with West Africa for centuries; it has
+long drawn from it many valuable commodities; it has explored
+it and made settlements in it which have lasted for
+hundreds of years. Why has not Europe done more for it,
+then? The question is really one of great importance in
+the philosophical history of civilisation, especially in these
+days when civilisation tends so strongly to overflow from
+the temperate climates into the tropical ones. Here we
+have two countries equally gifted with natural resources
+and equally exposed to the civilising irradiance of Europe.
+Yet, while India is of itself already one of the great Powers
+of the world, the other still remains in the condition of a
+newly discovered continent, to be opened up in the future.</p>
+
+<p>Of the three reasons usually assigned for this curious fact,
+the first generally given is that in India Europe found a
+certain degree of civilisation already existing before her
+advent; while in West Africa she started to work upon a
+completely barbarous country. No doubt this has much to
+do with the result; but we must remember that many
+countries now far ahead of West Africa were little or no less
+barbarous than West Africa a few centuries ago—such as
+many portions of tropical America, Burma, and the Islands<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_155"></a>[155]</span>
+of the Pacific. It can scarcely be said that the antecedent
+semi-civilisation of India and China has been always favourable
+to progress, nor that a basis of complete barbarism is
+always fatal to it. Another reason, perhaps more frequently
+given, is that the natives of West Africa are incorrigibly indolent.
+Yet it is by the labours of these very people, controlled
+by Europeans, that the prosperity of the Southern
+States of America has been established. In my humble
+opinion the West African should be very good material for
+civilisation. Compared with the East Indian, he is perhaps
+not so patient, laborious, or thrifty; but, on the other hand,
+he is much more vivacious and virile; he is not hampered
+by the restrictions of caste; he is physically strong and
+healthy; he is capable of producing men who are intellectually
+not a whit inferior to the average European; and above
+all, instead of adhering obstinately to his own customs as the
+Indian so often does, he always shows a remarkable desire
+for the customs and culture of Europe. In fact, I personally
+feel, though I may be wrong, that these people are
+better material for civilisation than East Indians, and I do
+not think that the backwardness of West Africa can be
+wholly or even largely assigned to defects in their character.</p>
+
+<p>To many of us the real reason for this backwardness
+appears to be undoubtedly the so-called unhealthiness of
+the West African “climate” for Europeans. It is impossible
+to deny the fact that the European cannot live on the West
+African Coast in the same security against disease as he
+enjoys in the East and West Indies; and in my opinion it
+is this fact, and not the original barbarism of the natives, or
+their indolence, which retards progress here. The agent of
+civilisation dies on the threshold of the country which he
+comes to develop.</p>
+
+<p>It would require a large volume to deal adequately with
+this important subject, and I can only attempt an outline
+here. We shall first ask what is the cause of this unhealthiness,
+and secondly, what is the remedy.</p>
+
+<p>I shall not attempt to give any statistics of mortality
+among Europeans or natives, because what statistics exist<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_156"></a>[156]</span>
+are not at all reliable. But the fact that the country is extremely
+unhealthy for Europeans is universally accepted;
+and is, moreover, demonstrated by the high rates for life-insurance,
+by the large amount of leave which Government
+grants to its employés, and by the difficulty which all employers
+experience in obtaining European agents for West
+African work, even for high pay. In fact, the country is so
+notorious in this respect that it is unnecessary to labour the
+point farther.</p>
+
+<p>What are the causes of the unhealthiness of West Africa
+for Europeans? The first series of causes are undoubtedly
+a group of infectious diseases, certainly or probably due to
+parasitic invasion of the body. These are principally what
+is known as malarial or intermittent fever, with its most
+dangerous variety, blackwater fever; various other fevers,
+dysentery, and according to many physicians, yellow fever.
+The first attacks the European with greater force than it
+attacks the habituated native, but nevertheless produces
+great havoc among native children. It is so prevalent that
+new-comers frequently succumb within a few weeks after
+arrival, while old residents often suffer from relapses during
+the whole of their stay in the country. In addition, epidemics
+either of this fever, yellow fever, or some allied disease,
+sweep through the settlements, causing great mortality
+among the Europeans; dysentery and bowel complaints are
+scarcely less to be feared in some parts. The records of
+West Africa are blackened by these terrible plagues, which
+time after time have blotted out the names of the most
+daring travellers, the most capable governors, and the most
+enterprising traders; which mutilate the lives of those whom
+they do not kill; and which hamper every political or commercial
+enterprise by striking down or intimidating the
+agents who are sent out to execute it.</p>
+
+<p>But we must not imagine that these are the only factors
+of the total result. The heat and moisture of the climate
+are most enervating to Europeans. The general absence of
+good food—good meat, bread, vegetables, and milk—tends
+to produce dyspepsia and melancholy. The absence of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_157"></a>[157]</span>
+most of the comforts and amenities to which Europeans
+are accustomed in their own home—good houses, good
+servants, society and exercise, not to mention the absence
+of wives and children—depress the mind; and when this
+general outline is filled in by such details as the ever-present
+dread of serious sickness, the constant stings of insects, the
+unsavoury surroundings of a squalid native population, it
+must be confessed that the colonist has much to depress
+him. What wonder if, in such circumstances, alcoholism
+and debauchery sometimes complete the sketch! The fact
+is, that what we call the “unhealthiness” of West Africa
+is a complex due to many causes which assist each other.
+People are apt to fall into a vicious circle from which it is
+hard to escape. I may say, indeed, that the whole of West
+Africa has fallen into this vicious circle and has not yet
+escaped from it. Let us consider the point farther.</p>
+
+<p>When we find much sickness in a given country we are
+too inclined to think that the sickness is entirely due to
+certain natural conditions which are present in that country
+and which render it unhealthy. We forget that the sickness
+may be due, not to the country itself, but to the fact that the
+inhabitants do not take proper precautions against the
+diseases which persecute them. Now the whole trend of
+sanitary science has been to show in a convincing manner
+that the great infectious diseases are preventable, if only the
+proper precautions are taken. Time after time we have
+witnessed the entire disappearance, or at least the partial
+disappearance, of such diseases from whole countries. For
+example, small-pox and typhus have almost vanished from
+the great States of Europe—at least we may say so when we
+compare their prevalence in the past with their prevalence
+at the present day. Typhoid and diphtheria are diminishing
+daily. Malarial fever and dysentery, which were formerly
+scourges of parts of Britain, have almost entirely gone from
+the country. Even in the tropics we shall find numerous
+instances of the same kind. Calcutta was once a hot-bed
+of fever and cholera, and was probably as fatal to Europeans
+as West Africa is now said to be. Rangoon was deadly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_158"></a>[158]</span>
+when the British first went there. A century ago cholera
+often swept away whole regiments in India. We now look
+in vain for this state of things. As a whole, India is perhaps
+as healthy for Europeans as England is—at least if we exclude
+the enervating effects of mere heat; and, indeed, I
+think that in some respects, in the absence of colds and
+chest complaints and in the benefits of open-air life and
+exercise, Europeans in India are more fortunate than their
+brothers at home.</p>
+
+<p>Such facts alone clearly demonstrate that many diseases
+are not dependent upon natural factors beyond human
+control; but science has reinforced the argument by showing
+that a number of infectious diseases are due to microorganisms
+which spring from previously diseased persons
+and not from the air, soil, or water of localities. When, therefore,
+we speak of a given place being unhealthy, we merely
+mean that from some cause or other infectious disease is
+readily propagated from the sick to the healthy in that place.
+This may in part be due to the local conditions as regards
+heat, moisture, and so on being especially favourable to the
+transmission of the disease germs; but it may also be due to the
+fact that no precautions are taken to check this transmission.</p>
+
+<p>Thus in the case of West Africa we may ask, Is the local
+sickness really due to the climate being specially favourable
+to the transmission of disease; or is it due to the neglect of
+proper precautions? I would not be prepared to say that
+as regards heat, moisture, and profuse vegetation—conditions
+long known to be particularly favourable to malaria—West
+Africa differs much from Calcutta or Rangoon. So
+far as nature goes I can see little difference between West
+Africa and other tropical regions which I have visited. On
+the other hand, I see the greatest difference in the mode of
+life adopted by Europeans in West Africa and in India;
+and I am convinced that the excessive mortality amongst
+them is due largely, if not principally, to this cause, added
+to the imperfect condition of public sanitation in the country.</p>
+
+<p>My own visits to West Africa have been short and limited.
+I have thrice lived in Freetown for brief periods, and have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_159"></a>[159]</span>
+paid flying visits to Bathurst, Accra, Lagos, and Ibadan.
+But though my experiences of the country were thus brief
+enough, I was always in a position to see a good deal in the
+time at my disposal, and my powers of sanitary observation,
+so to speak, were previously exercised by eighteen years’
+employment in the Indian Medical Service. Moreover, for
+the last three years I have been in constant communication
+with many old residents on the Coast, and I have also
+learned much from the members of several expeditions
+sent there by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine,
+and by reading numerous reports on the sanitation of the
+country. I state these facts simply in order to enable
+the reader to judge of the value of my testimony on the
+points under consideration. I do not pretend that a greater
+experience would not have increased that value; but at the
+same time it should be remarked that a sanitarian of any
+experience, like a trained physician, can often make a correct
+diagnosis in a comparatively short time; and that it is not
+necessary to examine every town in a country in order to
+arrive at a general conception of its sanitary condition.
+Moreover, the towns which I have seen are the capitals of
+four out of the six British Colonies on the Coast.</p>
+
+<p>In my experience, such as it is, the mode of life of
+Europeans in West Africa is not suited to the tropics.</p>
+
+<p>Take the houses to begin with. They are not generally
+good. It is absolutely essential in the tropics to have good
+roofs and large airy rooms. Our wise forefathers recognised
+this early in India, and built the great solid structures which
+are such a prominent feature of Calcutta and Madras and
+many Indian stations. I have seen nothing of the kind in
+West Africa. Even in Lagos and Accra the houses can be
+described only as second-rate. In Freetown they are simply
+execrable; and it is monstrous that Englishmen, much more
+ladies, should be compelled to live in them. It should be
+remembered that many of these West African hovels are
+built by Government. In Ibadan I saw a magnificent iron
+house which I was told cost the Government £6000, but
+which is so ill-designed and ill-placed that in the heat of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_160"></a>[160]</span>
+day the inmates are compelled to go outside and sit under
+leaf shelters! Then again, in India the Europeans and
+some of the better class natives live in a separate quarter;
+but in West Africa this seems to be the case only to a limited
+extent; while in Freetown the Europeans often live over
+native shops. Remembering that infectious diseases are
+communicated from the sick, we shall easily understand why
+the absence of a separate quarter is so dangerous to health.
+Those absolute essentials to comfort in the tropics, punkahs
+and mosquito-nets, which are invariably used in India, are
+often the exception in West Africa, or were so until quite
+recently.</p>
+
+<p>As regards food, we find little efforts made to help the
+African colonists to obtain good provisions. Fresh milk
+and butter often cannot be got at all, even where cattle
+exist in plenty. Government sometimes maintains, at considerable
+cost, botanical gardens for various economical
+purposes. I was told that these gardens used to grow
+vegetables for the Europeans until stopped by a mandate
+from England, on the ground that a Government botanist
+is not a vegetable gardener!—a type of the hopelessly unpractical
+spirit which has crept into all British administration.
+As a result the colonist has to fall back upon native
+vegetables, to which he is not accustomed. The meat is
+generally poor and coarse, and no proper effort is made to
+improve it. Ice—another essential in the tropics—cannot
+generally be obtained. I was gravely informed that ice-machines
+will not work in West Africa. It is difficult to see
+why this is the case, because they will certainly work in the
+hottest and dampest parts of India. Aerated waters have to
+be imported and cost about sixpence a bottle; I suppose
+that they, too, “cannot be made” in West Africa. In India
+they are made everywhere and cost about a penny a bottle.
+Singular effect of the West African climate!</p>
+
+<p>What are more necessary anywhere than exercise, recreation,
+and society? In India the smallest station has its
+gymkana; its polo, tennis, cricket, and even football; its
+dinners, its afternoon parties, its balls; its shooting and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_161"></a>[161]</span>
+riding. As for West Africa, though, owing to the intelligent
+encouragement of the Governors, much attention is now
+being given to this subject, things are very different. A
+resident of Sekondi told me that their “only amusement is
+to drink.” So it seemed. In many places horses do not
+exist, because it is said they do not live there. So far as
+I know, Government has never attempted the slightest
+scientific inquiry into this most important matter, although
+probably the disability is due merely to some easily preventable
+parasitic disease. In Freetown many people take no
+exercise at all and are carried about even for short distances
+in hammocks. In up-country places, I hear, the dulness of
+life, owing to the absence of recreation and exercise, is often
+intolerable and heart-breaking.</p>
+
+<p>Turning now to affairs of state sanitation, let us first ask,
+what would have been the logical and business-like course
+for adoption by Government from the earliest days of these
+Colonies? Seeing the obvious fact that all development of
+the country was being retarded by the sickness and mortality
+among the European Officials and traders, a practical
+Government would from the first have strained every nerve
+to remedy this state of things. It would have spent every
+available penny in the sanitation of the coast towns, which
+are, in fact, the portals of the continent. It would have
+kept these scrupulously clean, swept and drained. It would
+have housed its employés thoroughly well in quarters removed
+from the infectious vicinity of the poorer native
+locations. It would have encouraged the traders to do
+the same for their agents. It would have organised farms
+for the purpose of producing good fresh food—meat,
+milk, butter and vegetables. It would have created or
+endowed places of exercise and recreation. It would
+have attempted to add in every possible way to the
+comfort of the Europeans, who are the backbone of
+the Colonies, knowing that reasonable comfort is half
+the way to health and happiness, and that senseless and
+unnecessary discomfort is more than half the way in the
+other direction. It would have taken scrupulous care of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_162"></a>[162]</span>
+water supply; of the conservancy; of the drainage of
+swamps. It would have insisted on the adequate sanitation
+of native locations near European locations, in the interests
+both of natives and Europeans. It would have maintained
+an up-to-date medical and sanitary department, provided
+with sufficient powers and funds for its work. It would
+have kept accurate statistics of sickness and mortality,
+especially among the Europeans. It would have ordered
+numerous scientific investigations into the causes of the
+most disastrous West African diseases, both among men
+and domestic animals. Above all, it would have put the
+direction of sanitary affairs into the hands of the ablest
+scientific men it could procure.</p>
+
+<p>Now I do not wish to take the <i>rôle</i> of the fault finder; but
+I must say, so far as I know—and I hope I may be mistaken—the
+Colonial Office and the West African Governments
+and municipalities can scarcely be said to have given
+adequate attention to a single one of the items in this
+programme—at least until quite recently. Consider the
+question of surface drainage for instance. It has been well
+known, since the time of the Romans, that surface-drainage
+removes malaria; and malaria is the principal enemy of the
+West African Colonies. Surely, then, the most obvious
+considerations should have induced Government to reclaim
+the large marshes existing in the vicinity of the principal
+settlements. A small annual expenditure, if persisted in,
+would have gradually done the work; and, as Sir William
+MacGregor once observed, the local Governments have had
+at their disposal for years large gangs of gaol prisoners who
+could, with advantage, have been employed on such useful
+labours instead of shot-drill. But no; the marshes have
+been allowed to exist as they were. It is only quite recently
+that the swamps of Lagos and Bathurst have been touched.
+In Freetown the swamps existed in almost every street in
+the native quarters during the rains, and were, in fact, actually
+made by incompetent engineering efforts and maintained by
+the grossest sanitary neglect—the roadside drains being
+generally nothing but series of deep pools full of stagnant<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_163"></a>[163]</span>
+water seething with insect life. Yet this town was called the
+white-man’s grave; and Heaven was blamed for causing
+a disease which man could easily have prevented if the
+most elementary teaching of sanitary science had been
+attended to. Even after the connection between stagnant
+water and malaria was fully verified and explained by the discovery
+(completed in 1899) that the disease is carried from
+the sick to the healthy by certain kinds of mosquitoes which
+breed in stagnant puddles, no spontaneous effort was made by
+Government to improve the surface-drainage in Freetown.</p>
+
+<p>In 1899 the Liverpool School took the trouble to send out
+an expedition which made a complete map of the mosquito-breeding
+puddles in the town; and next year the Commission
+of the Royal Society extended our observations.
+Two years later, however, another expedition of the Liverpool
+School found that everything had been left in exactly
+the same old state, except that the salary of the chief
+sanitary official had been largely increased. Not a puddle,
+not a ditch had been drained; not a single effort worth
+mention had been made, to act upon the new discovery
+which was of such importance to these Colonies; and it
+was not until the advent of the new Governor, Sir Charles
+King-Harman, assisted by the Liverpool School, that any
+adequate attempt was made to clear and drain Freetown.
+In the other Colonies progress was equally slow, until Sir
+William MacGregor and Dr. Strachan commenced their
+anti-malarial campaign in Lagos. The central authority,
+the Colonial Office, instead of forcing on measures in a
+brisk, business-like way, contented itself with publishing
+good advice which every one had heard a dozen times
+before. The Governments of the Gold Coast (Sir Matthew
+Nathan), of the Gambia (Sir George Denton), are now
+pushing on in this direction; and we can only hope that the
+progress will be maintained in the future in all the Colonies.</p>
+
+<p>The other items of the programme mentioned above have
+also received little attention. The medical and sanitary
+services have not been kept in an up-to-date condition.</p>
+
+<p>For instance, in 1880, Laveran discovered the parasite<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_164"></a>[164]</span>
+which causes malarial fever; but even twenty years later
+there were few doctors who used the discovery for the
+proper diagnosis and treatment of the fevers prevalent on the
+Coast. In most cases they were not even provided with
+microscopes for the work. In these respects the West
+African medical services were only on a par with the other
+State medical services; which, while they often contain exceedingly
+smart men, are generally wanting as a whole in
+scientific ability and push, and in the influence which they
+should exercise in the government of the countries to which
+they belong. A high official once informed me that of all
+the men under his orders the doctors had the least sense of
+duty. This is little to be wondered at, since, in my experience,
+efficiency does not lead to advancement in these
+services, and the most perfunctory men reach promotion as
+readily as the most meritorious. I have noticed a dozen
+instances of the almost complete indifference to science
+shown in these public medical services. For example, when
+the first Liverpool expedition reached Sierra Leone in 1899,
+the principal medical officer of the R.A.M.C. forbade us to
+feed mosquitoes upon his cases of malarial fever for experiment,
+though neither he nor his subordinates took the
+smallest trouble to prevent their men from being bitten
+night and day by the insects in the barracks and hospitals.
+We were convinced that this order was given simply out of
+wilful desire to obstruct us. Similarly in India a military
+doctor once forbade me even to prick the fingers of his
+patients in order to study their blood. The manner in
+which the R.A.M.C. authorities interrupted the researches
+of Colonel Bruce, F.R.S., on tsetse-fly disease and horse
+sickness in South Africa, and in which the Madras Government
+persecuted Dr. King for his small-pox work, is well
+known. It would be folly to expect that services administered
+in this manner could ever take a leading part in organising
+great campaigns against disease in the colonies; and I
+fear that, until Sir William MacGregor led the way in Lagos,
+the West African medical services, even though they have
+possessed many able men, have done little to improve sanitation<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_165"></a>[165]</span>
+in that country. The fault is entirely with the chief
+offices of Government, which too often appoint and retain
+as heads of their medical departments men who have no
+scientific status or even scientific knowledge, and at the
+same time take no trouble to promote the deserving. I
+have known many instances of this. It would be much
+better, in my opinion, to fill such offices from the ranks of
+able civil practitioners or scientists at home, rather than to
+select men who have no other claim to the post than long
+official service.</p>
+
+<p>One of the greatest defects in the sanitary administration
+of West Africa has lain in the constant refusal of Government
+to investigate the causes of sickness by making use of
+the services of experts. Government argues that it is not
+its duty to investigate disease; but is it not? It admits
+the duty of maintaining expensive medical services, but
+not that of helping those services to increase their knowledge
+of their business! A logical position truly! In my
+own humble opinion the Colonial Office ought to have spent
+at least £5000 per annum during the last fifty years for investigation
+of the causes of sickness in West Africa alone.
+Do not talk to me of want of funds. There are plenty of
+funds, but they are thrown away on military expeditions;
+on the salaries of useless legal officials—chief justices and
+attorney-generals of little villages; and on building houses
+such as the one I referred to at Ibadan, which cost £6000,
+enough to pay for sanitary researches for years, and is uninhabitable!
+It is a case illustrating that peculiar form of
+mind which looks upon all research and investigation as
+idling and waste of time and money, a frame of mind which
+seems to be specially a British one. We have yet to learn
+the obvious fact that, if we wish to get a thing done, we must
+first make suitable inquiry as to how it should be done.
+Disease cannot be removed from a continent merely by
+establishing a medical service; we must also help the service
+to perfect its knowledge. The hand is not the same thing
+as the brain. In West Africa we have long possessed the
+hand, but the brain has been wanting.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_166"></a>[166]</span></p>
+
+<p>The truth is that the defects of the West African sanitation
+are really due to the fact that the colonial councils are
+almost entirely in the hands of certain castes which are not
+scientific castes, and which care little for sanitary matters.
+I mean the politicians, soldiers, tax-collectors and legal
+people. To these it is a matter of little moment to cleanse
+streets, to purify towns, to banish disease from thousands
+of homes. It is not given to them to stand powerless by
+the side of death-beds and to hear the cries of the bereaved
+at the moment of bereavement. If they have money to
+spend, do they spend it for the purposes for which it was
+really chiefly taken from the tax-payer—for conservancy and
+hygiene? The filthy condition of most native towns in the
+British tropical possessions gives the answer. No, it is a
+finer thing to build a grand new post-office or law-court, or
+to conduct a forward military policy which will find its
+place in the home papers and delight the heart of the British
+greengrocer (and voter) at his breakfast table. Well, after
+all, it is human nature—each man for his own caste. As for
+me, I have been too long an official myself not to understand
+these little matters.</p>
+
+<p>I have said that West Africa has fallen into a vicious circle,
+and the nature of this vicious circle will now be apparent.
+The unhealthiness of the Coast for Europeans tends to check
+their activities in all directions; and in return this detrimental
+effect on their activities tends to check their efforts
+towards ameliorating sanitary affairs. The two conditions
+work hand in hand. It is impossible to remain blind to the
+disastrous economical effect of the unhealthiness. It leads
+to a constant change in the working staff of the country, not
+only in consequence of death and sickness, but also in consequence
+of the frequent furlough which is rendered necessary.
+From the highest to the lowest, few Europeans remain
+in West Africa for more than two or three years at a stretch;
+and many Government officials are entitled to leave after
+one year. This has the effect of rendering all business discontinuous.
+As soon as a man has started a piece of work
+he is called away from his efforts, and is obliged to leave<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_167"></a>[167]</span>
+everything to a successor. In India the period of residence
+in the country before furlough can be demanded is five
+years at least, and even then the break in the business which
+occurs during the furlough is often very mischievous. How
+much more so must be the interruption which occurs in West
+Africa every year or two! The same thing prevents people
+in West Africa from taking sufficient interest in the homes
+of their exile. Many of them have told me that all the time
+they are in the country they are indifferent to what happens,
+that they simply live from hand to mouth, careless of their
+surroundings and longing only for the day when, if fate spares
+them, they can escape once more for a brief interval to
+Europe. It is this feeling which makes them indifferent to
+the houses in which they live, to the food they eat, to their
+surroundings—and sometimes, I fear, to their duties. The
+danger, discomfort and <i>ennui</i> of life are so great that a
+chronic condition of callousness inimical to all serious effort
+is frequently arrived at. We must remember these facts
+when we are inclined to blame them. What wonder then
+that a matter like sanitation, which requires such constant
+endeavours, is apt to be neglected. Thus the circle comes
+“full round” again; and the neglect of sanitation leads to
+the paralysing unhealthiness which leads to the neglect of
+sanitation. I have observed the same thing elsewhere—notably
+in the unhealthy planting districts of India.</p>
+
+<p>What must we do to mend this state of affairs? Well,
+the vicious circle must be broken at all costs.</p>
+
+<p>But how? I think that there is really only one way in which
+it can be done, and that is by the introduction of a new force
+into the vortex. I mean public opinion and public effort at
+home in Europe. These must be roused for the sake of our
+countrymen in West Africa. This country should be made
+to understand that it has something more to do than to
+watch processions of colonial troops and to brag of its
+Empire. It is its duty to see that the Empire which it
+boasts of is properly administered, and that our countrymen
+who are sent to carry on the affairs, both official and commercial,
+of that Empire are not left to die there unnecessarily.<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_168"></a>[168]</span>
+This duty has certainly been most grossly neglected
+in the past. It should be the work of all of us, especially
+of those who govern the country, of the wealthy merchants
+who trade with it, of the rich people who do not know what
+to do with their money, and of men like myself, who are
+hired to study and teach tropical sanitation—it should be
+the work of all of us to see that it is not neglected in the
+future.</p>
+
+<p>As every one knows, this new force has already come
+into being. Every day sees some notice of West African
+affairs in the Press. The able Governors of the Colonies
+are, I think, doing all for the cause which their limited
+means allow. The merchants of Liverpool and London
+have come forward most handsomely with their tropical
+schools, which I make bold to say are doing well also. A
+single philanthropist has actually drained and cleaned the
+houses in Freetown <i>pro tempore</i>, at his own expense, and
+last, but by no means least, many young pathologists have
+given their time and risked their health for the cause.</p>
+
+<p>But what are the exact steps which should be taken? I
+have already indicated these above. It is the duty of the
+Government to see that the principal settlements are kept
+scrupulously clean and drained; to construct and publish
+proper statistics of sickness and mortality among the Europeans;
+to appoint whole-time health officers; to enforce
+sanitary laws; and to encourage the building of good
+houses and the establishment of dairies, settlement farms,
+gymkanas and other institutions or trades which are likely
+to conduce to the comfort and health of the colonists.
+Thus Government has a great deal to do. It has only begun
+as yet.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not Government alone which must act. Sir
+William MacGregor recently pointed out to the Liverpool
+Chamber of Commerce that men who carry on business on
+the Coast have much to do for their employés—to give
+them good houses, to force them to take proper precautions
+against malaria, and to add to their comfort in every
+possible way.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_169"></a>[169]</span></p>
+
+<p>Then there is the philanthropist millionaire. I wish that
+we could get hold of him in earnest. Sir Charles King-Harman
+once told me that £100,000 would reform the
+West Coast if presented as a free gift, by enabling Government
+to start gymkanas, dairies, and such like for the
+Europeans. So it would; and the money ought to be
+obtained.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, the Colonial Office ought to do one thing—a thing
+which was recommended by a deputation which waited
+upon the Colonial Secretary some time ago. That is, it
+ought to appoint a Sanitary Commissioner on the Indian
+model, to make constant inspections of sanitary matters in
+the West African Colonies, and to report directly to the
+Colonial Office. We were told, however, that the scheme
+was too costly, and otherwise impossible. But shortly
+afterwards a gentleman with a large salary was appointed
+in order to inspect the knapsacks, &amp;c., of the black troops—a
+much more important matter than any sanitary business!</p>
+
+<p>I may mention here an opinion which I frequently heard
+expressed on the Coast, namely, that the West African
+Colonies have now outgrown the present system of control
+by small detached Governments placed under an office in
+London. It is contended that the whole country should be
+administered by a Governor-General on the Indian lines. I
+fancy that sanitation would not lose by the change.</p>
+
+<p>Such are my humble opinions on sanitary matters in
+West Africa. They are given in response to an invitation
+from the author of this book; and, of course, exigencies of
+space have prevented my dealing with many points which
+should be dealt with in a complete survey of the subject—which
+would require a book for itself. I have thought it
+best to say exactly what I think without much reservation;
+but, of course, my views may, perhaps, not be so sound as I
+imagine. It would be the grandest thing in the world if
+sanitary science could give to civilisation such a glorious
+gift as West Africa; and I believe that it will. But the
+thing will be done only by straight speaking, hard hitting,
+and the most indomitable action.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_170"></a>[170]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX<br>
+<span class="smaller">LAND TENURE AND LABOUR IN WEST AFRICA</span></h3>
+
+<p>“In dealing with the natives, one must never touch their rights in land.”—<span class="smcap">Sir
+William MacGregor.</span></p>
+
+<p>“The so-called labour problem is, in my opinion, created by the people
+who complain of it, and not by the natives, who are perfectly willing to work
+when fairly treated.”—Mr. <span class="smcap">J. A. Daw</span>, of the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation.<a id="FNanchor_145" href="#Footnote_145" class="fnanchor">[145]</a></p>
+
+<p>“I know the Gold Coast natives well, and I repeat, you can get all you
+want out of them, if people will only realise that the native is a human being,
+and not an animal or a machine.”—Captain <span class="smcap">Donovan</span>, late of the Gold
+Coast Police.<a id="FNanchor_146" href="#Footnote_146" class="fnanchor">[146]</a></p>
+
+<p>“Nothing in all the history submitted on this subject is more misleading,
+untrue, and unjust than the reiterated statement that the chiefs and people of
+Western Africa are unfitted for peaceable self-government. It is not pretended
+they will reach for the present any Western European ideal, but they will not
+lag behind some people who claim to be better. The people do not want war;
+the very facility with which their disputes are temporarily adjusted serves to
+show this disposition. The Coast is far from having recovered from the dire
+effects of the slave trade. The chiefs are weak, and much of their power is
+taken from them by the very British Administration which scolds them for
+their non-success.”—<span class="smcap">C. S. Salmon</span>, “The Crown Colonies of Great Britain.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>If there is one thing more than another upon which the
+most competent students of West Africa are agreed, it is the
+tenaciousness of the West African Negro to his landed
+rights. Land tenure in West Africa has been properly
+described as a “cult.” The most experienced English,
+French and German observers have noted this characteristic.
+Wherever it has been adequately studied, the system
+of native land tenure, in its tribal, family, individual and
+commercial aspects, is found to be at once simple in its
+broad lines, elaborate in its details, and approaching in
+many respects to the most advanced democratic conceptions
+of Western Europe. Before the torchlight of scientific inquiry,
+the old idea of the Negro being more or less of an
+animal, incapable of evolving any rational or consistent<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_171"></a>[171]</span>
+policy; too backward to frame anything approaching an
+unwritten code of law; his every act of life being merely the
+outcome of natural instinct, can no longer be entertained.
+And to the knowledge that these beings, who were thought
+irrational, and inconsequent to the extent of being the half-devil,
+half-child of popular imagination, has been added
+the conviction that the commercial and political success
+of the Powers of Europe in their West African Possessions
+depends for its attainment upon the recognition of native
+law in respect to property.</p>
+
+<p>But although the testimony to this effect is shared by
+those who have the largest experience of West Africa, and
+although evidence is accumulating on all sides which corroborates
+in the most ample manner the statements of Ellis,
+Sarbah and Mary Kingsley,<a id="FNanchor_147" href="#Footnote_147" class="fnanchor">[147]</a> it is nevertheless unhappily true
+that the tendency on the part of the European Powers, not
+only to interfere with the native law of land tenure, but to
+frame legislation without regard whatever for its importance
+in the relationship between the European and the Negro, is
+increasingly manifest. It would seem as though, having
+discovered that the West African Negro is not a brute but a
+man, evidence which establishes the discovery is deliberately
+set aside; because it is so much easier to go on treating the
+native as a brute, that is to say, as a being deprived of the
+faculty of reasoning, and who, on the principle of “a woman,
+a dog and a walnut-tree, the more you beat ’em the better
+they’ll be,” will come fawning to our feet in abject humility
+upon every fresh exhibition of our superiority.</p>
+
+<p>It is very curious to observe this conflict of forces; painstaking
+research, its published results, and the influence it
+wields, <i>versus</i> impatience and disinclination to investigate on
+the one hand; and selfish material interests on the other.
+The future of European political and commercial enterprise
+in West Africa is largely bound up with the struggle for
+the capture of Public Opinion which is going on in this<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_172"></a>[172]</span>
+country and on the Continent. At present, the purely
+materialistic notion, assisted by its twin-brother Indifference,
+is in the ascendant. Apparent success having been
+secured in that part of tropical Western Africa where,
+under the tuition of his white masters, the native has
+become a mere machine for the production of dividends
+to European company promoters, a great impetus has been
+given to the conception, popular in so many quarters, that
+the <i>raison d’être</i> of West Africa and the West African is
+their exploitation by Western Europe, on such lines and in
+such fashion as the peoples of Western Europe see fit.
+The European Governments are alternately allowing themselves
+to be dragged along this perilous path whose ultimate
+destination is the abyss called Failure, or are hanging back
+from it, beset with doubts. But the danger is acutely
+realised by many, and as it gathers in extent and consistency,
+is being energetically opposed. The merchants,
+English, French and German, are, as a body, unanimous
+in condemnation. The exceptions to the rule are exceedingly
+few and far between. The best type of Colonial
+Administrator in West Africa also is utterly antagonistic,
+and amongst the still restricted but daily growing section
+of the Public which follows the affairs of West Africa
+with intelligent interest a strong feeling of protest gathers
+volume every day. These forces are numerically inferior,
+but they carry great weight, and if they can succeed in
+combining they must ultimately win the day. But the
+struggle will be long and bitter.</p>
+
+<p>An attempt has been made in this volume to show (1) the
+unwisdom of interfering too rapidly, and without sufficient
+care and thought, with native customs generally, and (2), as
+regards the evil of slave-raiding, the advisability of seriously
+considering whether force is the only weapon which a great
+Empire can forge to suppress it. In the latter case, the
+Powers are able to put forward a plea justifying interference,
+insomuch as the evil is an active one. The only difference
+of opinion, as already stated, is the form which such interference
+should take. In the former case the evils, if some<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_173"></a>[173]</span>
+of them are evils—a matter which admits of a good deal of
+qualification—are of a kind that patience, tact, and time—time
+above all things—will prove the most efficient means
+of combating. But in respect to native law of land tenure,
+we are not confronted with any evil. On the contrary, the
+system of native land tenure is essentially just, thoroughly
+adapted to the needs of the country and its people, a striking
+refutation of the “arrested development” theory as applied
+to the Negro, and <i>per se</i> an eloquent vindication of the
+Negro’s claim to consideration at the hands of the European
+invaders of, and settlers in, his country. There can be no
+justification whatever for the break-up of land tenure, or for
+the alienation of native property, under any pretext. It is
+morally indefensible, and what is morally indefensible is
+seldom politically wise.</p>
+
+<p>In West Africa, the circumstances being what they are,
+interference with native property is bound to affect, not in
+theory but in practice, the interest of every single individual
+in the country. In the coastwise regions of West Africa
+proper, as far south, that is to say, as the Rio del Rey, where
+Bantu culture begins, it may be accepted as a rule (whatever
+differentiation may exist in the system of land tenure in
+widely removed districts), from which the departures are
+extremely rare,<a id="FNanchor_148" href="#Footnote_148" class="fnanchor">[148]</a> that every square yard of the country is
+<i>owned</i>. Sarbah for the Gold Coast; Clozel and Delafosse for
+the Ivory Coast; Ellis for Yoruba; Mary Kingsley for the
+Rivers; Bohn for French Guinea; Fabre for Dahomey, have
+borne witness in their respective fields of observation to this
+fact—that there is no land without an owner. There is also
+a vast amount of untabulated corroborative information
+from almost every part of the Coast. South of Rio del Rey
+the land customs of the natives have not been the object
+of so much inquiry as north of it, and there the population
+is not in the main so dense, but what gleanings are available
+to us appear to be conclusive on the same point: in all
+inhabited districts land is never without an owner, whose
+claims, whether tribal or family, are as sacred in native<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_174"></a>[174]</span>
+unwritten law as they would be if duly set forth in a legal
+document, in accordance with the full requirements of
+European jurisprudence.</p>
+
+<p>It is easy to understand why this should be so. The native
+lives on the produce of his land. He not only lives upon it,
+it is also his wealth, his currency, his medium of exchange
+for European goods. The products which he gathers in
+his forests, the plantations he makes in the clearings and the
+plains, these are at once his sustenance and his cash. Is it
+astonishing, therefore, that he guards his land and all that
+grows therein, or is built thereon, with passionate jealousy;
+and that, whereas he can be induced without difficulty to lease
+his property rights under certain conditions to Europeans
+for even a long term of years, he can seldom be brought,
+save by physical compulsion, to alienate them for ever?
+Ought it to be matter for surprise that legislation calculated
+to hinder his free use of the products of his land, or action
+of which the logical consequence is to reduce him from the
+position of land-owner to tenant, either provokes him to pit
+his spears and flintlocks against the repeating-rifles of the
+despoilers, or breeds in him such utter confusion of mind,
+such bewilderment and terror, that,</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+<div class="poetry">
+  <div class="stanza">
+    <div class="verse indent0">Fleeing to the forest’s dim recess,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">He broods in sullen unproductiveness,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Plunged in deeper savagery,</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Witness to the high morality</div>
+    <div class="verse indent0">Of Christian peoples?</div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Strange, indeed, does it seem, with the burden of historical
+proof to the adaptability of the Negro; with the abundant
+and cumulative evidence of his willingness to trade, to learn,
+to take on new industries, to everywhere follow up his
+natural profession of agriculture; with the actual and daily
+evidence of his enterprise and producing capacity in the
+existing oil-palm, ground-nut, mahogany and rubber industries;
+strange, indeed, that European statesmen worthy
+of the name should for a moment entertain the idea, or lend
+ear to the suggestion, that in a country like West Africa,
+where the white element compared with the black is as a<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_175"></a>[175]</span>
+grain of sand on the sea-shore, and where the European
+can attain nothing that is permanent or lasting without the
+willing co-operation of the Negro, the spontaneous production
+of the Negro as a free man, in the enjoyment of the
+fruits of his own land, can be replaced by the forced production
+of a serf deprived of his lands, his freedom, and his
+individuality!</p>
+
+<p>If in one sense the question of native land tenure in West
+Africa is distinct from that of native labour, it is in another
+way closely allied to it, and to treat of one without referring
+to the other is difficult, if not impossible. But it is equally
+difficult, when once the labour problem is raised, to confine
+oneself to West Africa only; for the theory of “assimilation”
+is very much to the fore just now, and although the conditions
+prevailing in West Africa differentiate absolutely from
+those in Central, East, and South Africa, the same general
+arguments are made to apply more or less to all four. I
+must, therefore, crave the reader’s indulgence if I wander
+somewhat afield.</p>
+
+<p>There is not the least shadow of doubt that the tendency
+to go past the law of native land tenure in West Africa owes
+its origin in large measure to the oft-repeated statement that
+the Negro will not work. Numbers of people have for some
+time past been assuring the Public that West Africa can only
+be developed by compelling the native to work.<a id="FNanchor_149" href="#Footnote_149" class="fnanchor">[149]</a> It is, of
+course, assumed <i>à priori</i> that the native of West Africa does
+not work. How the contention can be justified in the face
+of demonstrable and easily accessible facts to the contrary,
+we need not pause to inquire. It suffices that the contention
+exists, and that there is not a paper dealing with African
+affairs in Great Britain, or the Continent of Europe, which
+does not contain in almost every issue some reference to
+the matter. Nor is discussion limited to such papers. In<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_176"></a>[176]</span>
+the speeches of public men whose interests are associated with
+Africa; in conferences, in books, pamphlets, and not infrequently
+in the daily press, the subject crops up again and
+again. The refrain is usually much after this style: “The
+native will not work. We have to work and pay income-tax.
+Why should not the native? What is the use of Africa
+to us if the native refuses to work? It is intolerable. He
+must be made to work.”</p>
+
+<p>It must be admitted that the spirit of the hour is admirably
+suited to act the part of receiver to these laments. The
+signatory powers of the Berlin Act have allowed the gradual
+establishment and consolidation in Western Central Africa
+of an institution the existence of which is based upon repudiation
+of the inherent right of the native to his land or the
+fruits thereof; and upon forced labour on the part of the
+dispossessed for their despoilers. What wonder that the
+public of France and Germany, observing the enormous
+profits derived by people immediately connected with this
+institution, and led astray by the apathy of their statesmen
+to the evil, should put down to political ability what is
+merely outrage; and impatient at the comparatively slow
+progress of their own possessions, should begin to loudly
+call for the adoption of a similar system therein? “The
+King of Belgium has succeeded in making the natives
+work. He and his coadjutors are reaping a huge harvest.
+Belgian industry is the gainer. Antwerp has become the
+first rubber market in the world. Why not imitate the
+King of Belgium?”</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus23" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus23.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>THE IDLE NATIVE! MARKET SCENE IN WEST AFRICA</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>It would be grossly unfair to describe this mental attitude
+on the part of public opinion in France and Germany as
+having been due, or as being due, to a natural callousness. At
+one time, indeed, the proceedings of the Congo State were
+severely condemned in both countries, and not farther back
+than 1895 Count Alvensleben, German Ambassador in Brussels,
+was carrying on a correspondence with the then principal
+Secretary of the Congo State anent the payment of rubber
+premiums by the Congo State to its agents and the trading
+operations of that State, couched in such language as would<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_177"></a>[177]</span>
+have brought about between two European Powers an
+immediate rupture of diplomatic relations. But wealth
+commands great power, and its rapid acquisition is a blunter
+of conscience. The Belgian financiers who control the two
+great Trusts in the Congo State—the <i>annexes</i> of the Domaine
+Privé Trust and the Thys Trust—were desirous for their own
+ends of still further extending their power. They managed
+to obtain the co-operation of many highly placed persons in
+France and Germany, and to secure the assistance of an important
+section of the Colonial Press in the two countries. The
+result is seen in the creation of what is known as the Concessionnaire
+<i>régime</i> in the Colony of French Congo; its partial
+adoption in the French Colony of Dahomey; its attempted
+establishment in the auriferous French Colony of the Ivory
+Coast; and its introduction into German Cameroons, where,
+however, experience has led to a revulsion of feeling as
+healthy as it is encouraging. In other words, the indifference
+of the Powers to the violation of the Berlin Act by the
+Sovereign of the Congo State has involved the application
+of the new slavery to another vast tract of territory in
+Africa. Public opinion has been worked to such good
+purpose that the lucubrations of a Carl Peters or Camille
+Janssens are not only listened to with patience, but are
+regarded by many as the embodiment of a rational colonial
+policy; while in France, open appeals have for the past year
+and more been uttered every day in favour of a <i>régime</i> of
+forced labour at the point of the bayonet. The theory that
+the Negro will not work and must be compelled to do so has,
+therefore, made strides rapid enough among the Western
+nations on the Continent of Europe to satisfy the fondest
+hopes of its promoters.</p>
+
+<p>In England the modern school of thought in African
+affairs shows a like tendency. We hear in various forms
+how essential it is to inculcate the African with the notion
+of the “dignity of labour.” As we are here dealing with
+West Africa, it would be out of place to discuss at any
+length the labour questions connected with South Africa.
+But it is only too obvious that the financiers of the Rand<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_178"></a>[178]</span>
+and their friends at home are the leading spirits through
+whom British public opinion is being influenced towards
+coercion in the matter of native labour in Africa as a whole,
+just as the Brussels and Antwerp financiers who run the
+Congo State are the instruments whereby similar notions
+are propagated on the Continent of Europe. As already
+stated, special conditions, as well as the nature of the native
+population and, indeed, nearly all attendant circumstances,
+differ profoundly in West Africa and South Africa, but it is
+necessary to indicate the prevalence of a common shade of
+thought which it is sought to apply in practice wherever
+the European has secured a sufficiently strong hold upon
+the Dark Continent. In a fascinating volume of African
+travel recently published by a brilliant young explorer,
+Mr. H. S. Grogan, can be found embodied, in a style distinguished
+for its honest vulgarity, frank brutality and entire
+absence of those hypocritical sophistries so much in vogue,
+the views of the “modern school” as to what is, or what
+ought to be, the inter-relationship of European and Hamite
+in Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Here are a few samples of his arguments:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“But few people at home,” he writes, “realise what an alarming and
+ever-growing difficulty has to be faced in the African native problem.
+It is a difficulty that is unique in the progress of the world.... Under
+the beneficent rule of the white man he thrives like weeds in a hot-house....
+What is to be done with this ever-increasing mass of
+inertia? We have undertaken his education and advancement, as we
+have carefully explained, by the mawkish euphemisms in which we
+wrap our land-grabbing schemes. When we undertake the education
+of a child or beast we make them work, realising that work is the sole
+road to advancement. But when we undertake the education of a
+nigger, who, as I have endeavoured to show, is a blend of the two, we
+say; ‘Dear Nigger, thou elect of Exeter Hall, chosen of the negrophil,
+bread-and-butter of the missionary, darling of the unthinking philanthropist,
+wilt thou deign to put thy hand to the plough, or dost prefer
+to smoke and tipple in undisturbed content? We, the white men whom
+thy conscience wrongly judges to be thy superiors, will arrange the
+affairs of state. Sleep on, thou ebony idol of a jaded civilisation, may
+be anon thou wilt sing ‘Onward, Christian Soldiers.’ ... A good
+sound system,” proceeds Mr. Grogan, “of compulsory labour would do
+more to raise the nigger in five years than all the millions which have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_179"></a>[179]</span>
+been sunk in missionary efforts for the last fifty.... Why should not
+other peoples be called upon to work for the cause of progress?
+Throughout Africa the cry is, ‘Give me labour.’ There is a sound
+maxim in the progress of the world: ‘What cannot be utilised must be
+eliminated.’ And drivel as we will for a while, the time will come when
+the negro must bow to this as to the inevitable. Why, because he is
+black and is supposed to possess a soul, we should consider him, on
+account of that combination, exempt, it is difficult to understand, when
+a little firmness would transform him from a useless and dangerous
+brute into a source of benefit to the country and of satisfaction to
+himself.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>What a typical passage is this! The Negro lazy and degraded,
+useless and dangerous: the European doing all
+the work while the Negro smokes and drinks—whether imported
+European liquor or liquor manufactured locally is
+not stated: narrow-minded visionaries at home preventing
+the salvation of Africa in the shape of compulsory labour
+on the Rand mines which constitutes “education”: the
+perfection of morals that result from such education, and
+so forth! The crowning folly is conveyed in the words
+“what cannot be utilised must be eliminated,” which, I
+suppose, means a “thinning-out process”—such as Professor
+Gregory tells us has been accomplished only too successfully
+in Unyoro, where “it has been estimated that in the
+four years following the establishment of British rule the
+population was reduced to a fourth”—in order to prevent
+the too rapid propagation of these “hot-house weeds!” And
+yet what Mr. Grogan says is repeated by many and believed
+by more—the mass who swallow this tainted diet as though
+’twere nectar, and absorb these grotesque distortions as if
+they were gospel truths.</p>
+
+<p>Let us endeavour to examine this question in a practical,
+temperate, and impartial spirit. According to ethnologists,
+the true, uncontaminated Negro is only found in West Africa,
+roughly from Senegal to the Rio del Rey. He inhabits the
+coastwise regions and the forest belt. The innumerable
+creeks and forests of the Niger Delta shelter the purest
+specimens, ethnologically, of his race. South of Rio del Rey
+the Bantu stock begins, and predominates as you work<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_180"></a>[180]</span>
+southward. Behind the forest belt the true Negro stock has
+become changed and modified by infusion of Berber and
+Fulani, and also, but to a lesser degree, of Arab blood. In
+the Niger bend, in the regions round about Lake Chad, in
+Northern Nigeria this blending of races has created a
+bewildering variety of mixed types, while here and there
+both the invaded and invading elements have preserved
+their purity—for instance, among the Negroes, the Bambarra
+of the Upper Niger; among the Berbers, the noble Imosagh;
+among the Arabs, the Shuwa; among the Fulani, the Pullo
+herdsmen of Futa Jallon, Adamawa, Bondu, and of many
+other parts of the Western Sudan. Leaving west for east,
+you have the Shoa, Galla, Somali, and Jew in Abyssinia and
+its confines; then the Bantu—product, as Dr. Voight thinks,
+of Semitic and Negro mixture—spreading southwards, inwards
+and westwards; universal everywhere, right down
+to the Cape—the Masai, Wahuma, Pigmies, Hottentots;
+and, in the French Congo, the Fans, presenting small
+channels of ethnic divergence in a vast sea of Bantu
+stock.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus24" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus24.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>WEST AFRICAN “YOUNG HOPEFULS”</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Throughout all this huge expanse of territory the soil is
+in the main so fertile that it produces with little trouble
+everything which the native requires for his subsistence and
+his comfort, where his sense of what constitutes comfort
+has not expanded as the result of intercourse with a higher
+ethical development—a “higher civilisation,” to use the hackneyed
+term. The climate being mostly hot, it militates against
+great physical energy, which, moreover, is not, and has not
+been, economically necessary for the African for countless
+generations. The degree of development of the native
+depends upon the extent of his contact with, or remoteness
+from, influences tending to create in his mind fresh ideas; a
+higher conception of arts and crafts—influences which may
+have filtered through to him either by the medium of trade,
+successive migration, conquest by a more advanced race, or
+the infiltration of a revealed religion. The more inaccessible
+the region, the further inland the people, the wider removed
+from highways of commerce their situation, the more<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_181"></a>[181]</span>
+primitive their state. That is logical, although there are, of
+course, exceptions. But that in his primitive state the
+African is the “useless and dangerous brute” which the
+shallow materialism, the frenzy for expansion, the unthinking,
+rather blatant callousness of the hour would make him
+out to be, is one of the many fictions which pass for truths
+about Africa. The Wa-Kavirondo are the most primitive
+people in the Uganda Protectorate. They go absolutely
+naked, are more moral than their partly clothed neighbours,
+and are agriculturists. “Wherever they settle, the jungle
+around them is soon converted into fruitful fields, yielding
+sweet potatoes, or various forms of corn. Those who can
+afford it keep goats and sheep, and the wealthy have herds
+of cattle,” says Dr. Ansorge, adding that among them,
+“where the European villain with his lies and frauds has
+not yet made his appearance, the white man’s simple word
+is equal to a solemn and a binding oath.” In most parts of
+Africa, south of the equator—in the huge central portion at
+any rate—in the Upper Nile valley, the region traversed by
+Mr. Grogan, the native has never had the motive, the spontaneous
+impetus to produce more than his needs required
+or his fancy led him to. Yet he works in iron, moulds
+pottery, has in many cases a highly developed artistic
+instinct,<a id="FNanchor_150" href="#Footnote_150" class="fnanchor">[150]</a> manufactures cloth and ingenious and elaborate
+weapons of offence, has some notions of harmony, and
+often enough a vein of true poetic instinct. When local
+conditions have been favourable to the evolving of important
+social agglomerations, a native state form has grown up
+which was a cause of abundant astonishment to the early
+European travellers in Central Africa. Yet, as far back as
+we are able to plunge in the dim recesses of the past, these
+millions of natives—this “mass of inertia”—were entirely
+cut off from intercourse with the outside world, isolated from
+all contact with the “superior” races. A few stray Egyptian<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_182"></a>[182]</span>
+traders probably penetrated to the head waters of the Nile
+and the Great Lakes. Later on, a handful of Arabs wandered
+inwards from Zanzibar, but until Burton, Speke and
+Grant, Livingstone (working from the south), Baker, Emin,
+and Stanley revealed the interior of Africa, its inhabitants
+had been innocent of all communication with the higher
+culture. One need not inquire whether the lot of these
+people has been much brighter since the advent among them
+of the half-caste Arab slave-trader, the Belgian ivory and
+rubber hunter, the over-zealous European missionary, and
+the land-grabbing fever of the Powers. An estimate on that
+point must be largely a matter of opinion. But to expect
+that these natives are going to willingly emigrate <i>en masse</i>
+to the Rhodesian mines, hire themselves out for the performance
+of arduous labour, dig, delve, undertake plantation
+work and the like with the zeal of a European workman
+anxious to earn a living wage, is a piece of consummate
+folly. They can only be induced to do so by the most
+tactful treatment; by the payment of a decent wage; by
+the selection of European agents possessing some sense of
+proportion, and at least a rudimentary knowledge of the
+teachings of history. To attempt to revolutionise these
+peoples’ conceptions in a few years is madness, and to try
+and drive them by coercive measures constitutes a policy at
+once immoral, short-sighted, and disastrous.<a id="FNanchor_151" href="#Footnote_151" class="fnanchor">[151]</a></p>
+
+<p>Until quite recently British West Africa remained unaffected
+in any material sense by the gradual gravitation of
+European public opinion towards the use of coercion in
+dealing with the African, together with the non-recognition
+of native land tenure and the various concomitants of the
+“exploitation” policy. The birth of a scientific gold-mining
+industry in the Gold Coast, however, has let loose a flood of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_183"></a>[183]</span>
+ignorant talk about West Africa, and raised up a whole host
+of evil advisers who are busily intent in introducing South
+African methods in the West African goldfields. Constant
+complaints are being raised about the scarcity of labour, the
+indolence and the slothfulness of the native. Experienced
+men like Mr. Daw, of the Ashanti goldfields, have not
+hesitated to speak out boldly against these views; and so far
+the Colonial Office,<a id="FNanchor_152" href="#Footnote_152" class="fnanchor">[152]</a> to its honour be it said, has refused to
+yield to the clamour, and has declined to repeal the law on
+the acquisition, extent, and registration of mining concessions
+whereby the rights of the native owners of the soil are
+amply safeguarded. In that respect the Concessions Ordinance
+must rank as the most equitable legislative measure
+for the protection and preservation of native land tenure
+which exists in West Africa. It is true that of the numerous
+complaints which the Ordinance has given rise to, those that
+refer to the actual working of the measure are justified. The
+machinery for registration is hardly complete enough, and
+in that and some other respects matters might be improved.
+It is also true that cases have occurred where native chiefs
+have, knowingly or unknowingly, sold their properties twice
+over, and thus perpetrated a fraud which, no doubt, is
+exceedingly reprehensible; but certainly not more so than
+the numerous frauds deliberately consummated by sundry
+Gold Coast company promoters in foisting upon the British
+public bogus concerns, causing pecuniary loss to hundreds
+and thousands of English men and women. The African
+chief who indulges in sharp practice can be punished in the
+Gold Coast, but his European prototype generally manages
+to escape the clutches of the law. It is to be hoped that the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_184"></a>[184]</span>
+Colonial Office will maintain the Concessions Ordinance in
+its integrity, while perfecting the machinery to administer
+it, for the law, as a law, is a credit to British justice in West
+Africa.</p>
+
+<p>On the other hand, it is much to be regretted that the
+Colonial Office should have framed a code of laws and regulations
+in respect to the development of forest products and
+the attribution of forest reserves, in Southern Nigeria, which
+have given rise to grave objection, and must continue to do
+so. The effect of these regulations in the aggregate is to
+authorise the High Commissioner to issue any rules he
+chooses with regard to all kinds of forest produce, not excepting
+the produce of the palm. No proper distinction is
+drawn between so-called “waste”<a id="FNanchor_153" href="#Footnote_153" class="fnanchor">[153]</a> lands and forest lands
+at the disposal of the native and the Government respectively.
+Natives are to be compelled to take out licences to
+enable them to do what they have hitherto done without restriction.
+The licences are to be granted by the Government
+officials. Half the money goes to the local treasury,
+the other half to the native owner, but only if he can show
+that he is entitled to it! The native is tried, under the
+penalties provided by the proclamation, by the European
+officer and not by his own local court. All this is bad and
+short-sighted policy. It must inevitably tend to suggest to
+the native mind that the Government is taking entire possession
+of his land. His rights of land tenure are being treated
+as though they had ceased to exist, and had been vested in
+the Government. We are officially assured that the native
+chiefs are satisfied that this is not the case, and that they
+welcome these regulations. It is impossible to regard these
+assurances otherwise than with scepticism. In Southern
+Nigeria the Crown Colony Government is a despotism absolute<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_185"></a>[185]</span>
+and entire. There is no legislative council; there are no
+native newspapers. The native has no means of ventilating
+his grievances. The powers of the High Commissioner are
+more sweeping than that of the Tsar of all the Russias.
+There is no check upon him, no control of any kind. He
+does exactly what he likes, and “force” in Southern Nigeria,
+in other words, punitive expeditions are but of too frequent
+occurrence. For upwards of three-quarters of a century
+the natives of Southern Nigeria have been encouraged by
+successive British Governments in the belief that they were
+free to utilise the products of their own forests. I defy any
+jurist to say what amount of freedom they will enjoy if these
+regulations are carried out to the letter. I have sought the
+opinion of English lawyers not unversed in native law on
+this matter, and they have been anything but impressed
+with the justice or legality of the measure. The regulations
+have been compared to a retrogression “to the days of
+William the Conqueror.” “The interpretation of the Commissioner’s
+powers, under this Ordinance”—I am quoting
+from the letter of a lawyer to whom I submitted the measures
+in question—“are far too arbitrary. What privileges are left
+to the native who, you will remember, is the owner of the
+soil? It seems that he is in the unfortunate position of being
+the owner of his land without being able to obtain the
+slightest advantage from that land, and if he attempts to deal
+with the products thereof, even with the very best intentions,
+he is liable at the will of the Commissioner to imprisonment
+or fine as provided by the Bill. This is surely
+not the intention of the framer of the Bill; at least I hope
+not.” The Chambers of Commerce on the one hand, and
+the Aborigines Protection Society on the other, have protested
+against this reactionary legislation, which shows that
+both in commercial and philanthropic circles a similarity of
+feeling exists in regard to its tenour. It is one thing “to
+protect the forests from destruction,” which is understood
+to be the motive of these regulations, and no reasonable
+being would object to the framing of common-sense rules
+for the preservation of rubber trees and vines (although it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_186"></a>[186]</span>
+is not rules but <i>instruction</i> which is required) and certain
+young hardwood trees of slow growth; but it is quite
+another thing to introduce a series of cast-iron laws of this
+wholesale character, of doubtful legality, of still more questionable
+expediency, inevitably calculated to lead to friction
+and distinctly prejudicial to the development of legitimate
+commerce. The Crown Colony system in the Rivers has
+not been such a brilliant success that it can afford to deliberately
+run such risks! These proclamations, it may be
+added, were passed into law in Southern Nigeria without
+the merchants who supply the whole revenue of the country
+being advised or even consulted. Such is the business-like
+method with which we conduct our affairs in West Africa!</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp50" id="illus25" style="max-width: 29.6875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus25.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>AN IBO FAMILY GROUP—SOUTHERN NIGERIA</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>In Lagos, where a similar measure was introduced (it
+should be stated that the law is of home manufacture), it
+met with considerable native opposition, and passed through
+several stages of amendment before becoming law. In
+Lagos there is a legislative council on which natives sit—in
+a minority it is true—and there are local newspapers.
+Channels exist, therefore, through which native opinion can
+make itself heard. There is also, happily, a Governor of
+the widest sympathies, of great and extensive knowledge and
+experience. Under his auspices we may feel assured that
+nothing will be wittingly done to alienate native rights in
+land. The Bill, as amended, provides that it shall be open
+to the duly constituted Native Councils, or Governments, of
+the inland protected States, to construe its clauses in accordance
+with native custom and usage; and as the chiefs are just
+as interested in preserving their forests as the legislators or
+the merchants, we may feel tolerably sure that the objects
+aimed at will be secured. Moreover, it is further provided
+that the Native Councils shall themselves issue licences when
+required, the proceeds of which shall come to their own
+local treasuries entirely; and shall themselves inflict fines
+under their own law, and in their own courts; and the
+Governor is further recommending that the Government
+reserves shall be conveyed under lease.<a id="FNanchor_154" href="#Footnote_154" class="fnanchor">[154]</a> There you observe<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_187"></a>[187]</span>
+the difference between the two procedures. The one arbitrary,
+dogmatic, despotic—the other such as it is seen to be.
+If any difficulties arise in Lagos in the course of the working
+of the Bill,<a id="FNanchor_155" href="#Footnote_155" class="fnanchor">[155]</a> it will not be for the want of doing everything
+possible to avert them, of surrounding the rights of native
+land tenure with safeguards which, so long as they are
+adhered to, will be sufficient to protect them, of imbuing the
+native mind with the feeling that the Administration intends
+to conform to the traditions of native usage; but they will
+be due to the principle involved in the Bill, the principle,
+that is, of a <i>primâ facie</i> right of interference, directly or indirectly,
+on the part of the Government, in the affairs of
+native States, whose internal independence in contradistinction
+to their external relations is guaranteed by treaty. On
+that point opinion will differ, and some of us will continue
+to think that, in all matters affecting native industries, instruction
+is better than restriction.<a id="FNanchor_156" href="#Footnote_156" class="fnanchor">[156]</a></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_188"></a>[188]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX<br>
+<span class="smaller">A COTTON INDUSTRY FOR WEST AFRICA</span></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Within the past few months a subject of the greatest
+possible moment to West Africa, and of vital importance
+to no inconsiderable section of the inhabitants of Great
+Britain, has been discussed in concrete fashion, and there is
+every reason to hope—nay more, to feel assured—that practical
+results will follow. I refer to the movement for the
+promotion of cotton-growing in West Africa.</p>
+
+<p>What has already been done may be stated in a few words.
+On May 8 a memorable meeting was held at the Albion
+Hotel, Manchester, under the auspices of Mr. Arthur Hutton,
+the President of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce.
+The Chambers of Commerce of London, Liverpool, and
+Oldham were represented at the meeting, together with the
+managing director of the British West African Steamship
+Lines, Sir Alfred Jones,<a id="FNanchor_157" href="#Footnote_157" class="fnanchor">[157]</a> the Oldham Cotton Spinners Association,
+the Manchester Cotton Spinners’ Association, various
+other associations of a similar character from Blackburn
+and other Lancashire towns, the West African merchants,
+cotton merchants, brokers, weavers and manufacturers, &amp;c.
+The object of the meeting was to widen the area of cotton
+cultivation under the British flag, more especially in West
+Africa, and before the close of the proceedings a “British
+Cotton Growing Association” had been formed with a preliminary
+capital of £10,000, to be exclusively devoted to
+experimenting in West Africa and other over-sea possessions.
+This meeting was followed by another held in Manchester<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_189"></a>[189]</span>
+in June, in the course of which the decision arrived at
+previously was confirmed and enlarged, and it was decided
+to raise a fund of £50,000. The resolutions passed at this
+second meeting were as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Resolutions.</span></p>
+
+<p>“(1) That, in the opinion of this meeting, the continued prosperity of
+the British cotton industry depends on an increased supply of cotton,
+and it is desirable that our sources of supply should be extended.</p>
+
+<p>“(2) That in order to attain this end an association be formed, to be
+called the British Cotton Growing Association.</p>
+
+<p>“(3) That its principal object be the extension of the growth and
+cultivation of cotton in British colonies, dependencies, and protectorates.</p>
+
+<p>“(4) That a guarantee fund of £50,000 be raised, to be spread over
+five years, no guarantor being required to contribute more than one-fifth
+of his total guarantee in any one year.</p>
+
+<p>“(5) That this association shall have power to form a subsidiary
+company, or companies, and to dispose of any of its assets to any company
+thus formed, on conditions that subscribers to this association
+have the first option of taking up shares in any such company in
+proportion to their subscriptions.</p>
+
+<p>“(6) That a general committee should be appointed.</p>
+
+<p>“(7) That this general committee should appoint from their number
+members to form the executive committee.</p>
+
+<p>“(8) That the executive committee shall immediately collect all the
+available information on the subject and despatch expert expeditions
+to report on the best methods of procedure, and shall have power to
+(<i>a</i>) acquire land on which to make experiments and to establish plantations;
+(<i>b</i>) distribute seed among the natives to encourage them by
+advice and assistance to grow cotton on their own land, and to engage
+experts for this purpose if necessary; (<i>c</i>) establish stations to buy and
+sell cotton, or any of its by-products, animals, implements, or any other
+articles or goods necessary for the expeditions; (<i>d</i>) to adopt any other
+means that may suggest themselves from time to time to attain the
+object in view.</p>
+
+<p>“(9) That the general committee issue a report once each half-year
+of the work which has been done.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>A third meeting took place at the Liverpool Chamber of
+Commerce on July 14, in the presence of Sir William
+MacGregor, Governor of Lagos, and Sir A. King Harman,
+Governor of Sierra Leone, when practical ways and means<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_190"></a>[190]</span>
+of promoting the cultivation of cotton in their respective
+Colonies for export to Europe were debated.<a id="FNanchor_158" href="#Footnote_158" class="fnanchor">[158]</a></p>
+
+<p>Having thus briefly indicated the various measures
+adopted, we may profitably inquire into the origin and causes
+of the movement. That inquiry cannot fail to impress the
+thinking public with the importance of the issues. With
+every year that passes Great Britain is becoming more than
+ever dependent upon the United States for her cotton supply,
+and with every year that passes the increase in the cotton
+production of America accentuates itself by comparison
+with the production of other countries. Thus in the decades
+1870-80, 1880-90, and 1890-1900 America has produced 4½,
+6½, and 9½ millions of bales, while India has produced 2, 2½,
+and 2 millions; Egypt 384,000, 400,000, and 700,000; and
+Brazil 600,000, 300,000, and 380,000 in the same period.
+The gradual position assumed by America as controller of the
+world’s cotton is, therefore, clearly apparent, and although
+the production of Egypt and India is increasing, the ratio
+of increase when compared with America is trifling, while
+the production from countries outside India and Egypt is
+decreasing.</p>
+
+<p>That is one consideration. Another consideration is this.
+Forty years ago England took the bulk of American cotton.
+To-day the Continent, thanks to the growth and to the
+marvellous success of Continental spinners, takes one-third
+of the entire American crop.</p>
+
+<p>Yet another factor is the increase in the American consumption
+of cotton. A few years ago the American <i>consumption</i>
+of cotton was almost <i>nil</i>. America now consumes
+a third of her produce. In the opinion of some experts—although
+in some quarters a contrary opinion is held—America<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_191"></a>[191]</span>
+will consume by the end of next year at least one-half
+of her production.</p>
+
+<p>Now these are very serious facts for industrial Lancashire.
+The terrible distress which visited Lancashire in the days
+of the American Civil War is still sufficiently recent to be
+remembered, and one shudders to contemplate the consequences
+which would ensue if anything should again prevent
+Lancashire from obtaining her share of the cotton crop of
+America, with nothing but the existing inadequate supplies
+from other parts of the world to fall back upon. The danger
+is a very real and pressing one. As matters stand at present,
+Great Britain is practically at the mercy of the United States,
+and in a position of almost entire dependence upon the
+market manipulations of American speculators, in whose
+power it is to regulate the price to suit their own convenience.
+So unsatisfactory is the actual condition of affairs,
+that for the past three years it has hardly paid importers
+to ship cotton to Liverpool. The fear of an American
+syndicating of cotton is not, perhaps, altogether groundless
+in these days of vast trusts and combinations, while the
+competition from Continental spinners, and, above all,
+increased American consumption, make the outlook as
+gloomy as it well can be. It is therefore imperative that
+something be done to increase the area of cotton production
+under the British flag. So much for the wider aspect of the
+question.</p>
+
+<p>Those to whom this matter specially appeals have naturally
+enough turned their eyes towards West Africa, and it is in
+connection with the possibilities of the development of an
+export cotton industry in that part of the world that some
+remarks may fittingly be made in this volume. I say an
+“export” industry, because, as we know, a native industry
+to supply local wants has existed in West Africa for centuries
+past. We have seen, for example, the paramount
+part which the cotton industry plays in the prosperity of
+Kano and Northern Nigeria generally, where, in addition to
+supplying local wants, manufactured cotton cloths are an
+article of barter; in some regions indeed a veritable currency,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_192"></a>[192]</span>
+sent far and wide to countries of inland Western Africa where
+the excellence of the Kano article is in perpetual demand.
+But what is true of Kano is true of many other portions of
+West Africa. The cotton shrub (<i>Gossypium herbaceum</i>)<a id="FNanchor_159" href="#Footnote_159" class="fnanchor">[159]</a> is
+met with in a wild state all over West Africa, and cultivated
+very extensively. Wherever Islam has spread, cultivation
+has increased, but in pagan communities the manufacture
+of cotton cloths is indulged in to no inconsiderable extent.
+The pagan tribes of Sierra Leone, of the Gold Coast and
+Liberia, turn out the most beautiful cloths. Their excellence
+and felicity of design are such that no one who has seen
+them can fail to be impressed with the capacity of the races,
+with their primitive appliances, which produce them. The
+endeavour to promote cotton cultivation on a larger scale
+in West Africa will not be, therefore, a new thing, and what
+might have been an initial difficulty is happily non-existent.</p>
+
+<p>Nor will West Africa be called upon for the first time in
+its history to supply Europe with raw cotton. When the
+American Civil War broke out, high prices were offered for
+West African cotton, which was universally pronounced by
+experts to be of excellent quality. Cotton was exported in
+its raw state from the Gold Coast, Fernando Po, Lagos, the
+Gambia, and Angola. Indeed the export was continued
+long after that, and between the years 1878 and 1885 raw
+cotton to the value of £56,501 was shipped home to Europe
+from the Gold Coast and Lagos. Even before the American
+War, as was recently recalled to memory by Mr. Elijah Helm,<a id="FNanchor_160" href="#Footnote_160" class="fnanchor">[160]</a>
+himself a Quaker, the constitutional objections of the
+Quakers to utilise the products of slave labour led to the
+formation of a small association, which imported cotton
+from West Africa of a quality so good, and in quantities so
+considerable, as to provide for the not very extensive wants
+of the Quaker fraternity.</p>
+
+<p>But with the close of the war, and the considerable fall in
+price since those days, the West African export cotton industry
+has become virtually extinct. A very little, I believe,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_193"></a>[193]</span>
+still finds it sway to Europe from the banks of the Volta and
+from Angola, but that is all, with the exception of the Togoland
+experiment of last year, of which I shall speak later.</p>
+
+<p>The four main requirements for the successful cultivation
+of cotton are: (1) a suitable soil, (2) adequate irrigation
+or a regularly recurring rainfall, (3) sufficient labour,
+(4) transport facilities. British West Africa can, in the main,
+give the first three, in some places better than in others.
+British West Africa’s capacity to furnish the fourth depends
+upon whether the grassy upland plains of the interior may
+be considered more fitting or less fitting than the swampy,
+better-watered regions of the coast. If the former be thought
+the most likely, the country behind Lagos alone affords the
+necessary qualifications at present. Lagos, moreover, is
+particularly fitted in respect to the third requirement, that of
+labour. A railway 125 miles long runs up from Lagos
+town to the interior, passing through the naturally rich and
+productive belt of forest, where it is hopeless to expect, and
+where it would be dangerous to attempt to promote, cotton
+cultivation. But beyond the forest belt a park-like country
+opens out of an area of some 10,000 square miles in extent,
+the greater proportion of which would be suitable to the
+cultivation of cotton, and would go far to justify and hasten,
+if taken up in earnest, the extension of the existing railway line
+to the Niger. If, therefore, it be a question of experimenting
+in a region of grass-covered plains—similar to those of
+Texas—Lagos, by reason of its railway, is the only British
+colony where such experiments can at present be undertaken.
+The intelligence of the Yorubas, their agricultural
+and industrial capacity, the dense agglomeration of population
+met with in the country, the need of providing or
+strengthening the <i>economic</i>, as opposed to the strategic,
+argument for a continuation of the line (let us fervently
+trust under different conditions) to the Niger; all those
+factors render it in the highest degree to be hoped that
+Lagos may be chosen as a centre of activity for the new
+movement. Lagos, let it never be forgotten, is one of the
+doors of Northern Nigeria.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_194"></a>[194]</span></p>
+
+<p>If, on the other hand, the consensus of expert opinion
+favours the low-lying coastwise regions, where fluvial
+transport to the actual port of shipment is relatively easy,
+the Gambia and Southern Nigeria primarily suggest themselves.
+Those possessions seem to me to offer advantages
+over Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast. The present
+condition of Sierra Leone is not encouraging. The railway,
+if it achieves anything at all, which is doubtful, can only do so
+by increasing the yield of the fruit of the palm, and by bringing
+the interior oil-palm districts into closer touch with the coast
+markets. This may enable that unfortunate Colony to bear
+the heavy burden under which it is now staggering. To cut
+down the forests in the Eastern districts of Sierra Leone in
+order to plant cotton would be suicidal. In the Gold Coast,
+again, there is an opposing factor in the shape of the gold-mining
+industry. The mining companies are perpetually
+grumbling about the scarcity of labour, for which in many
+cases they have themselves to thank. Their demands upon
+the population have already resulted in drawing away a
+number of people from their usual avocations, with the
+result that the export of timber is decreasing; and any
+further deviation of available labour, such as the cultivation
+of cotton would necessitate, would seriously affect the producing
+capacity of the country, not only as regards timber,
+but in respect to other natural and cultivated products, such
+as palm oil and kernels in the first category, and cocoa in
+the other.</p>
+
+<p>For the Gambia, on the other hand, the advent of a new
+industry would be a boon. The Gambia entirely relies for
+its existence upon the ground-nut. It is always a bad thing
+to have all your eggs in one basket. When an article like the
+ground-nut is in question, it is very bad, because you are at the
+mercy, as it were, of the seasons. The ground-nut is necessarily
+a fluctuating article on that account, and one year may
+produce a fine crop, to be followed the next by an indifferent
+one. Sir George Denton—the genial and popular Governor
+of the Gambia—intended, I know, to try and start a better
+system of irrigation in certain parts of that Colony, in order<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_195"></a>[195]</span>
+to widen the extent of ground-nut producing land, and any
+such project would be all to the good, of course, for cotton
+cultivation. The population of the Gambia being mostly
+Mohammedan and largely composed of those most enterprising
+people the Mandingoes, and Mandingoes crossed
+with Fulani blood—remnant of the old empire of Melle—a
+cotton industry (to which they are long inured) could be
+started with so much greater hope of success from this fact.</p>
+
+<p>In Southern Nigeria<a id="FNanchor_161" href="#Footnote_161" class="fnanchor">[161]</a> the field is vast. You can march
+for miles on either bank of the main river through a cotton-growing
+country. The density of the population varies, of
+course, in different districts. Fluvial means of transport
+abound. The people, it is true, are not blessed, or cursed,
+with many wants; but there is no valid reason why, with
+a little painstaking care and sympathetic treatment; with
+improvements in the production of kernels which, as already
+suggested, would release a considerable amount of native
+labour for other pursuits; with a greater display of combination
+between the official and mercantile class; with a good
+deal less blood-letting, fewer punitive expeditions, “clearing
+away of the refuse of the population,” “drastic measures,”
+and so forth; the natives of Southern Nigeria should not
+be induced to take up cotton cultivation for purposes of
+export.</p>
+
+<p>Granted the necessity; given the soil, irrigation rainfall,
+labour and transport, as specifically mentioned above;
+admitted an experience in cotton growing, spinning and
+weaving among the natives; what remains to be studied
+in this great enterprise destined, let us hope, to make of
+British West Africa a great cotton-producing country on
+which England can count in case of need; to assist in
+freeing us to a large extent from a position of dependence
+upon America, and so prevent the accumulating dangers of
+the hour, and of which the creation cannot fail to confer
+the greatest benefit upon the British West African possessions?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_196"></a>[196]</span></p>
+
+<p>Obviously the first consideration is one of price. Can
+a cotton industry in West Africa be made to pay? Can
+sufficient inducement be offered to the native to encourage
+him to produce cotton for export? Can West African
+cotton compete with any degree of success against the
+American product in the matter of price? On what lines
+can a cotton industry in West Africa be promoted? Based
+upon the data available, which are not, of course, by any
+means complete, the general consensus of opinion amongst
+experts appears to be that, with the inculcation of scientific
+methods of cultivation, the treatment of the cotton shrub
+as an annual instead of a perennial, the introduction of the
+necessary implements and of ginning and compressing
+machinery it will be possible to make cotton-growing profitable.
+In this respect the experiments of the Germans in
+Togoland are particularly interesting. To Germany belongs
+the credit of initiating the new cotton movement. From the
+German Colony of Togo came last year, for the first time in its
+history, fifteen thousand marks worth of cotton. The conclusions
+of the German Agricultural Committee were precise.
+The absence of adequate transport facilities alone prevented
+the complete financial success of the first experiment.
+Further, it was shown upon analysis that, of the various types
+of cotton raised from American, Egyptian, Indian and native
+seed, the type raised from the native seed produced, as a
+whole, the best staple, equal in quality to average American.
+This absence of transport is likely to be remedied in time,
+as a survey is now being made for a railway from the
+coast to Misahöhe. Meanwhile the Germans are so far
+from being discouraged that a company is, I understand,
+about to be brought out for the express purpose of developing
+the cotton industry in Togo<a id="FNanchor_162" href="#Footnote_162" class="fnanchor">[162]</a> with a capital of
+£37,500.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp53" id="illus26" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus26.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>TRAVELLING ON THE NIGER IN THE DRY SEASON</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>The French are also devoting a great deal of attention to
+the subject just now. Some years ago the then military
+Governor of the French Sudan, Général de Trentinian, took
+the matter up. Nothing came of his efforts, but M. Roume,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_197"></a>[197]</span>
+the new Governor-General of French West Africa, has now
+adopted it as one of the planks of his platform, so to speak.
+He is anxious to establish a cotton industry in Senegal,
+which, like the Gambia, lives upon ground-nut production.
+More ambitious schemes are vaguely mooted, and some
+enthusiasts already speak and write as though the valley of
+the Upper Niger were about to be converted, as it were by
+a flash of the magician’s wand, into a rival of the Southern
+States. That with its magnificent soil and splendid natural
+irrigation the valley of the Upper Niger may some day
+fulfil the aspirations of the French is, perhaps, more than
+possible.<a id="FNanchor_163" href="#Footnote_163" class="fnanchor">[163]</a> But we are a long way off that yet.</p>
+
+<p>It seems difficult, then, to believe that this simultaneous
+impulse on the part of competent men in England, Germany
+and France can be founded upon a miscalculation in respect
+to working expenses, and I think we may feel tolerably
+certain that, if cotton costs an average per lb. of 2⅛ <i>d.</i> to
+produce in Texas, such parts of West Africa as can be endowed
+with similar facilities in respect to machinery, and
+where transport, either by rail or water, is available, will be
+able to produce cotton at a lower figure; and as the interest
+of the West African shipowners is to fill their ships homeward
+bound from the West Coast, we may also presume that
+they will make reasonable concessions to encourage the
+industry.<a id="FNanchor_164" href="#Footnote_164" class="fnanchor">[164]</a></p>
+
+<p>There remains the question of how to set about establishing
+a cotton industry in West Africa upon a sound
+basis. Shall it be attempted in the form of plantations
+managed by white overseers and with paid native labour;
+or shall it be left very largely to native initiative, and
+develop itself on the lines of a native industry—as, I
+believe, is the case in India? I think that all who have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_198"></a>[198]</span>
+some knowledge of West African matters will unhesitatingly
+pronounce in favour of the latter solution. West
+Africa is essentially a country of native industries, and the
+best economic results have been obtained in West Africa
+when the motive power all through has been the native,
+with the European as teacher, instructor and guide, but <i>not</i>
+as manager or director of native labour.<a id="FNanchor_165" href="#Footnote_165" class="fnanchor">[165]</a> In the construction
+of public works the same phenomenon is observable in
+a somewhat different form. Experience has demonstrated
+that where the recruiting of labour for railways or road construction
+has been left in the hands of the chiefs, requisite
+labour was forthcoming, and sufficient left on the farms to
+allow usual production, and therefore the export trade has
+remained unaffected; whereas when recruiting operations
+have been directed by Europeans outside the authority of
+the chiefs, labour was indeed obtainable, but at the cost of
+disorganising the general labour supply of the country and
+consequently affecting adversely the export trade.</p>
+
+<p>A knowledge of these facts suggests, therefore, that the
+cotton industry can be promoted with the greatest chance
+of success by interesting the rulers of the country and their
+councils in the movement; by giving the chiefs the benefit
+of expert advice; by enlisting their sympathies and good-will;
+by supplying them with cotton seed, implements, and
+possibly hand-gins, gratis; and so on. Here at least the
+necessity of proceeding on lines of instruction entirely is
+manifest. The object is to improve an existing industry,
+to greatly enlarge and systematise it, <i>to get the people of the
+land interested in it</i>. If the native can see a profit in the
+business, he will take it up. That is morally certain. It
+has been so in every branch of West African commerce.
+So keenly has the native embraced new trade outlets offered
+to him that upon occasion he has, when uninstructed in the
+art of production, compromised the future. Absolute and
+entire co-operation of officialdom and commerce is essential
+if the cotton movement in West Africa is to be attended<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_199"></a>[199]</span>
+with success. The Germans may here serve us as a model
+to imitate. The home Government, the local Government;
+the forces of industry and commerce in Germany, and
+in the particular Colony where the experiments are being
+made, have vied with one another in the effort to achieve an
+aim of common interest to all. Centres of instruction have
+been established in the Colony; model farms have been
+created; Negro farmers from the States have been brought
+over through the instrumentality of Mr. Booker T. Washington,
+the distinguished Negro scholar and manager of the
+Tuskegee Institute.<a id="FNanchor_166" href="#Footnote_166" class="fnanchor">[166]</a> In all these matters the official world
+has worked hand in glove with the commercial world.</p>
+
+<p>It is equally important that the cotton associations and
+merchants should be in earnest. No mere pecking will
+suffice. Disappointments and delays must be discounted
+in advance. There are sure to be plenty of both. Ginning
+and compressing machinery must be set up either on the
+coast, or, if it be decided to try Lagos, at large centres such
+as Ibadan and Abbeokuta; and preferably what is known as
+the “American round lap,” which ensures simultaneous
+ginning and compressing in 250 lb. round bales, instead of
+the more cumbrous and more expensive separate ginning
+and compressing machines, which produce the 500 lb. square
+bale. In short, the movement must be engineered, from
+the beginning, on a real scientific basis. If Togoland with
+its transport difficulties has been able in the first year’s experience
+to export 70,000 decimal pounds of cotton, what may
+not be achieved by those of our West African Colonies
+where transport facilities exist; where the population is at
+least as dense if not denser; and where British subjects have
+been in contact with the natives for periods ranging from
+fifty to one hundred years?</p>
+
+<p>I cannot leave this subject without referring to the indirect
+relation it bears to the Negro problem in the States. At
+present all is vague and uncertain. We cannot tell what<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_200"></a>[200]</span>
+may be the outcome of the movement; but if it be a success,
+what vistas does it not open up for the future! We have
+seen how the Germans have invited the co-operation of
+American Negro cotton farmers. The few who have gone
+out—the German reports assure us—have elected to
+remain. More, it is announced, are to follow. What
+would the attitude of the American Government be in
+the face of a steady flow of emigration on the part of
+the coloured population of the Southern States, to help
+to build up in its country of origin what it has built
+up in America? In what light would the Americans regard
+the up-springing of a great cotton industry in West Africa?
+If, as events seem to indicate, America is likely to become on
+an ever-increasing scale the principal consumer of her own
+raw cotton, would such an occurrence be viewed with
+equanimity by the American public? Or if not with actual
+equanimity, with at least the feeling that the danger, presuming
+it to be one, might be cheerfully faced if a deeper
+peril could thereby be diminished, and in time perhaps
+altogether removed? Could white labour in the American
+cotton plantations, with the exception of the more swampy
+and malarial regions, be substituted for Negro labour, in the
+event of appreciable emigration? These are questions for
+American statesmen and thinkers to answer. If American
+intelligence can perceive in these tentative suggestions a clue,
+be it ever so faint now, of future potentialities, a clue worth
+following up and investigating, let America remember that a
+million square miles of African territory, which was declared
+in 1884 internationally free commercial land, and in the consolidation
+of which under its present <i>régime</i> America is to a
+large degree responsible, is in the grip to-day of a band of
+greedy monopolists in whose bowels reside no scruples, no
+pity, no humanity; who are sowing red ruin wherever their
+influence can be asserted. If America ever seriously turns
+her attention to West Africa as a solution of the greatest
+problem of her internal politics, let her cast her eyes upon
+the Congo State, misnamed Free—the abode of cruelty and
+persecution, of slavery and reaction.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_201"></a>[201]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE MAHOGANY TRADE</span></h3>
+
+<p>“The traveller who wanders through the dim recesses of the tropical forest
+of Western Africa soon feels the sense of its beauty lost in that of its mournful
+grandeur, and there steals over him a profound feeling of solitude and a deep
+consciousness of the solemnity, majesty, and utter loneliness of this great,
+gloomy wilderness.”—Dr. <span class="smcap">Austin Freeman</span>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The great forest region of Africa is one of the wonders of
+the world. It is a moot point whether Africa should be
+described as possessing two forest belts or only one. Roughly
+speaking, the forest region takes the form of an inverted
+hatchet or axe, with French Congo, the Congo Free State,
+and a portion of the Great Lakes districts as the blade; while
+the West Coast, from Sierra Leone downwards, provides the
+handle. There are gaps here and there; in the Cameroon
+hinterland; among the mangrove swamps of the Niger Delta,
+and behind Lagos on the Niger side. The forest is densest
+in the Upper Congo, where Stanley, we know, struggled in
+it for many weary weeks, as though held in the grip of some
+hideous nightmare from which there was no escape.</p>
+
+<p>In this natural hot-house, always bathed in an atmosphere
+of humidity and steam, vegetation flourishes in the wildest
+profusion and exuberance, and with the widest diversity of
+size and species, from the mighty <i>bombax</i> to the creeping
+lichen. So abundant is this luxurious growth, so thick the
+canopy formed by the spreading branches and creepers
+overhead, that, save here and there, where some giant has
+fallen and broken down the surrounding undergrowth, leaving
+a gap overhead through which the sunlight penetrates flickeringly,
+the forest is plunged in eternal gloom. This gloom
+and the silence which accompanies it are the two great<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_202"></a>[202]</span>
+characteristics of the African forest. Except for the occasional
+chattering of monkeys, the crash of a falling tree, or the far-off
+chirrup of birds, who seek the sunlight in the topmost
+branches, the silence broods everlastingly. The effect of
+living amongst this gloom and silence is most depressing to
+the European, and it is no matter for surprise that the terrific
+solemnity of their environment should have exercised a
+profound influence upon the naturally superstitious minds of
+the native Africans who dwell therein. It is amongst the
+dwellers in the forest region that we find the lowest type of
+African humanity<a id="FNanchor_167" href="#Footnote_167" class="fnanchor">[167]</a> and the most sombre developments of
+African religious conceptions. All European travellers who
+have spent some time in this great forest region have been
+alike impressed by its grandeur and its melancholy, and their
+descriptions bear witness to the way in which their feelings
+have been wrought upon by the natural phenomena with
+which they were surrounded.</p>
+
+<p>It is only within quite recent years that European enterprise
+has concerned itself with the potential riches of this
+vast forest region, or rather of that portion of it which it is
+as yet possible to commercially develop, viz. the belt on the
+West Coast—or, to refer to the illustration given above, the
+handle of the axe. The results already achieved in a short
+period of effort, which can hardly be called more than
+tentative and unsystematic, are such as to warrant the most
+sanguine expectations for the future, when facilities of
+transport shall have brought the main portion of the forest
+region within reach of the European markets. It is curious
+to observe how, in its main lines, the trade of Western Africa
+has arisen in a succession of well-defined stages. The earliest
+trade was in gold-dust, and, so far as we know, confined to
+gold-dust, unless the gorilla (or more probably the chimpanzee)
+skins brought home by Hanno be counted as trade—which
+would be a somewhat humorous classification.
+Then ensued a long period of absolute neglect of West
+Africa by civilised man. When once more the latter turned<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_203"></a>[203]</span>
+his attention to that part of the world, gold was again the
+principal item of trade, accompanied by ivory, and later on
+by slaves—the later a monstrous evil, whose Nemesis is
+to-day making itself felt in the United States. The gold
+trade died out, the ivory trade languished, and the gum,
+palm oil and kernel trades came into existence, to be followed
+by the rubber trade, and lastly by the timber trade—principally
+confined to mahogany. On the principle of <i>plus
+ça change, plus c’est la même chose</i>, the gold industry is now
+again reviving, although on very different lines from the old
+barter system. That is, of course, a general statement.
+There have been, now and then, exceptions to prove the
+rule, and so far as timber is concerned, a not inconsiderable
+business was carried on in the Gambia and Sierra Leone
+some fifty years ago.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp52" id="illus27" style="max-width: 21.875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus27.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>FELLING A MAHOGANY-TREE</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp52" id="illus28" style="max-width: 21.875em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus28.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>SQUARING THE TREE</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Sir Alfred Moloney, however, was able to write in 1887
+that, after having made many inquiries, such timber trade as
+had previously existed “may be said to have altogether
+ceased or to have sunk into the export done in dye-woods
+and ebony.” The following tabulated statement shows how
+insignificant was the timber trade in West Africa between
+the years 1878 and 1885:</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Wood and Timber Exports from
+Western Africa, 1878 to 1885.</span></p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th>Year.</th>
+    <th>Articles.</th>
+    <th>Countries whence imported.</th>
+    <th>Quantity.<br>Tons.</th>
+    <th>Value.<br>£</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1878</td>
+    <td class="tdc">Wood and timber unenumerated</td>
+    <td class="tdc">From the West of Africa, not particularly designated</td>
+    <td class="tdc">Nil.</td>
+    <td class="tdc">Nil.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1879</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1880</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1733</td>
+    <td class="tdr">14,892</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1881</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td colspan="2" class="tdr">No mention.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1882</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1458</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10,750</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1883</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1441</td>
+    <td class="tdr">11,100</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1884</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1395</td>
+    <td class="tdr">9,980</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1885</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1181</td>
+    <td class="tdr">9,565</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>In 1889 the total import of African mahogany was only
+68,000 feet, and in 1890—or a little over ten years ago—it
+did not amount to more than 259,000 feet. To-day the
+mahogany trade has grown to be one of the most important<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_204"></a>[204]</span>
+branches of commerce in West Africa. Enormous quantities
+of logs are shipped home from the Gold Coast, Lagos and
+the Ivory Coast, and the mahogany exports from the Niger
+Coast Protectorate,<a id="FNanchor_168" href="#Footnote_168" class="fnanchor">[168]</a> which were started in August, 1899,
+produced 23,983 superficial feet in the year 1899-1900.</p>
+
+<p>The industry is carried on by two categories of shippers,
+viz. the European merchant established on the coast, who
+either employs native labour to cut down his own trees, or who
+buys timber direct from the native; and the native merchant
+who ships home on commission. The chief centres of the
+mahogany trade on the coast are: for the Gold Coast—Axim,
+Twin Rivers, Sekondi and Chama; for the Ivory
+Coast—Assinie, Half Assinie, Lahou and Grand Bassam;
+for Southern Nigeria—Benin and Sapelli. Lagos timber is
+carried round to Forcados in branch boats, and there
+shipped on the homeward-bound steamers. The South
+Coast mahogany trade is chiefly confined to Botica Point,
+Gaboon, Eloby and Mayumba, although a few logs have
+been sent home in the steamers of the Cie Belge Maritime
+du Congo, from near Boma in the Congo Free State. The
+South Coast timber trade appears to be dying out, owing
+chiefly to the pale colour of the wood, which does not now
+commend itself to buyers.<a id="FNanchor_169" href="#Footnote_169" class="fnanchor">[169]</a> The vast forests of the Upper
+Congo cannot, with advantage or profit, be tapped until the
+Congo Railway Company lowers its preposterous rates, and
+until the administration of the country is in other hands
+than the monopolist clique which controls it.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus29" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus29.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>DRAGGING THE SQUARED LOG THROUGH THE BUSH</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus30" style="max-width: 31.25em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus30.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>SAPELLI, SOUTHERN NIGERIA’S PRINCIPAL TIMBER PORT</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>It may be interesting to give the actual exports of timber
+from the Gold Coast and Lagos from 1895 to 1899, showing
+the wonderful strides which have taken place. The Gold
+Coast, it may be stated, has a total forest area of 12,000
+square miles.</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Exports from the Gold Coast.</span></p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th>Year.</th>
+    <th>Value.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1895</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£28,245</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1896</td>
+    <td class="tdr">52,234</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr">90,509</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">110,331</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">87,076<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_205"></a>[205]</span></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Exports from Lagos.</span></p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th>Year.</th>
+    <th>Value.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1895</td>
+    <td class="tdr">Nil.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1896</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£275</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr">8,271</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">12,944</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">34,737</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Liverpool, Havre, Hamburg, Marseilles and Bordeaux
+absorb nine-tenths of the exports of mahogany from Africa,
+but a certain proportion finds its way from those ports to the
+United States.<a id="FNanchor_170" href="#Footnote_170" class="fnanchor">[170]</a> Of the ports mentioned, Liverpool holds far
+and away the first place. The statistics of Liverpool imports
+from 1889 to 1900 inclusive will be found in the <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a>.</p>
+
+<p>In view of the evidence given of the phenomenal increase
+of the mahogany trade, it seems almost incongruous to say
+that the existing condition and the future prospects of the
+trade have, for some months past, been causing much
+apprehension in West African commercial circles. The
+truth is that the growth of the trade has been checked, and
+for the last twelve months has even been showing signs of
+decay. There was a decreased export in 1901 of over
+11,000 tons, and the figures for the first six months of the
+present year show a further decline, although prices have
+considerably advanced and the demand for good logs
+exceeds the supply.</p>
+
+<p>It is a fact recognised by all the interested parties that
+the export of mahogany from West Africa has received a
+serious check. What are the reasons? They differentiate
+with the localities. In the Gold Coast the falling off which
+has occurred is due, in the first place, to labour being
+attracted from the timber to the gold-mining industry, and
+to the needs of railway construction. Many thousands of
+natives have thus been drawn away from timber-felling to
+work on the railway; for the mines, or as carriers for the
+various prospecting expeditions into the interior. A second
+contributory cause has been the necessarily trade-disturbing
+element of warfare, otherwise stated, the Ashanti War, in the
+shape of the general unrest and disorganisation brought
+about by the excessive demands for carriers, &amp;c. In the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_206"></a>[206]</span>
+Ivory Coast, prospecting expeditions have also affected the
+output. As far as Lagos is concerned, the remarks of the
+Governor in the last report of that Colony for last year
+afford the requisite explanation.<a id="FNanchor_171" href="#Footnote_171" class="fnanchor">[171]</a></p>
+
+<p>The freight question is undoubtedly held to militate
+against the development of the timber industry, and it had
+been freely prophesied that the effect would begin to make
+itself felt last year. How much the decline was due on the
+whole to high freights, and how much to other causes
+mentioned, it would be difficult to say. With the technicalities
+of the subject I will not bore my readers. Suffice it
+to say that the principal objection which is advanced against
+the steamship owners, is the way in which the system known
+as the “sliding scale” is worked out. At present logs over
+two tons pay increased freight, and a further increase is
+made upon logs of three tons and upwards. It is urged
+that, if the principle of the bigger the log the better the
+timber were sound, this would be all right enough; but it so
+happens that the average sale price of a one-ton log is much
+the same as that of a two-, three- or four-ton log, except
+when the heavier log is what is termed a good “figured”<a id="FNanchor_172" href="#Footnote_172" class="fnanchor">[172]</a>
+log. Figured logs fetch any price, according to the fancy of
+the purchaser, and in such cases the question of freight is a
+bagatelle. But the vast majority of the logs do not possess
+these qualifications, and the increased freight on the heavier
+logs tells very heavily against the merchant, and may even
+go so far, when low prices prevail on the home market, as
+to render any profit on the sale impossible. Of course, the
+steamship owner has his reply ready; and, so far, he considers
+it good enough to justify the existing rates.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_207"></a>[207]</span></p>
+
+<p>When all is said and done, the fact remains that the
+timber trade is languishing. It would be a thousand pities
+to allow this to continue, if it can be avoided. A trade
+once abandoned or paralysed is not easily restarted. It is
+in the interest of all the parties concerned to arrive at a
+<i>modus vivendi</i> which shall allow the native who cuts and
+squares the wood, the merchant who ships it, and the
+steamship owner who carries it, to make a profit. In this as
+in other respects one would like to see some systematic
+measures of instruction adopted, under joint official and
+commercial auspices, to show the natives how the best logs
+can be selected for felling, which would avoid the sending
+home of a mass of worthless and immature timber calculated
+at times to flood the market and depreciate prices, while
+damaging the forests in Africa.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_208"></a>[208]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII<br>
+<span class="smaller">ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA</span></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The steady and continuous spread of Islam in the western
+portion of the Dark Continent is a fact which no one
+acquainted with the subject will attempt to deny. It is,
+indeed, so well established that to specialise particular
+instances where it has been observed would be a needless
+undertaking. It is everywhere palpable, striking, impressive.
+It can no more be disguised or ignored than the concurrent
+circumstance of relative failure on the part of Christian
+missions. While Mohammedanism continues to gain converts
+far and wide; to absorb whole tribes; to filter down the
+rivers to the ocean; to pierce the forest belt, with hardly a
+check—save here and there, as, for example, among the Ibos
+on the Niger—Christianity makes no headway in the interior;
+and even in its confinement to the coastwise region, or
+perhaps it would be more accurate to say, some of the
+Europeanised towns on the coast, its progress is slow, so
+slow, indeed, that well-informed observers are not wanting
+who believe that it is losing rather than gaining ground.
+At any rate, it is not, I venture to think, an exaggeration to
+say, Christianity is maintaining itself with difficulty among
+heathen communities in West Africa, and beats in vain
+against the strong tide of Mohammedanism.<a id="FNanchor_173" href="#Footnote_173" class="fnanchor">[173]</a></p>
+
+<p>It cannot be without interest to Englishmen whose West
+African Empire covers so large an area, and numbers
+between thirty and forty millions, to devote careful attention<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_209"></a>[209]</span>
+to a subject which is fraught with such far-reaching importance,
+and which it is imperially necessary for Great
+Britain to take into serious consideration as constituting a
+factor which has to be reckoned with and appreciated at its
+proper value. On that account it may not be out of place
+to discuss in a general way the whole subject of Mohammedanism
+in West Africa. The problem is a great one, and
+although there is no pretence here to more than touch the
+fringe of it, even a tentative effort is, perhaps, of interest to
+the daily increasing section of the public, which begins,
+although still but dimly, to realise the nature and the extent
+of the responsibilities Great Britain has undertaken in West
+Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Rejecting, as, in my opinion, we can do with safety, the
+legend that attributes the existence of Mohammedanism in
+Walata (Biru), the seat of the Ghanata Empire as early as
+the sixtieth year of the Hejira, or about 682 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, there is yet
+good reason to believe that Islam crossed the Sahara, and
+became powerful in the Western Sudan, earlier than the
+eleventh century <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, which is the period assigned to that
+event by the majority of authorities. We know positively
+that the fifteenth prince of the first and Za dynasty of the
+Songhay, Za Kasai, was converted to Islam in the year
+1000 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span><a id="FNanchor_174" href="#Footnote_174" class="fnanchor">[174]</a> From El Bekri we glean that Mohammedanism
+had taken such firm root in the Songhay Empire about sixty
+years after the conversion of Za Kasai (1067 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>) that none
+but a Muslim could be king. In the reign of Yusif Ibn
+Tashfin, the founder of Morocco, 1062 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, many Negroes,
+according to Leo Africanus, became followers of the Prophet.
+Barth’s invaluable “Chronological Table of the History of
+Bornu” shows us that Islam was introduced into Kanem
+(and Bornu)<a id="FNanchor_175" href="#Footnote_175" class="fnanchor">[175]</a> in the reign of Hume, the first of the Muslim
+rulers of that extensive Empire (1086-89), and the circumstance
+that this potentate died in Masr (Misr)—<i>i.e.</i>
+Egypt, infers that he was either on his way to or from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_210"></a>[210]</span>
+Mecca.<a id="FNanchor_176" href="#Footnote_176" class="fnanchor">[176]</a> Now it seems inconceivable that Gao or Gogo, the
+capital of the Songhay Empire, which was situate on the Niger
+about 500 miles in the heart of the country of the Negroes,
+should have yielded to the influence of Islamic preachers
+who came from the north, before the introduction of that
+religion in the intervening region comprised between the
+southern limits of the Sahara and the Western Sudan. That
+it should have struck the Niger, and followed it as providing
+the swiftest vehicle of penetration inland before permeating
+the countries that lay on either side of the river, is natural
+enough, and we find indirect confirmation that it did so in the
+circumstance that the other great Negro kingdom contemporary
+with Songhay, that of Melle or Mali, which had succeeded
+Ghanata, only embraced Islam in the person of its king,
+Baramidana, in 1213, or about two centuries after the conversion
+of Za Kasai. It may therefore, I think, be assumed,
+without departing from the limits of inherent probability,
+that if the existence of mosques in Walata were relegated to
+900 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> instead of 682 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, the former date would approximately
+represent the truth; and that Mohammedan proselytisers
+must have been busily at work in the Senegal about
+that time or a little later, pushing southwards and eastwards
+from thence, until they reached the Niger, and pursuing
+their course onwards to the most important city on its
+banks, Gao; reaching it, as already stated, in the opening
+years of the eleventh century,<a id="FNanchor_177" href="#Footnote_177" class="fnanchor">[177]</a> and having met with success,
+continuing their triumphal progress to the third great Negro
+kingdom of West Africa, Kanem.<a id="FNanchor_178" href="#Footnote_178" class="fnanchor">[178]</a></p>
+
+<p>The introduction of Islam revolutionised Western Africa.
+His first contact with a revealed religion powerfully affected
+the naturally intense spiritual nature of the Negro. What<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_211"></a>[211]</span>
+was the precise nature of the religious beliefs entertained by
+the Songhays, Mandingoes, Fulani, Hausas and other tribes
+inhabiting the Upper Senegal and Upper Niger at the time
+of the advent of Mohammedanism it is difficult to say. It
+may have been the animism which, under its modern appellation,
+Fetishism, is met with to-day in its purest form
+among the true Negroes of the coastwise swamp and forest
+regions. Or, as is much more probable, it may have been a
+form of pantheism allied with animal worship inherited from
+contact, at a remote period, with Egyptian culture; as witness
+the <i>Tarik’s</i> description of the original fish-god of the
+Songhays, believed by some authorities—and not without
+reason—to have been the manatee;<a id="FNanchor_179" href="#Footnote_179" class="fnanchor">[179]</a> the alleged regard of the
+Mandingoes for the hippopotamus;<a id="FNanchor_180" href="#Footnote_180" class="fnanchor">[180]</a> and the strong presumptions
+of an ancient bovine worship among those Fulani
+who have remained faithful to their original calling of
+<i>bororoji</i> (herdsmen) as distinguished from their more ambitious
+countrymen of the towns, whom destiny has fashioned
+into statesmen, diplomatists and warriors. Whatever those
+beliefs may severally have been they were flung aside, and
+Islam struck so deep that the Negro became in time not only
+as zealous, but upon occasion more zealous than his Semitic
+teachers. Under the fostering impulse and care of the
+new religion, these backward regions, says Thomson,<a id="FNanchor_181" href="#Footnote_181" class="fnanchor">[181]</a> commenced
+an upward progress. A new and powerful bond<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_212"></a>[212]</span>
+drew the scattered congeries of tribes together and welded
+them into powerful communities. Their moral and spiritual
+well-being increased by leaps and bounds, and their political
+and social life took an altogether higher level.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“Islamism is in itself stationary, and was framed thus to remain;
+sterile like its God, lifeless like its first principle in all that constitutes
+life—for life is love, participation and progress, and of these the
+Coranic deity has none. It justly repudiates all change, all development,
+to borrow the forcible words of Lord Houghton, the written book
+is there the dead man’s hand, stiff and motionless; whatever savours
+of vitality is by that alone convicted of heresy and defection.”<a id="FNanchor_182" href="#Footnote_182" class="fnanchor">[182]</a></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The underlying thought in the above passage is evidently
+comparative. The writer is unconsciously drawing
+a comparison between the two great revealed religions
+of the world, Christianity and Islam, as such. But as we
+are here concerned merely to treat of the performances of
+Islam in West Africa, and of the effect upon the <i>Negro</i>,
+primarily of Islam, indirectly of Christianity, it can without
+hesitancy be asserted that what may be partly true in the
+description given of Islam in its relation to mankind as a
+whole is wholly false as regards its influence in West Africa.
+To the <i>Negro</i> the God of Islam is not sterile: Islam is not
+lifeless. It is a living force, giving to its Negro converts, as
+Mr. Bosworth-Smith says, “an energy, a dignity, and a
+self-respect which is all too rarely found in their pagan or
+their Christian fellow-countrymen.” Individually and collectively
+the Negro has progressed since Islam crossed the
+desert, and just as to the Negro fetishist of the forest and
+the swamp religious conceptions permeate every act, preside
+over every undertaking and insinuate themselves in every
+incident of his daily existence, so Islam, where it has laid
+permanent hold upon the Negro, claims from him an allegiance
+entire and complete.</p>
+
+<p>We need not seek for proof of this. It is writ large over
+West Africa. Negroes, not by dozens or by scores, but by
+tens of hundreds, traverse thousands of miles on foot from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_213"></a>[213]</span>
+the innermost parts of the Mohammedanised Continent;
+from Senegal, from the Niger Bend, from Bornu, from
+Hausa, from our Coast Colonies of Sierra Leone and Lagos,
+to perform the Haj, the sacred journey to Mecca, which
+every true believer should accomplish at least once in his
+life. A clergyman belonging to the Church Missionary
+Society, writing from Tripoli,<a id="FNanchor_183" href="#Footnote_183" class="fnanchor">[183]</a> recently spoke of “a ceaseless
+stream of Hausa pilgrims continually passing through
+Tripoli on the way to Mecca after a wearisome tramp across
+the desert,” a significant admission from such a source.
+This “ceaseless stream” is not confined to Hausa. It flows
+from all parts of Western Africa. It has flowed thus for
+many centuries, and the volume, far from diminishing, increases.
+That is not the sign of sterility. Burton, during
+his stay in Mecca, was witness of the extraordinary influence
+wielded by Islam on the Negro mind. The case, as he remarks,
+was not an exceptional one.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“Late in the evening,” he says, “I saw a negro in the state called
+Malbus—religious frenzy. To all appearance a Takruri,<a id="FNanchor_184" href="#Footnote_184" class="fnanchor">[184]</a> he was a fine
+and powerful man, as the numbers required to hold him testified. He
+threw his arms wildly about him, uttering shrill cries, which sounded
+like <i>le le le le</i>, and, when held, he swayed his body and waved his head
+from side to side like a chained and furious elephant, straining out the
+deepest groans. The Africans appear unusually subject to this nervous
+state, which, seen by the ignorant and the imaginative, would at once
+suggest ‘demoniacal possession.’ Either their organisation is more
+impressionable or, more probably, the hardships, privations, and
+fatigues endured whilst wearily traversing inhospitable wilds and
+perilous seas have exalted their imaginations to a pitch bordering upon
+frenzy. Often they are seen prostrate on the pavement, or clinging to
+the curtain, or rubbing their foreheads upon the stones, weeping bitterly,
+and pouring forth the wildest ejaculations.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Dr. Blyden, speaking of the native Moslems of Sierra
+Leone, has said, “Wherever they go, they take the Koran with
+them. In a wreck or a fire, if nothing else is saved, that
+book is generally rescued. They prize and honour it with
+extreme reverence and devotion.... I have known them<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_214"></a>[214]</span>
+to pay as high as five pounds sterling for a Manuscript Koran
+and think it cheap.” One might fill a volume in giving concrete
+instances, as well as general statements founded upon
+the personal observations of travellers in all parts of Western
+Africa, to prove the inapplicability as concerns West Africa
+of Palgrave’s passage quoted above, a passage which I have
+specially chosen because it represents, unfortunately, what
+may be called “home opinion” on the subject.</p>
+
+<p>It can, no doubt, be said with truth, that the majority of
+West African Mohammedans cannot read Arabic, and that a
+large proportion of them only know the ordinances of the
+Koran by hearsay; but this, far from being an argument
+against the influence of Islam in West Africa, is but an
+added proof of the grip which Islamic thought has attained
+over the African mind, and of its having supplied the Negro—not
+through specific rules, regulations and ordinances, but
+in its main conception—with something which he required
+both in a spiritual and material sense. It is, moreover,
+advisable to accept with caution the general statements
+attributing wholesale ignorance of letters to Muslims in
+West Africa. Blyden gives a long list of works which he
+observed in a Mallam’s house in the Sierra Leone hinterland.
+The <i>Tarik</i> tells us that, not long after the introduction
+of Islam in West Africa, many Negroes rivalled their Semitic
+or Berber teachers in knowledge and erudition. Barth
+met in the wildest parts of Adamawa a Fulani from far-off
+Massina carrying a considerable number of Arabic books
+as <i>trade</i>. Many other instances could be given.</p>
+
+<p>Islam in West Africa is, indeed, a living force and a most
+powerful agency “everywhere knitting the conquerors and
+the conquered into an harmonious whole,”<a id="FNanchor_185" href="#Footnote_185" class="fnanchor">[185]</a> and Englishmen
+must regard it as such. It confronts them more particularly
+in its political aspect in Northern Nigeria; and in
+Sierra Leone, the Gambia, the Gold Coast, Lagos, and to a
+much lesser degree, in Southern Nigeria, in its social aspect.
+People in England appear strangely unacquainted with
+these facts. West African Mohammedanism is presented to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_215"></a>[215]</span>
+them in distorted shape by those who have interest in so
+doing, and to whom the public ear is more readily accessible.
+But the local authorities in the West African Colonies realise
+the state of affairs; and what is more, are rapidly coming to
+the conclusion that the Mohammedan section of the community
+is not only the most orderly and the most progressive,
+but necessitates, both as a matter of duty and of policy,
+recognition on the part of the Government. Within the last
+few years Mohammedan schools have been established with
+official sanction and support in all our Colonies; a mosque
+built by the late Shitta Bey has been opened at Lagos<a id="FNanchor_186" href="#Footnote_186" class="fnanchor">[186]</a> by
+the (then) Governor in person, and in Sierra Leone a Director
+of Mohammedan Education has been especially appointed
+at a fixed salary per annum.</p>
+
+<p>As with Great Britain, so with France, but to a very much
+greater degree. France’s African Empire is almost wholly
+an Islamic one, and confining ourselves to that part of it
+which is properly West African, the overwhelming majority
+of the inhabitants are Muslims. With the exception of a
+small section of Bobos, Diakankes and Bambarras, a larger
+but declining section of the Malinkes and a few wandering
+Fulani in the more remote districts of Barani, Fuladugu,
+Bobo-Dialassu, &amp;c., the whole of the Western Sudan is more
+or less Muslimised. In the north of her colony of Guinea,
+France has the large Muslim Fulani State of Futa-Jallon;
+in Senegal, Mohammedanism has spread right down to the
+ocean; in the Chad region, in Baghirmi and a considerable
+distance up the Shari, Islam has flourished for at least four
+centuries, and through Fulani cattle-rearers and Hausa
+traders, the tenets of the Prophet are being propagated
+as far south as the Shari, Sangha and Ubanghi. The
+French have established numerous schools at which the
+sons of Mohammedan chiefs receive instruction on Western<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_216"></a>[216]</span>
+lines. Among such schools may be mentioned those of
+Kayes and Medina. Special instructors appointed by the
+French Government teach Arabic side by side with French,
+and every effort is made by France to secure Muslim co-operation
+on lines of Western thought in the great work
+which she has taken in hand. The French African Committee
+go so far as to print a special bulletin in Arabic, which,
+together with the Arabic newspaper <i>al Mobacher</i>, published
+in Algeria, is distributed gratuitously to a large number of
+influential Mohammedans throughout the Western Sudan,
+especially in such centres as Jenne, Timbuctoo, Nioro and
+Sokolo. Needless to say these publications are largely
+composed of laudatory articles calculated to inspire their
+readers with the justice, generosity, and liberty of French
+political conceptions. The French seem to be adopting in
+this, as in many other respects in West Africa, a very enlightened
+attitude. At the Kayes school, for instance, they
+have appointed a special teacher from Algeria to superintend
+instruction in the Arabic tongue.<a id="FNanchor_187" href="#Footnote_187" class="fnanchor">[187]</a> Moreover, in order to
+make clear to the Muslim population that their sons can
+attend the Government schools without fear of having to
+listen to teaching conceived in a spirit of hostility or criticism
+towards Islam, the French authorities not only permit but
+encourage the presence during class time of the Muslim
+schoolmasters themselves, thus removing the natural suspicion
+of Muslim parents, and at the same time making
+allies of the “marabouts.” This line of conduct, it may be
+added, is especially embodied in the instructions given to all
+District Commissioners.</p>
+
+<p>How comes it that Islam has succeeded with the West
+African Negro when Christianity has fared so badly? Islam
+has marched from triumph to triumph among the Negroes,
+but of the greatest effort ever put forward by the Christian
+Church in West Africa, that by the Portuguese in the Congo
+in the sixteenth century, there remains little or no trace, and
+the results of more widespread but less consistent (because<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_217"></a>[217]</span>
+rent by internal differences) efforts of to-day cannot be
+termed otherwise than profoundly discouraging, when one
+considers the lives expended in a fruitless task; pitifully
+sterile, when one is aware of the large sums that have been,
+and continue to be, spent in the attempt. It would seem as
+though the failure of the Christian Church in North Africa,
+and the failure of Roman Catholicism in South West Africa,
+in the sixteenth century, were to be repeated in these later
+days by the multifarious sects and denominations the
+monotony of whose painful struggles to gain a foothold on
+the western shores of the unfathomable continent is only
+varied by the jealousies and recriminations which they indulge
+in towards one another.</p>
+
+<p>The Protestant churchman is wont to ascribe the failure
+of Christian propaganda in South-Western Africa in the
+sixteenth century to Roman Catholicism, which to him is the
+embodiment of an evil little if at all removed from the evil
+of Islamic doctrine.<a id="FNanchor_188" href="#Footnote_188" class="fnanchor">[188]</a> I have heard English and French
+Roman Catholics attribute it to the inherent incapacity, or
+weakness, or corruptibility—according to the particular views
+of the individual—of the would-be converters, the Portuguese.
+Persons devoid of special religious prejudices are sometimes
+inclined to argue that the mere fact of the slave trade being
+in existence contemporaneously was in itself sufficient to
+account for it. Upon examination none of these views
+appear very conclusive. Protestantism has not fared better
+in West Africa than Roman Catholicism. Indeed, it may be
+doubted whether it has fared, on the whole, quite as well.
+No argument worthy of serious attention has been adduced
+to prove the exceptional unfitness of Portuguese prelates to
+successfully accomplish the task they had begun, nor does<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_218"></a>[218]</span>
+the decline of the political influence of Portugal in West
+Africa provide a fitting explanation, because the flimsy
+nature of the first apparent successes of the Roman Catholic
+Church had become evident before that decline took place.
+As for the alleged slave-trade deterrent, it was, contradictory
+as the statement may appear, probably no deterrent at all,
+but rather the reverse; for the policy of the Portuguese consisted
+in promoting friendly relations with the more powerful
+potentates of the littoral, and in supplying them with guns
+and gunpowder to make war on the inland tribes. The
+latter, and not the coastwise natives, were, in the main, the
+chief sufferers by the slave trade; and the coast people, being
+guaranteed from molestation, would have no occasion to
+invoke the miseries inflicted upon them by the Portuguese
+traffickers in human flesh, when approached by the Portuguese
+inculcators of Christianity. In fact, if the political
+acts of professing Christian nations in West Africa are to be
+considered as a factor in the measure of success, or failure of
+Christian propagandism in West Africa—a debatable proposition
+upon which I propose to refer later on—it may
+without hesitation be affirmed that recent developments of
+European policy have done more to prejudice the natives
+against the doctrines of Christianity, as propounded by
+European teachers, than the slave trade with all its savagery
+and horrors.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus31" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus31.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>A SUSU MALLAM</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>We must go deeper than this, and in doing so try and
+clear our minds of preconceived opinions, no easy matter
+when certain errors have been so persistently dinned into
+our ears that they have come to be regarded as cardinal
+articles of faith; and those who in this respect occasionally
+venture to disturb the serenity of our convictions are
+looked upon as outside the pale of respectable society. One
+of such preconceived opinions is embodied in the quotation
+from Palgrave’s “Arabia” already commented upon. Another
+bears on the nature of Islamic proselytism in West Africa.
+It is an ingrained belief with most people that Mohammedanism
+in West Africa has ever been propagated by brute
+force; is ever and always associated with “slave-raiding.”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_219"></a>[219]</span>
+The mere epithet of “slave-raiders” applied in Reuter’s telegrams
+to a tribe with whom trouble has occurred, is sufficient
+to justify in the eyes of the public any expeditions of
+a punitive kind which the authorities in their wisdom think fit
+to organise, against those who have incurred the displeasure
+of a District Commissioner or Military Commandant. Far
+be it from me to assert that occasions do not arise when the
+adoption of punitive undertakings is not only an unavoidable
+necessity, but a positive duty owed by the Suzerain
+Power to its protected subjects. But I would venture
+respectfully to suggest that the term “slave-raiding” is much
+abused, not a little distorted, and sometimes most unfairly
+applied. It is used almost exclusively in connection with
+Mohammedan tribes. When a difference comes about with
+pagans, we are told that it is caused by a predilection to
+human sacrifices. A reference to the frequent collisions
+which have taken place between Great Britain and the
+natives of Western Africa during the last six years will
+show that, either as a primary or an accessory cause of the
+difficulty, human sacrifices are invariably given in the case
+of a pagan community and slave-raiding in the case of a
+Mohammedan community.</p>
+
+<p>There could be no greater error than the prevalent idea
+that in West Africa, Islam has attained its remarkable
+successes <i>manu militari</i>. Most of Islam’s triumphs in West
+Africa have been won by the peaceful sect of the Quadriyah,
+founded by Sidi-Abd-el-Kader-el-Jieari in 1077 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>, first
+introduced into West Africa in the fifteenth century; and
+the work accomplished by this sect has been more enduring
+and more widespread than that of the other great order in
+West Africa, the Tijaniyah, which believes primarily in the
+sword as a means of conversion.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“In the beginning<a id="FNanchor_189" href="#Footnote_189" class="fnanchor">[189]</a> of the present century<a id="FNanchor_190" href="#Footnote_190" class="fnanchor">[190]</a>
+    the great revival which
+was so profoundly influencing the Mohammedan world stirred up the
+Quadriyah of the Sahara and Western Sudan to renewed life and
+energy, and before long learned theologians or small colonies of persons
+affiliated to the order were to be found, scattered throughout the Sudan,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_220"></a>[220]</span>
+on the mountain chain that runs along the coast of Guinea, and even
+to the west of it, in the Free State of Liberia. These initiates formed
+centres of Islamic influence in the midst of the pagan population,
+among whom they received a welcome as public scribes, legists, writers
+of amulets, and schoolmasters; gradually they would acquire influence
+over their new surroundings, and isolated cases of conversion would
+soon grow into a little band of converts, the most promising of whom
+would often be sent to complete their studies at the chief centre of the
+order; here they might remain for several years, until they had perfected
+their theological studies, and would then return to their native
+place, fully equipped for the work of spreading the faith among their
+fellow-countrymen. In this way a leaven has been introduced into the
+midst of fetish worshippers and idolaters which has gradually spread
+the faith of Islam surely and steadily, though by almost imperceptible
+degrees. Up to the middle of the present century<a id="FNanchor_191" href="#Footnote_191" class="fnanchor">[191]</a> in the Sudan,
+schools were founded and conducted by teachers trained under the
+auspices of the Quadriyah, and their organisation provided for a
+regular and continued system of propaganda among the heathen tribes.
+The missionary work of this order has been entirely of a peaceful
+character, and has relied wholly upon personal example and precept,
+on the influence of a teacher over his pupils, and the spread of
+education.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The Quadriyah order, moreover, is not animated by
+hostility towards Christians, in which it differs materially
+from that of the Tijaniyah. The French find it advisable
+to co-operate politically with the former sect. “It is,”
+writes Captain Morrison in the interesting report already
+alluded to, “our business to see that the Negroes, Moors,
+Tuaregs and other inhabitants of the Western Sudan should
+become more affiliated to the Quadriyah (Kadria). It is,
+thanks to the spirit with which the Imam of Lanfiera
+inspires his adepts, that friendship and protection have been
+granted to all our explorers in that region.” M. le Commandant
+Binger thus describes the work of Quadriyah
+Muslims in the important city and country of Kong, in the
+hinterland of the Ivory Coast, which he was the first to
+discover and bring to the notice of Europe:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“A hundred years ago, the influence of the Muslim community of Kong
+did not extend beyond a few miles of the city. Surrounded on all sides
+by pagan tribes who existed by rapine and brigandage, the people of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_221"></a>[221]</span>
+Kong could not carry on trade and dispose of their cotton goods without
+great loss, consequent upon the exorbitant taxes imposed by the pagan
+kinglets, non-payment of which involved the pillage of caravans. What
+did the Muslims do? They established Mohammedan families from
+Kong in all the villages situated between Kong and Bobo-Dialassu first,
+and between Kong and Jenne afterwards. It took them fifty years to
+settle one or two families in each village. Each of these immigrants
+organised a school, asked some of the inhabitants to send their children
+there, then little by little, through their relations with Kong and other
+commercial centres, they were able to render service to the pagan king
+of the country, to gain his confidence, and gradually to take part in his
+affairs. If a difficulty arises it is always a Muslim who is appealed to.
+Even if he be quite alone in the country, the king will empower him to
+negotiate, because he is usually able to read and write and has the
+reputation of being a good and holy man. If the Muslim ambassador
+fails in his mission, he proposes to the pagan king that the mediation
+of the people of Kong shall be invoked. Thus the country becomes
+placed under the protection of the Mohammedan States of Kong.
+Gradually Islam makes progress. More Muslim families settle among
+the pagans, who do not fail to become converts. The latter quickly
+recognise that the one means of finding aid and protection wherever
+their travels may lead them lies in the adoption of Islam.<a id="FNanchor_192" href="#Footnote_192" class="fnanchor">[192]</a> Moreover,
+have not the pagans a significant example before them? Do not the
+Muslims live in comparative ease and comfort? The pagan, while
+acknowledging that it is commerce and industry that render Mohammedans
+prosperous, attributes much of that prosperity to the Supreme
+Being, and the Muslim takes care to point the moral, ‘God wills it
+thus.’ It is clearly apparent from the above that the Islamic propaganda
+of Kong is carried on by persuasion. Force is but rarely
+employed, and only against pagan peoples composed of thieves and
+brigands, and when the Kong Mussulmans are driven to make use
+of it.”<a id="FNanchor_193" href="#Footnote_193" class="fnanchor">[193]</a></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The practices of the Kong people in this respect are not
+at all peculiar to themselves. We find the same procedure
+mentioned by Thomson, Barth, and numerous other explorers;
+and the influence of Islam among the Hausas could
+never have been maintained if to the early conquests of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_222"></a>[222]</span>
+Othman Fodio had not succeeded the peaceful efforts of
+the Muslim teacher, schoolmaster and priest. Dr. Blyden
+once described to the writer the incidents relating to the
+conversion of one of the largest pagan towns in the Sierra
+Leone hinterland, the knowledge of which he gleaned from
+the inhabitants themselves in the course of his travels in the
+Protectorate. On a certain day the inhabitants of the town
+observed a man, black like themselves, but clad in a white
+garment, advancing down the main street. Suddenly the
+stranger prostrated himself and prayed to Allah. The
+natives stoned him and he departed. In a little while he
+returned, and prostrated himself as before. This time he
+was not stoned, but the people gathered about him with
+mockery and reviling. The men spat upon him and the
+women hurled insults and abuse. His prayer ended, the
+stranger went away in silence, grave and austere, seemingly
+oblivious to his unsympathetic surroundings. For a space
+he did not renew his visit, and in the interval the people
+began to regret their rudeness. The demeanour of the
+stranger under trying circumstances had gained their
+respect. A third time he came, and with him two boys
+also clothed in white garments. Together they knelt and
+offered prayer. The natives watched, and forbore to jeer.
+At the conclusion of the prayer a woman came timidly
+forward and pushed her young son towards the holy man,
+then as rapidly retreated. The Muslim rose, took the boy
+by the hand and, followed by his acolytes, left the village
+in silence as before. When he came again he was accompanied
+by three boys, two of them those who had been
+with him before, and the third the woman’s son, clad like
+the rest. All four fell upon their knees, the holy man
+reciting the prayer in a voice that spoke of triumph and
+success. He never left the town again, for the people
+crowded round him beseeching him to teach their children.
+In a short time the entire population of that town,
+which for three centuries had beaten back the assaults of
+would-be Muslim converters by the sword, had voluntarily
+embraced Islam!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_223"></a>[223]</span></p>
+
+<p>It is in incidents such as these, which are by no means
+rare in West Africa, that the moral force of Islam lies, and
+which is largely accountable for its astonishing successes.
+The fanatical zeal of an Ahmadu, a Samory and an El-Haji-Omar
+are but drops in the ocean compared with the
+systematic moral suasion exercised by Islamic teachers,
+who, carrying no staff or scrip, relying solely upon the
+inward strength derived from contact with a higher creed,
+brave the perils and discomforts incidental to their calling
+with a sublime indifference only met with in Biblical
+narrative. There is a passage in Arnold’s “The Preaching
+of Islam” which accurately interprets the misconceptions
+which exist on the subject of Islamic propaganda in West
+Africa:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“Unfortunately,” says that author, “for a true estimate of the missionary
+work of Islam in Western Africa, the fame of the <i>jihads</i>, or
+religious wars, has thrown into the shade the successes of the peaceful
+propagandist, though the labours of the latter have been more effectual
+to the spread of Islam than the creation of petty short-lived dynasties.
+The records of campaigns, especially when they have interfered with
+the commercial projects or schemes of conquest of the white man, have
+naturally attracted the attention of Europeans more than the unobtrusive
+labours of the Mohammedan preacher and schoolmaster....
+These <i>jihads</i>, rightly looked upon, are but incidents in the modern
+Islamic revival, and are by no means characteristic of the forces and
+activities that have been really operative in the promulgation of Islam
+in West Africa; indeed, unless followed up by distinctly missionary
+efforts, they would have proved almost wholly ineffectual in the creation
+of a true Muslim community.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_224"></a>[224]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII<br>
+<span class="smaller">ISLAM IN WEST AFRICA</span></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Being now perhaps in a somewhat more open frame of
+mind with regard to the work of Islam in West Africa, we
+may attempt to investigate the methods of Islam and the
+methods of Christianity in their relationship to the Negro.
+In this manner we may hope to come to still closer quarters
+with the subject, and by so doing arrive at a tolerably clear
+impression of its various phases. Why does Africa, which
+was, as has been truly said, “the nursing mother of Christianity,”
+remain impervious to the teachings of the highest
+religion? Why does Christianity, which has laboured for so
+many centuries in Western Africa, make no appreciable
+advance in that country? The failure may, I think, be
+ascribed to four main causes: first, the refusal to admit
+that the circumstances which regulate certain natural laws
+vary with climatic considerations and racial idiosyncrasies;
+secondly, the tendency which Christianity, as taught in
+West Africa, has to denationalise; thirdly, the incompatibility
+between the ideals of Christ and modern conceptions
+of Christianity; fourthly, the political action of Christian
+Powers.</p>
+
+<p>For obvious reasons the question of polygamy is a very
+difficult one to publicly discuss, but the subject of Christianity
+and Mohammedanism in Western Africa cannot
+adequately be treated without referring to it. It is no use
+shutting our eyes to the fact that the refusal of the Christian
+Church to admit polygamists into its fold is one of the
+great obstacles with which the Church in West Africa has to
+contend. That is not seriously disputed, and yet, so far as
+can be observed, the chief dignitaries of the Church with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_225"></a>[225]</span>
+whom all decisions affecting missionary enterprise in West
+Africa must ultimately lie, give no sign that they realise the
+paramount importance of the problem. Now and again
+individual utterances are made, which tend to show that some
+Churchmen, at least, are possessed of a spirit sufficiently
+broad to approach the subject in more practical fashion.
+A well-known Canon of the Church once remarked that,
+“owing to polygamy, Mohammedan countries are free from
+professional outcasts, a greater reproach to Christianity
+than polygamy to Islam.” Although the first part of that
+statement may not be accepted <i>ad literatim</i>, there are,
+unfortunately, sufficient data to show that the morals
+of Mohammedan communities in West Africa are higher
+than those of the Europeanised West Coast towns, where
+alone Christianity has gained a sort of foothold, and where
+a monogamous Christianity has been preached off and on
+for centuries past. And it is, at any rate, true that in West
+Africa the Mohammedan is, as a rule, distinctly averse to
+relationship with public women; and also, as a rule, jealously
+guards the honour of his wives and daughters.</p>
+
+<p>Let us consider for a moment how this refusal on the
+part of the Church to receive polygamists appeals to the
+Negro in relation to Christianity. If there is one social
+feature of the Negro which all observers are agreed in
+recognising, it is the sincerity and depth of the link between
+mother and son.<a id="FNanchor_194" href="#Footnote_194" class="fnanchor">[194]</a> With what sort of feelings, then, must
+the Negro look upon a religion which, according to its
+expounders, brands his parents with immorality? In very
+truth, whether we approach this great subject from a standpoint
+of common sense and severe practicability, or whether
+we claim to study it on moral grounds alone, only one conclusion
+can be arrived at. To offer Christianity to the
+Negro at the price of repudiating the members of his household
+is unreasonable, preposterous, unjust, and even cruel.
+It is unreasonable, insomuch as it ignores the most fundamental
+laws of human affection which exist in more or less<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_226"></a>[226]</span>
+developed form in every community and under every clime.
+It is preposterous, because it displays an extraordinary ignorance
+of the customs of the Negro and the strength of the
+family tie, and all that appertains to it among the Negroes.
+It is unjust, because it would deprive the rejected women
+(and children) of all they possess, cover them with shame
+and obloquy, thus deliberately inciting them to lead immoral
+lives. It is cruel, because, with an entire inconsequence
+and heedlessness of after effects, it would break up a social
+system consecrated by immemorial usage. There is a noble
+passage in Faidherbe’s great work which I cannot refrain
+from quoting in this connection:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“Certain people,” said that distinguished Frenchman, “would seem
+to desire that the natives should be induced to repudiate their wives
+and to retain but one. This method appears to me to be thoroughly
+immoral. What! Our object is to strengthen family ties, and we
+would begin by disorganising the family! We should commit a great
+injustice, and we should be displaying a singular callousness towards
+the women and children, if we professed to grant to the native the title
+and privileges of a citizen on the condition that he kept one wife and
+expelled the others. We should place venerable fathers of families in
+the position of sending away, with their children, wives with whom
+they had lived for fifteen, twenty, or thirty years. And how would
+they distinguish between their wives?... Disorganisation would be
+complete.”<a id="FNanchor_195" href="#Footnote_195" class="fnanchor">[195]</a></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>There is another aspect of the question which cannot
+fail to arrest the attention of all enlightened and truly
+Christian men. Is polygamy a necessary institution on
+physical grounds for the Negro <i>in Africa</i>? The evidence in
+a corroborative sense is not to be lightly dismissed. Without
+stopping to discuss the generally admitted theory that
+the sexual side of man’s nature becomes more pronounced
+as the tropical zone is approached, it is incontestable that
+a well-grounded belief exists in West African educated
+native circles that the effects of monogamy upon the Negro
+<i>are racially destructive</i>. Dr. Blyden’s testimony in this respect
+may not, perhaps, command universal acknowledgment, but<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_227"></a>[227]</span>
+the following passage from his writings is well worthy
+of note:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“Owing,” he says, “to the exhausting climatic conditions, the life
+and perpetuity of the population depend upon polygamy. The difference
+is marked between children born under monogamic restrictions
+and those whose parents are polygamists. In the one there is the
+evidence of physical deterioration and mental weakness; in the other
+are manifest physical vigour and mental activity and alertness. In the
+one there is the sad evidence of arrested growth, suppressed physical
+development, and intellectual sluggishness; in the other there is
+astonishing muscular strength and fully developed chest—a reproduction
+of their fathers’—not weaker, but wiser than their fathers’, when
+not diverted from aboriginal simplicity by alien influence.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The exhausting climatic conditions of which Doctor
+Blyden speaks is accountable for a custom, almost universal
+throughout West Africa, among both Mohammedans and
+pagans; which, although it may have some drawbacks
+attaching to it, must nevertheless be assumed to entail
+preponderating advantages for the racial welfare of the
+people, or it would hardly have been so widely adopted. I
+refer, of course, to the extensive period of lactation—three
+years as a rule—during which time husband and wife have
+no connection; connection, indeed, generally ceasing when
+conception has taken place. The custom is attributive to the
+belief that too frequent child-bearing is injurious to the
+health of the mother and the offspring, in view of the
+climate.<a id="FNanchor_196" href="#Footnote_196" class="fnanchor">[196]</a> This is a point which also deserves the most
+attentive consideration. The instinct of primitive peoples
+in such matters is generally found to be based upon knowledge
+born of experience. The only portion of the Dark
+Continent where orthodox Christianity has made any appreciable
+inroad is Uganda. Now what does Sir Harry
+Johnston tell us in his last report? He says there is a
+serious decrease in the birth-rate of the Bantu Waganda.
+He quotes Monseigneur Strachir’s opinion that one of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_228"></a>[228]</span>
+causes of this state of affairs is the introduction of monogamy,
+consequent upon the spread of the Christian faith.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“In many parts of West Africa,” continues Sir Harry Johnston,
+“where Christianity prevails, but where there is very little result other
+than pious utterances from the mouth, ostensible monogamy is corrected
+by the possession of recognised or unrecognised concubines,
+and by a general promiscuousness in sexual matters. But in Uganda,
+Christianity seems to have taken such a real hold upon the people that,
+though by no means free from immorality—as no nation or community
+is free from the same tendency—they really seem to be striving at
+genuine monogamy and the exclusive possession of one wife for a
+partner. As the Baganda women are certainly very poor breeders,
+this means that the majority of couples only have one child. In fact,
+the birth of a second child on the part of the wife is such an unusual
+occurrence that the wife, in consequence thereof, is given a new and
+honorific title.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>A Liberian Bishop—one of the kindliest of men—to whom
+I showed the above passage, replied sententiously that the
+ways of the Almighty were unfathomable, but that the disappearance
+of the few could not be held to weigh in the
+balance as compared with the salvation of the many; which
+seemed to me to bear a curious analogy to that passage in
+“Azurara” in which the old Portuguese historian, apostrophising
+Prince Henry the Navigator on the occasion of the
+first appearance at his court of West African slaves, torn
+with every accompaniment of barbarity from their homes
+by those gallant knights Antam Gonçalvez and Nuno
+Tristram, exclaims:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“O holy Prince, peradventure thy pleasure and delight might have
+some semblance of covetousness at receiving the knowledge of such a
+sum of riches, even as great as those thou didst expend to arrive at that
+result?... But thy joy was solely from that one holy purpose of
+thine to seek salvation for the lost souls of the heathen. And in the
+light of this it seemed to thee, when thou sawest those captives brought
+into thy presence, that the expense and trouble thou hadst undergone
+was nothing: such was thy pleasure at beholding them. And yet the
+greater benefit was theirs, for though their bodies were now brought
+into some subjection, that was a small matter in comparison with their
+souls, which would now possess true freedom for evermore.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I hope it will not be thought that these references are
+made with any idea of depreciating the efforts, and in some<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_229"></a>[229]</span>
+respects surprisingly successful efforts, of Christian propaganda
+among the Bantu races of the Uganda Protectorate.
+The point under discussion is not the evangelising
+success of the Church in Uganda, but the physical effects
+of a monogamous Christianity upon the races of Africa.</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus32" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus32.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>FULANI MALLAM</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>I have been at great pains to obtain all the evidence available
+bearing directly or indirectly on this subject, and in
+the aggregate it bears out what precedes. The highest type
+of the Christian educated Negro urges that an entire latitude
+should be left to the aboriginal element in the matter,
+and although professing monogamists themselves, they
+strictly maintain—whether rightly or wrongly is not for the
+layman to decide—that in so doing the Church would not
+be acting contrary to the principles of divine revelation.<a id="FNanchor_197" href="#Footnote_197" class="fnanchor">[197]</a></p>
+
+<p>I have given as the second contributory cause of the non-success
+of Christian missions in West Africa the tendency
+to denationalisation. It is unhappily true that the Christianised
+Negro becomes to a large extent denationalised,
+and the reason of it lies in the methods employed to convert
+him. Islam, on the other hand, not only encourages
+the spirit of nationality in the African, but intensifies it. The
+Muslim Negro is elevated among his pagan neighbours; he<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_230"></a>[230]</span>
+gains their respect and increases his own. Islam takes the
+Negro by the hand and gives him equality with all men.
+From the day the pagan adopts Islam, no Semite Muslim
+can claim racial superiority over him. Islam to the Negro
+is the stepping-stone to a higher conception of existence,
+inspiring in his breast confidence in his own destiny,
+imbuing his spirit with a robust faith in himself and in his
+race. Christianity does not do this for the Negro. Its effect,
+indeed, is quite contrary. Instead of encouraging, it discourages.
+Instead of inculcating a greater self-reliance, it
+seems to lessen that which exists. The Christian Negro for
+the most part is a sort of hybrid. He is neither one thing
+nor another. His adoption of European clothes causes him
+to be looked upon partly with suspicion, partly with ridicule,
+by his pagan fellow-countrymen; although they make use
+of his services as clerk or secretary when occasion requires
+it. Mohammedans treat him with undisguised contempt.
+More bitter perhaps than anything else is the scorn which
+Europeans themselves bestow upon him. Question any
+white official, military man, trader or traveller, as to his
+impressions of the West African native. He will tell you
+that the pagan native of the interior is more often than not
+a fine fellow, one of nature’s gentlemen, hospitable, kindly,
+simple, courteous; that the Mohammedan native is a splendid
+man, with a carriage full of pride and self-reliance, arrogant
+may be, haughty, but singularly dignified, with a conscious
+superiority and quiet confidence stamped all over him. But
+the Christian Negro is seldom spoken of without opprobrium.
+His vanity, his conceit, his “veneer of civilisation,”
+the vices he has acquired and so forth, are the inevitable
+theme. His unfortunate habit of adopting the latest
+vagaries of European fashions, both in his own person and
+in the person of his women folk, is the butt of constant
+sarcasm, as are the accounts of the solemnisation of the
+Christian form of marriage in a native West Coast town.
+Even the missionaries are compelled, although with natural
+unwillingness, to admit an unpalatable fact. “There are a
+great many natives on the coast and in Lower Nigeria,”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_231"></a>[231]</span>
+writes Canon Robinson, “who call themselves Christian;
+there are distressingly few converts.... My advice to
+travellers on the coast in search of trustworthy servants
+would be to prefer the heathen or Mohammedan to the
+professing Christian, because a bad religion sincerely
+accepted, or even no religion at all, is to be preferred to a
+religious profession which is only a sham.” A humiliating
+confession, humiliating to the Christian Church, humiliating
+to European civilisation. What between one thing and
+another, the Christianised Negro is a <i>déclassé</i>, a <i>culotté sans
+culottes</i>.<a id="FNanchor_198" href="#Footnote_198" class="fnanchor">[198]</a> Of course there are exceptions, but they are relatively
+scarce, and consist in the main of natives who have
+acquired wealth by commerce (wealth being a safeguard to
+open obloquy all the world over, no matter what the colour of
+the possessor’s skin), and who either through the enjoyment
+of special educational advantages, or because they are men
+of unusually high character and intelligence naturally, have
+succeeded in grasping the true Christian ideal and have
+gained moral and spiritual ennoblement thereby. It is
+my privilege to number such a man among my friends.
+But I greatly doubt whether he would feel at ease in travelling
+or sojourning alone in the interior, even among the
+tribe to which he belongs, in his own country of origin.
+There seems to be a barrier between the Christianised Negro
+and his non-Christian countrymen; a barrier which excludes
+sympathy, and which European policy tends to still further
+accentuate.</p>
+
+<p>To what are these things due? To no one particular
+circumstance, but to a whole set of circumstances, which
+together produce the effect. To the general, omnipresent
+suggestion—possibly quite unintentioned in many cases—of
+the Negro’s inherent racial inferiority, inculcated by European<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_232"></a>[232]</span>
+missionaries. To the never absent, one might say
+inevitable insistence, whether outspoken or only understood,
+upon a great intellectual, social, moral gulf which yawns
+between the Negro and his Caucasian instructor; a gulf that
+can never be bridged by Christianity, as taught in West
+Africa by Europeans.</p>
+
+<p>The third and fourth contributory causes, viz. incompatibility
+between the ideals of Christ and the modern conceptions
+of Christianity, and the political action of Christian
+Powers, may be treated together, for they are closely allied
+one to the other; as, indeed, they also are to the third cause,
+upon which I have briefly touched. There is a striking
+passage in the last literary contribution on West African
+affairs, penned by Miss Kingsley on that fatal voyage to the
+Cape, which puts in more pregnant language than I could
+hope to do the underlying thought expressed above:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“I know,” wrote Miss Kingsley, “that there is a general opinion
+among the leading men of both races that Christianity will give the one
+possible solution to the whole problem. I fail to be able to believe
+this. I fail to believe Christianity will bring peace between the two
+races, for the simple reason that, though it may be possible to convert
+Africans <i>en masse</i> into practical Christians, it is quite impossible to
+convert the Europeans <i>en masse</i> to it. You have only got to look at the
+history of any European nation—the Dutch, the Spanish, the Italian,
+the German—every one calling themselves Christian, but none the
+more for that tolerant and peaceable. Each one of them is ready to
+take out a patent for a road to heaven, and make that road out of
+men’s blood and bones and the ashes of burnt homesteads. Of course,
+by doing this they are not following the true teachings of Jesus Christ,
+but that has not, and will not, become a factor in politics.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The bewildering contradictions between the ideals laid
+down by Christ, as taught by the expounders of his word,
+and the practical effect of that teaching as exemplified in the
+conduct of Europeans and European Governments, confronts
+the Negro at every turn. The more intelligent he is,
+the more advanced in the social scale, the more puzzling
+does it become. Is it a question of charity? The Muslim
+propagandist speaks of Christ with deep respect amounting
+to reverence. He is <i>Kalima</i>—the Word; <i>Masih</i>—the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_233"></a>[233]</span>
+Messiah; <i>Qual-ul-Haqq</i>—the Word of Truth; <i>Ruh</i>—the
+Spirit (of God). He is “One illustrious in this world and
+in the next”: “One who has near access to God.” The
+Christian missionary speaks of Mohammed “as an impostor;”
+“an arch impostor;” “a man full of evil and
+wickedness.” Islam is a “bad religion”: “its ways are the
+ways of darkness”: “it is Satan’s work,” and so on. Is it
+a question of self-abnegation? The Bible and the Koran
+utter the same precepts in almost identical terms. But what
+a difference in the spiritual practice of their respective
+expounders in West Africa! The Muslim preacher follows
+out the letter of his book. He goes on his way alone and
+unattended, carrying neither purse nor scrip. He lives the
+life of the Negro, enters into his pursuits, shares his hardships
+and his pleasures, assimilates himself in every possible
+way with those whom he hopes to convert. The European
+missionary is compelled, by the exigencies of the climate
+very greatly, to attend primarily to his own comforts. He
+travels with a long file of carriers bearing his baggage; preserved
+foods, linen, camp impedimenta and what not.
+Some of the most earnest missionaries keenly realise the
+drawbacks which such procedure must entail in the prosecution
+of their work, both physically and morally. They
+are deeply sensible of the adverse influence which it cannot
+fail to exercise over their labours. We have seen an English
+prelate, high up in the hierarchy of his Church, suggest a
+decrease in his salary, in order that the balance might be
+devoted to the appointment of another helper in the great
+cause.<a id="FNanchor_199" href="#Footnote_199" class="fnanchor">[199]</a> On the other hand, we find in the works and
+letters of prominent missionaries engaged in the West
+African field, egotistical essays of the following description:<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_234"></a>[234]</span>
+“Care must be taken that the waterproof cloak is <i>stitched</i>.
+Sponges, bath-towels, &amp;c., will suggest themselves. Do not
+forget the table-linen; a neatly arranged table helps to
+tempt the appetite, which is often fastidious. Antibilious
+compounds are worth in my judgment <i>two guineas</i> a box.”
+The above passage is derived from a book recently published,
+written by a missionary with nine years’ experience in West
+Africa. The articles mentioned by the writer are recommended
+by him as indispensable to the welfare of a teacher
+of the Gospel in West Africa. The following is a typical
+passage culled from the epistolary effusions published
+from time to time in the organ of the Church Missionary
+Society from the pen of a most energetic Bishop, who has
+been endeavouring with singular ill-success, and not without
+some danger of arousing disturbances, to evangelise the
+Hausas. “We are all well.... Our appetites are enormous.
+We have plenty of food. We receive presents of
+food from the people every day—rice, onions, corn, maize,
+fowls, bananas, &amp;c. B—— shoots a good many partridges
+and guinea-fowl, and we have a good reserve of European
+and English stores.” That these little peculiarities do not
+in the slightest degree detract from the sincerity of the
+writers may be accepted without reserve. All we are here
+concerned with, is to consider the general effect which these
+conceptions of the methods of propagating Christianity in
+West Africa are likely to have upon the African. Are men
+who profess so tender a regard for their well-being calculated
+to make much headway in an evangelical sense? It
+may reasonably be doubted.</p>
+
+<p>Is it a question of vice? The Mohammedan preacher
+does not leave a stone unturned to combat drunkenness in
+every form, and to a very large extent he succeeds. The
+sobriety of the great mass of Muslimised Negroes no longer
+requires to be demonstrated. Laxity in this respect is the
+exception which proves the rule. The European missionary
+also denounces drunkenness, and with a fervour at times
+which is not always discriminating. But he is terribly
+handicapped (1) by the European trader, about one-fifth of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_235"></a>[235]</span>
+whose total trade consists in the importation of freshly distilled
+liquor, often but not invariably containing various
+impurities, and in quality not exceeding that which is sold
+in low public-houses in this country, and which freely
+mixed with water may not be very injurious, but drunk neat,
+as for the most part it is, in the <i>coastal</i> regions of West
+Africa, is—we have overwhelming testimony to that effect—harmful;<a id="FNanchor_200" href="#Footnote_200" class="fnanchor">[200]</a>
+(2) by the European Governments who, although
+they do now and again raise the duty on spirits in deference
+to public opinion, tacitly encourage a traffic without which
+their whole administrative machinery would become temporarily
+paralysed, seeing that from 45 per cent. to 75 per cent.
+of the revenue of their Colonies is derived from this traffic.
+These circumstances may, or may not, be preventable.
+They exist, and cannot be ignored. As for another kind of
+vice; the life lived by many white men in West Africa is
+not, perhaps, calculated to give the Negro a high idea of
+the morality of Christian Europe. His occasional visits to
+Europeanised coast towns—presuming him to be living<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_236"></a>[236]</span>
+some distance in the interior—do not probably imbue him
+with the notion that his trousered countrymen are the gainers
+in moral ethics, through contact with European civilisation;
+nor, unhappily, can it be said that the tales and personal
+experiences related by those of his educated brothers who
+visit our great cities are of a kind to lessen the impression
+he may already have formed as to the results of twenty
+centuries of Christianity in Europe.<a id="FNanchor_201" href="#Footnote_201" class="fnanchor">[201]</a></p>
+
+<p>Is it a question of gauging the true inwardness of the
+doctrine of peace and love? It is to be feared that the
+political aims of European Powers in West Africa are too
+often associated with Maxims and Martinis to admit of much
+doubt on that score. The Negro is a shrewd man, and he
+distinguishes professions from actions. The readiness with
+which the white interlopers in his country appeal to the
+sword as the shortest cut to the solution of a misunderstanding
+is instructive. The hastiness with which his habits
+and customs are trampled upon by his would-be elevators;
+the cheerful alacrity he is expected to show in swallowing
+innovations thrust upon him at what, to his conservative
+prejudices, appear to him a moment’s notice; and, finally,
+the increasing desire on the part of his European friends
+to appropriate his most precious heritage, his ancestral
+lands, and the fruits thereof, for their own use—all these
+things, whether in fashionable parlance they be the “inevitable”
+accompaniments of opening up West Africa by
+Western Europe or not, constitute those contradictions of
+which I have already spoken, and whatever else they may do,
+militate against the spread of Christianity in the land of the
+Negroes.</p>
+
+<p>Is there a remedy, and if so, on what lines is it to be
+sought for? There is only one <i>native</i> Christian State in
+Africa—Abyssinia—and its Christianity is declared by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_237"></a>[237]</span>
+eminent divines to be tainted with all sorts of heresies and
+objections. But it has endowed Abyssinia with sufficient
+vitality to enable her to repel Mohammedan invasion for a
+long term of centuries, and the strong religious zeal of
+Abyssinia’s warriors was not a negligible factor in beating
+back the unjustifiable aggression made upon the independence
+of that country by Italy. To-day the Emperor of
+this African Christian State is, with one exception, probably
+the most powerful native ruler in the world. No doubt,
+it does not enter the heads of European statesmen to
+encourage the growth of a similar State in West Africa;
+which, indeed, is an obvious impossibility for many reasons.
+Yet Abyssinia provides a moral for the Christian Church.
+The Christianity of Abyssinia is an <i>African</i> Christianity,
+originally taught by an <i>African</i>, perpetuated by <i>Africans</i>.
+Orthodox or unorthodox, it has shown itself suitable to
+the necessities and the requirements of Africans; and
+if Christianity in West Africa, is ever destined to make
+appreciable progress, it will be when it is provided
+with its only feasible agent, a West African Church: a
+Church designed to respond to the needs of West Africa,
+which are not the needs of Europe; a Church whose
+servants shall be neither Europeans nor repatriate “Afro-Liberians,”
+but West African Negroes, imbued with the
+instincts and patriotism of race; a Church founded upon an
+enlightened acquaintance with nature’s immovable laws;
+upon principles of true science, which is true religion; upon
+a wise recognition that what is good and proper and right
+for one great branch of the human family may be bad,
+improper, and wrong for another.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_238"></a>[238]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_IV">PART IV</h2>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV<br>
+<span class="smaller">ANGLO-FRENCH RELATIONS IN WEST AFRICA</span></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The subject of the relationship between England and
+France in West Africa is one to which every year that passes
+adds importance. The French have during the last few
+years left us far behind in Western Africa, so far as territorial
+expansion is concerned. They have now a great
+Empire there. They have acquired it by dint of persistent,
+far-sighted, courageous effort; qualities which it is regrettable
+to state have been conspicuously lacking on the part of the
+British official world. If a tithe of the energy which has
+distinguished Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, and Bristol
+merchants in Western Africa had been displayed by successive
+British Governments, the possessions of Great Britain
+in West Africa to-day would be infinitely more extensive
+than they are.</p>
+
+<p>In addition to getting the better of us, in a territorial
+sense, France—whose possessions touch our own at almost
+every point—is steadily becoming a serious commercial
+competitor. It is with that commercial competition that we
+shall have to reckon in the future to an increasing degree.
+It is of two kinds. There is legitimate competition and
+unfair competition. In either case it behoves us to carefully
+study its nature and consequences; to draw the necessary
+lessons therefrom; to candidly acknowledge in a spirit of
+tolerant common sense that in many respects the cause of
+its pressing hardly upon us is due to superior management<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_239"></a>[239]</span>
+on the part of the French; to appeal to the spirit of
+equity and fair play in our neighbours, when, as is the case
+in some parts of their West African possessions at present,
+British merchants, who have powerfully contributed in
+creating the trade of those very possessions, are getting
+neither fair play nor just treatment; and generally to brace
+ourselves together, realising that in West Africa, as everywhere
+else, the old position of undisputed commercial
+supremacy which Great Britain was able to maintain at one
+time with very little trouble, can no longer be retained unless
+we shake off our facile opportunism and tackle the new
+conditions in a scientific manner.</p>
+
+<p>Of early French enterprise in Western Africa very little
+seems to be known by the average Englishman; and yet the
+French were among the very first pioneers of Western
+Africa—probably the very first—before the Portuguese, at
+any rate, by at least 100 years. After the remarkable studies
+recently published in the French African Committee’s
+journal by Commandant Binger, the distinguished chief of
+the African department of the French Colonial Office, there
+is not, I think, any alternative but to accept as conclusive
+the French claim of being the first Europeans to visit the
+West African coast. Spanish and Genoese navigators; the
+former hailing from Catalonia, the Lancashire of Spain,
+may possibly have been contemporaneous with the French.
+But, apart from French testimony, it is affirmed by eminent
+Spanish authorities themselves, such as Navarette
+and Viera, that the French preceded their own countrymen.
+The Canaries were discovered by a Genoese of French
+descent, and with a French name, Maloisel to wit, about
+1275 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span> They were also conquered by a Frenchman
+named De Béthancourt in the first years of the fifteenth
+century. In the beginning of the fourteenth the West
+African coast as far south as the Senegal certainly, and
+Sierra Leone probably, was regularly visited by French
+ships. So much has now been established. Whether
+French ships then pushed south to the Gold Coast is not
+quite so clear. Personally I incline to the belief that this<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_240"></a>[240]</span>
+has also been satisfactorily made out, and the confirmatory
+testimony of Villaut-de-Bellefonds no longer stands alone.</p>
+
+<p>The paucity of historical and documentary evidence has
+hitherto been the principal objection to the French claim of
+priority. It has, of course, been made the most of by
+Portuguese historians. But, apart from the circumstance
+that Commandant Binger has now been able to partly fill
+up the gap, and apart from the eminently reasonable explanation
+of Labat that the old records of the port of Dieppe,
+from whence many of the French ships bound to the West
+Coast started, were destroyed by the bombardment of that
+port in 1694, there is very good reason, to my mind, why the
+Portuguese on the one hand should possess such splendid
+and unique accounts of their early exploits in West Africa
+from the middle of the fifteenth century onwards; and why,
+on the other hand, the French, who arrived on the scene at
+least a century before them, should be so poorly represented
+in their own national archives. The reason is this. The
+enterprise of Portugal in West Africa—which has so incomparably
+enriched the domain of geographical knowledge—was,
+from the first, an official undertaking. It was conceived
+by Prince Henry the Navigator, one of the most remarkable
+figures in history, and all the resources of the science and
+literature of the age were invoked by him to give to the new
+epoch of discovery a national and historical permanency,
+which should be the means of reflecting glory for ever on
+Portuguese annals. Very different was the enterprise of the
+French. It was in no sense official, but private. It was
+undertaken not by renowned knights and important personages
+in kingly service, but by hardy, illiterate, independent
+mariners and merchants of Normandy. The object was not,
+as in the case of the Portuguese, fame, geographical discovery,
+and religious zeal, but trade. The men who fitted
+out the French ships and sent them on their perilous course
+were Dieppe, Rouen, and Honfleur merchants; and the
+French vessels returned, not with captives forcibly torn
+from their homes with every accompaniment of cruelty in
+order to convert them to a faith of peace, charity, and good-will,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_241"></a>[241]</span>
+but with ivory, spices, and gold dust. That was the
+earliest form of trade in West Africa by the people of
+Western Europe. The slave trade came afterwards. To
+this day a local industry in ivory carving exists at Dieppe,
+and every one who has visited that quaint old seaport has
+noticed the numerous ivory ornaments displayed in the shop
+windows. If, therefore, the British merchants can claim to
+be the latter-day pioneers of commercial enterprise in West
+Africa; if during the century that has just closed their commercial
+aptitude and initiative gained for them the foremost
+commercial position on the West African littoral, it was
+French merchants who originally led the way. We have
+too often led the way ourselves in most parts of the world
+to begrudge the French this honour, so far as Western
+Africa is concerned. Rather should it be a bond of respect,
+the twin sister of sympathy between us and our neighbours.</p>
+
+<p>The first recorded instance upon which Englishmen and
+Frenchmen met off the West African coast resulted,
+curiously enough, in an alliance. It happened in this way.
+One William Towerson, in the course of a voyage to Guinea
+in 1555, being pursued by some Portuguese brigantines,
+opportunely came across a fleet of French ships, with whom
+he joined company for safety. The alliance does not seem
+to have been a very satisfactory one, as it turned out; still,
+it was an alliance, of sorts. This first meeting took place
+some thirty-five years subsequent to the earliest known
+appearance of an Englishman in West Africa, in the person
+of one Andrew Battel, of Leigh—whether an ancestor of
+the three old maids of that ilk, history sayeth not—who put
+to sea in a Portuguese slaver, and after many extraordinary
+adventures amongst the natives of Angola, succeeded in
+getting back to his native country. The beginning of the
+sixteenth century marked the awakening of Englishmen to
+the potentialities of the West African trade. It had been
+preceded by a notable slackening in the energies of Normandy
+merchants. The Hundred Years’ War with England
+had crippled enterprise of any kind in France. The House
+of Valois was in a parlous state. The great war which<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_242"></a>[242]</span>
+began in 1337 and continued, with occasional breaks of
+short duration, until the marvellous successes of the Maid
+of Orleans compelled the English to give way, was marked
+by the crushing defeats the French sustained at Crecy and
+Poitiers at the hands of Edward III., and at Agincourt at
+the hands of Henry V.; and, to make use of some quoted
+words, “The State was reduced to bankruptcy, the nobility
+excited to rebellion, and the mass of the people sunk in
+barbarism.”</p>
+
+<p>No sooner, however, had the victories of Joan of Arc
+infused new vitality into the French, than we find renewed
+evidence of the enterprise of Dieppe and Rouen merchants
+in West Africa. The revival of that enterprise coincides
+with the entry upon the scene of English merchants:
+Windham, Hawkins of evil memory, Rutter, Baker, and
+others, and the records bear witness to the contemporary
+presence of French trading vessels on the West Coast from
+Senegal to the Gold Coast. Recent discoveries of old
+manuscripts, dating back to 1574, at Honfleur prove that
+from that year to 1583—a space of nine years—thirty-two
+French vessels left that port alone for West Africa. For
+some time English and French got on well enough on the
+West Coast. The power of Portugal was fast decaying, and
+adventurers of all nationalities, notably the Dutch, were
+hurrying to the spot. Then came more wars between
+English and French, with their natural effect upon commercial
+transactions in West Africa. In 1696 the French
+destroyed the British settlement at the mouth of the Gambia.
+For the next hundred years or so relations between the
+Europeans established or trading on the West Coast appear
+as a tangle of animosities. Every one seemed to be fighting
+his neighbour, and pirates of all nationalities attacked every
+vessel they came across, including those owned or manned
+by men of their own race, even Gambia Castle, garrisoned by
+a British force, being on one occasion captured and sacked
+by a notorious British pirate named Davies, presumably
+a Welshman! Notwithstanding all this dire confusion, the
+English were gradually getting the upper hand all down the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_243"></a>[243]</span>
+coast. In 1794 Sierra Leone was bombarded by a French
+squadron without the authority apparently of the Revolutionary
+Government then in power. Twenty years later,
+the power of Napoleon having collapsed, all that was left to
+France by the Treaty of Vienna was her settlement on the
+coast of Senegal.</p>
+
+<p>England remained in a preponderating position politically
+and commercially on the West African coast. Such, too,
+was her position in the main until the revival of a French
+Colonial policy, under the impulse of those far-seeing statesmen
+Gambetta and Jules Ferry in 1883. At any period
+between 1815 and 1883 England had the opportunity of
+creating an extensive Empire in West Africa and annexing
+practically the whole coast.</p>
+
+<p>And here the curtain rings down on the old <i>régime</i>, and a
+new chapter in the history of Anglo-French relationship in
+West Africa begins.</p>
+
+<p>To whom should be properly attributed the initiation of
+the scramble for Africa? It has been a cause of considerable
+inconvenience to the Cabinets of Europe, and of still
+greater inconvenience, we may feel tolerably certain, to the
+natives of Africa. Each Power that participated in it throws
+the onus on its neighbour. So far as West Africa is concerned,
+whatever claim or credit may be taken, the French
+must, I think, be held guilty or meritorious, according as
+individual opinion may differ. The scramble in West Africa
+arose from what, for want of a better description, may be
+termed the discovery by the French of the West African
+hinterlands. When Gambetta and Jules Ferry awoke the
+slumbering colonial instincts of their countrymen, inland
+West Africa was to all intents and purposes a blank.
+Englishmen and Frenchmen sat on the coast, the former
+doing a large trade and the latter little or none. In two
+places only were organised attempts at interior penetration
+being made. On the Lower Niger, Englishmen were pushing
+their trade inland. On the Senegal, the era of political conquest
+begun by Faidherbe was being slowly developed,
+despite many difficulties and set-backs. The political<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_244"></a>[244]</span>
+energies of Great Britain were paralysed by the resolution
+arrived at in 1865 to abandon all Government action in
+West Africa, with the possible exception of Sierra Leone.
+France was still feeling the effects of the disasters of
+1870.</p>
+
+<p>With the propaganda of Jules Ferry and Gambetta in
+favour of a policy of Colonial expansion, a change came
+o’er the spirit of the dream as regards West Africa. Backed
+by a strong body of opinion; supported by men of note,
+such as M. Waldeck Rousseau, as he has himself recently
+reminded us, French activity in Western Africa became
+very pronounced, and the work once begun was not abandoned
+on account of the temporary reverses suffered by
+French arms in Tonquin, which drove Ferry from power
+and broke his heart. French missions, generally of a
+peaceful character, started eastwards and southwards from
+the Senegal, and northwards from the coast, to explore the
+unknown interior. They reported it to be a fairly salubrious,
+fertile, cereal-producing and cattle-rearing country, unobstructed
+by dense forests such as are met with inland from the
+West Coast proper to a depth varying from sixty to two hundred
+miles. This country was inhabited by intelligent races
+relatively advanced in the scale of civilisation, possessing
+flourishing industries and commercial aptitude. The French
+found regularly constituted States, more or less Muslimised,
+and in some of which social law and order had reached a
+high stage of development; large towns of 10,000 to 15,000
+inhabitants with regular market-days, where iron smelting
+was highly advanced, where the natives dressed in handsome
+clothes of their own manufacture, and used leather
+sandals, sword-belts, and scabbards, despatch-bags, and
+saddles fabricated by themselves. It was a revelation. The
+chief drawback about this vast inland region, which seemed
+to offer such brilliant prospects under able administrative
+supervision, was its liability to be swept by fire and sword
+at any moment by some over-zealous adherent of a certain
+militant sect of Mohammedans, which enjoyed great influence
+in the Western Sudan. These French agents were<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_245"></a>[245]</span>
+generally well received, and by their means vast stretches of
+hitherto unknown country were opened up and brought to
+the knowledge of the world.</p>
+
+<p>Out of these discoveries was born the desire—the very
+natural and legitimate desire—on the part of the French to
+build up a mighty empire in West Africa, a black Indies,
+which should rival the Indies of the East in extent, in
+wealth, and in the prestige which its acquisition would
+confer. Exploring and semi-political missions were followed
+by expeditions of a definite political character, and district
+after district, State after State, tribe after tribe, came under
+French influence; by peaceful means in the majority of
+cases. All this time the English were doing nothing, in an
+official sense. Liverpool men were calling upon the Government
+to wake up to what was going on, but their efforts were
+entirely unsuccessful. Wider and wider grew the sweep of
+the French net, closer and closer to our own Colonies,
+which it threatened to throttle in its meshes. Sierra Leone
+became encircled on three sides by French territory; the
+magnificent country of Futa-Jallon, the Switzerland of
+Western Africa as it has been called, which had been visited
+at various times by agents of the Government of Sierra
+Leone (notably Dr. Blyden), of which it formed the natural
+hinterland, was acquired by France without firing a shot.
+The Gold Coast, and Lagos, and what is now known as
+Northern Nigeria—whose safety the Convention of 1890
+was supposed to guarantee—were in imminent danger of
+sharing a similar fate.</p>
+
+<p>I have often seen it stated, even by authorities of no mean
+order, that the French were permitted or allowed to carry
+out the great task of securing the hinterlands of Western
+Africa. In point of fact, the statement is very misleading
+and has had a somewhat mischievous effect. England was
+not in a position to allow or disallow. The French conceived
+a plan and carried it out in the face of tremendous obstacles;
+they were prepared to undergo sacrifices which we were not
+prepared to accept, and such being the case, they were
+answerable to none but themselves. Their success and our<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_246"></a>[246]</span>
+failure was the due measure of their enterprise and our
+apathy.</p>
+
+<p>When the future of our Colonies appeared thoroughly
+compromised by the cutting off of the interior markets, the
+British Government suddenly realised that Liverpool and
+Manchester merchants had been clearer-sighted than British
+officialdom, and at the last moment efforts were made to
+secure for the British Colonies such of the hinterlands which
+remained unabsorbed. Then arose a very delicate position,
+which taxed the diplomatic resources of both Powers to the
+uttermost. British and French officers with excitable native
+troops under their command, remained facing one another
+in the far interior a few hundred yards distance for weeks
+at a time, awaiting instructions from the irrespective Governments.
+To the good sense, tact, and mutual esteem of these
+officers is due that peace was preserved between England
+and France. We owe a deep debt of gratitude to these men,
+who, suffering from the debilitating effects of the West
+African climate and the hardships attendant upon West
+African travel—neither of which are conducive to sweetness
+of temper, managed to keep their heads. Mainly thanks to
+them the quarrel was adjusted without bloodshed, and the
+Anglo-French Convention of 1898 was signed. It left our
+Colonies of the Gold Coast and Lagos greatly circumscribed,
+but assured us in “Nigeria” a magnificent territory some
+504,000 square miles in extent.</p>
+
+<p>The era of territorial rivalry between Great Britain and
+France in Western Africa has, it may be legitimately assumed,
+quite passed away. We continue to be rivals in commercial
+matters, but that is a peaceful rivalry—or should be—which
+ought not to exclude friendship. Nevertheless, as trade questions
+are often converted into fertile causes of dispute, it is
+essential that Englishmen and Frenchmen, in order to work
+harmoniously together in the future, should thoroughly
+understand one another’s points of view in this connection.
+We, as a nation, are free traders. The French, as a nation,
+are protectionists. It would be absurd and undignified for
+us to complain of the different economic standpoint taken up<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_247"></a>[247]</span>
+by our neighbours. Moreover, there are various degrees of
+protectionism in France. There is the extreme school of
+M. Méline, which, if its doctrines were strictly applied to the
+French West African Colonies, would ruin them in five
+years. There is the school which upholds partial protectionism
+in France, but favours freedom of trade in the
+French Colonies. The latter is happily gaining in strength.
+We should endeavour as far as in us lies to work with the
+representatives of this school. One of the clauses of the
+1898 Convention, which caused a great outcry in France
+when it became known, stipulated that no differential treatment
+was to be meted out to British trade throughout a
+considerable part of the French West African possessions
+for a term of thirty years. The following extract, bearing
+on this subject, from an address read by M. Bohn, the head
+of the largest firm of French West African merchants, before
+the Marseilles Geographical Society, in September 1898,
+three months after the Convention was signed, is interesting:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“A certain colonial school,” said M. Bohn, “starting from the
+premise that the only object of colonies is to favour the outlet of goods
+manufactured in the mother country, demands the application of prohibitive
+tariffs upon foreign goods imported into our colonies. This
+system, which contributed so powerfully to lose Spain her finest
+colonies, flourishes in Gaboon, which is the least prosperous of our
+colonies, and which only subsists at all by constant grants in aid from
+the metropolis. These examples are hardly encouraging. On the
+other hand, we are able to see that those of our colonies which are
+developing themselves in the most rapid and satisfactory manner are
+those where no differential tariffs exist.... From that point of view
+it is certain the Franco-English Convention of June 1898, by abolishing
+for a period of thirty years all differential duties in the Ivory Coast
+and Dahomey, has assured for that period the commercial prosperity
+of these colonies.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>That notable statement and others like it (the truth of
+which has been amply borne out since) show that experienced
+Frenchmen engaged in the West African trade
+realise, as we do, that a policy of free trade is one which in
+West Africa spells commercial success by the nation which
+adopts it. The existence of such views in France is a very<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_248"></a>[248]</span>
+encouraging sign for those who firmly believe that trade is
+the greatest progressive agency which can be brought to bear
+upon the relations between Western Europe and Western
+Africa.</p>
+
+<p>Recent events are proving that a natural community of
+interests exists between British and French merchants in
+Western Africa; that they will have to fight a common foe,
+the Concessionnaire, and that every action calculated to
+bring them into closer relationship is a step in the right
+direction.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_249"></a>[249]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV<br>
+<span class="smaller">TEN YEARS OF FRENCH ACTION IN WEST AFRICA</span></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The history of France’s action in West Africa during the
+last ten years has been so remarkable that it deserves to be
+recorded in some detail, and where possible her policy may
+be usefully compared with our own. On January 23, 1892,
+the Paris <i>Figaro</i> published a literary supplement entitled
+“Our African Domain,” in which was set forth by various
+competent authorities—amongst whom was Captain Binger;<a id="FNanchor_202" href="#Footnote_202" class="fnanchor">[202]</a>
+Emile Masqueray, the well-known student of Algerian problems;
+Georges Rolland, one of the foremost advocates of the
+Trans-Saharan Railway; and “Harry Alis,” the redoubtable
+Colonial propagandist, Lord Cromer’s <i>bête noire</i>, whose tragic
+end will be in the recollection of many—the past achievements,
+actual position and future aspirations of France in
+Western and Central Africa. The supplement was divided
+into five parts, entitled respectively “Algeria”; “Penetration
+towards the Chad”; “Senegal and Dependencies”;
+“Our Position on the Gulf of Guinea”; “Congo and Chad.”
+At the time this supplement appeared, the revival of Colonial
+ambition in France, which owed its inception largely to the
+foresight and courage of Jules Ferry, had taken firm root
+among the <i>élite</i> of French public opinion. But although
+the seed where it fell gave forth lusty fruit, the sowers were
+relatively few, and the area under cultivation was still but
+small in 1892. The Chamber of Deputies was slow to grant
+fresh credits. Politicians as a whole viewed the eloquence<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_250"></a>[250]</span>
+of Eugène Etienne and other exponents of the Ferry school
+with ill-disguised nervousness, if not with positive apprehension,
+fearing that the country was being turned from its
+true business of guarding against possible aggression from
+Germany, and was playing into Bismarck’s hands by rushing
+into Colonial adventures which it was known that Bismarck,
+for his own reasons, was desirous of encouraging. No one
+party or rather group cared to identify itself too closely with
+the expansionists, remembering the whirlwind of popular
+passion which assailed and overwhelmed <i>le Tonkinois</i>. On
+the other hand, it was not wise to entirely dissociate one’s
+self from a movement which was steadily gaining a hold
+over the masses. So Parliament vacillated, and, swayed by
+contrary winds, voted funds one minute and sought to
+withdraw them the next.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Figaro’s</i> supplement was widely criticised. The
+schemes it elaborated were not merely ambitious, they
+were gigantic. “Our policy,” it argued, “is to make one
+homogeneous entity of Algeria, Senegal, and Congo <i>viâ</i> the
+Tuareg-Sahara and the Central and Western Sudan.” The
+timid Deputy shuddered at the prospect. What must have
+been, even to the master-minds who initiated the policy,
+not much more than a fond hope strengthened by an unshaken
+faith in the destiny of the country; what, in the
+eyes of those who opposed it, appeared as a monstrous
+figment of the imagination, is to-day in its main lines a
+reality! How has it been accomplished?</p>
+
+<p>“Our intentions are pure and noble, our cause is just, the
+future cannot fail us,” wrote Faidherbe in 1859, and, on the
+whole, despite errors, despite the effects of temporary reaction
+coming after acute disappointment, despite some
+individual instances of cruelty and oppression, events have
+justified Faidherbe’s confident declaration. The work of
+France in Africa during the last ten years and more has, in
+the main, been a work of progress tending to benefit the
+populations with whom she has come in contact. Notable
+exceptions there have been, of course, especially during the
+years 1897 and 1898, when the scramble for West Africa was<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_251"></a>[251]</span>
+at its height, and under the spell of an insensate rivalry
+deeds were committed by all the parties in the struggle
+which cannot be too strongly condemned. To France’s
+debit account must be placed the ruthless proceedings of
+Bretonnet in Borgu; the needless bloodshed of which Mossi,
+Kipprisi, and Gurunsi were the scenes; the inevitable barbarity
+which characterised Marchand’s hunt for carriers in
+the Upper Ubanghi and Bahr-el-Ghazal. These incidents
+in themselves are odious and reprehensible; but it is only
+fair to recognise that they were the outcome of international
+jealousies the responsibility for which was collective rather
+than single, shared in by other Powers as well as by France
+herself. In what may be regarded as France’s own sphere
+of influence, acts have also been perpetrated from time to
+time which call for censure. The punishment meted out
+to certain towns hostile to the French in the Western Sudan
+have been altogether disproportionate to the offence. In
+the case of the French officers Voulet and Chanoine, an incalculable
+amount of suffering was inflicted upon the unfortunate
+people on the western banks of the Niger. But
+from these isolated transgressions against the principles of
+humanity, culpable as they have been, the records of no
+European Power in Africa are free; and they cannot, in the
+circumstances of France, be held to negative or even weaken
+the advantages she has undoubtedly conferred upon the
+population of the Western and Central Sudan, nor yet
+tarnish the great reputation France has achieved in the emancipation
+of millions from centuries of tyranny and invasion.
+If she has had her Voulets and Chanoines, France can show
+in the persons of her De Brazzas, her Bingers, her Monteils,
+her Crozats, her Foureaus, Noirots, Gentils, Hoursts, and
+Lenfants, performances which the subjects of other Powers
+may have equalled but have not surpassed; always excepting
+Barth, whose moral grandeur towers high above that of
+all his competitors on West African soil.</p>
+
+<p>From the time when the Sieur de Brüe—one of the
+clearest-headed Frenchmen who ever served his country
+in Africa—paid ceremonious visits to the King of Kayor and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_252"></a>[252]</span>
+the “grand Seratik” of the Fulas at the close of the seventeenth
+and at the beginning of the eighteenth century; from
+the time when raiding bands of Trarza Moors, extending
+their depredations to the very confines of St. Louis (1840-60)
+compelled Faidherbe to take the offensive against them, to
+the present day, it has been the lot of France to find herself
+confronted in West Africa with races differentiating in
+every respect from the true Negro of the coast regions—the
+people whom England had, up to 1900, been chiefly concerned
+with. Eight years before, a certain Select Committee
+of the House of Commons, frightened at the responsibilities
+England was assuming in West Africa, pusillanimously recommended
+the abandonment of all our settlements except
+Sierra Leone, thus enunciating a policy the evil effects of
+which continued until 1895 and greatly limited our footing
+in West and Central Africa; France had just emerged successfully
+from a death grapple with one of the most powerful
+individuals that ever sprung from African loins, el Haj-Omar,
+the great Tukulor Mallam and warrior. Looking
+backward at that long vista of years, when France was slowly
+but irresistibly thrusting her influence into West Africa, <i>viâ</i>
+the Senegal and Upper Niger, by pouring out her treasure
+and the blood of her sons like water; while England remained
+supine on the coast heedless of the representations
+of her merchant-pioneers, it was not surprising that,
+awakening almost too late from our lethargy, we should
+have found the French, having triumphed over their
+obstacles in the north, forging southwards and cutting off
+our rich hinterlands in the interior. Writing to the Marquis
+of Dufferin in 1892, Lord Salisbury contrasted the policy of
+Great Britain and France in Western Africa. “France,”
+wrote Lord Salisbury, “from her basis on the Senegal
+Coast, has pursued steadily the aim of establishing herself
+on the Upper Niger and its affluents.... Great Britain, on
+the other hand, has adopted the policy of advance by commercial
+enterprise.” There was, indeed, on the part of
+Liverpool, Manchester, and Bristol merchants, plenty of
+“commercial enterprise,” but it would have been difficult<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_253"></a>[253]</span>
+for Lord Salisbury to have quoted a single instance where
+that “commercial enterprise” had constituted “a policy of
+advance.”</p>
+
+<p>It is due to the type of native inhabiting the chief radius
+of France’s operations in Western Africa, that her task has
+been rendered so dangerous and so difficult, and its fulfilment
+so remarkable. Criticise as we may, and often enough
+unjustly, because ignorantly, the colonising capacities of our
+Gallic neighbours, and the fluctuations of their colonial
+policy, it is beyond question that no nation on earth could
+have achieved what she has achieved in Western Africa,
+without the possession of a doggedness and determination
+for which we do not—to our own injury, be it said—even
+now, give her the credit which she deserves. For centuries
+upon centuries the enormous tract which lies between the
+edge of the Sahara Desert and the fringe of the tropical
+forest belt—consisting for the most part of grassy uplands
+varied by wide plains of amazing fertility, by reason of the
+yearly overflow of the waters of the Niger—had been the
+cockpit of Africa. Empire after empire rose and fell; invasion
+and counter-invasion swept devastatingly over the
+country. The splendours of Jenne and Timbuctoo vanished
+with the sway of the Songhay, beneath the bullets of
+Morocco’s musketeers. Fulani domination arose and gave
+way before Tukulor cruelties. Semi-negro kingdoms came
+into being, declared their independence of this or that conqueror,
+only to be subdued, while their victors had, in turn,
+to bite the dust before some stronger foe. The mingling of
+races in that vast region has no parallel in Africa. Ages
+ago the pastoral Fula—veritable Asiatic—had settled therein
+with his flocks and herds, destined in time by the sheer
+force of superior intellect to become the master where he
+had been either the guest or the despised tenant. Later
+came infiltrations of the Moorish element proper; pastorals
+also these, emigrating from the plateaux of Adrar to the well-watered
+valley of the Niger. Tuaregs, the redskins of the
+Sahara, descendants, as some affect to believe, of those tall,
+fair-haired, long-limbed warriors of Northern Europe who,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_254"></a>[254]</span>
+about 1500 <span class="allsmcap">B.C.</span>, advanced slowly through Gaul and Spain,
+and crossing the Mediterranean in ships, landed on the
+North African Coast, ever pushing southwards, overcoming
+the terrors of the desert and reaching the green pastures
+beyond, but repairing the greater part of the year to the
+desolate Saharan solitudes of which they remain the virtual
+masters, though Foureau and his <i>tirailleurs</i> have for the
+first time in history passed through without paying the toll.
+Arabs too, but again later, and generally speaking farther
+south and east in Kanem, Wadai and Baghirmi, where
+Lamy met his death and Gentil was fighting two years
+and more; Arabs from the north with caravans of merchandise,
+and other Arabs from the east; Shuwas, of whom
+no man knows the history or the origin. They intermarried,
+these tawny, straight-haired nomadic strangers, with the
+aboriginal blacks, or raped their women, as the case might
+be; and from these unions, legitimate or otherwise, through
+long centuries, there sprang into existence fierce cross-races
+and wild, reared in war, nurtured in an atmosphere of turmoil
+and brigandage; negro Fula, negro Moor, negro Arab,
+exaggerating the savage instincts of the parent stock, whom
+they turned and rent when strong enough. One such
+hybrid product became in time the scourge of the Western
+Sudan—the Tukulor, offspring of Negro (Joloff) and Fula,
+unsparing, ruthless, dreaded alike by Fula and Negro, and
+whose atrocities are written in letters of blood from Toro
+(Senegal) to the frontiers of Hausa.</p>
+
+<p>In this medley of races there came in the tenth century
+of our era the first whisperings of a revealed religion. The
+whispering quickly changed to the deep hum of many voices
+proclaiming aloud the word of the Prophet. Islam spread
+with inconceivable rapidity. The Fulani became speedy
+converts, but the arts they employed to win over their pagan
+neighbours were usually peaceful. Not so with the Tukulors
+and the other cross-races. They saw in it naught but a fresh
+incentive to warlike deeds, and soon professed Mohammedans
+were not merely massacring the infidels, but waging
+battle against their more peaceable co-religionists. As<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_255"></a>[255]</span>
+though this were not enough, another fruitful cause of
+bloodshed and disturbance was fated to arise, and still further
+plunge in woe this distracted country. The Portuguese
+adventurers on the coast, in the course of their professed
+desire to save the soul of the Negro, made a discovery, to wit,
+that the muscular development of the Negro eminently fitted
+him for manual labour. From that discovery dates the
+most atrocious traffic the world has ever witnessed. In their
+greed for slaves, the Christians of Western Europe and of
+America—without distinction of nationality, though perhaps
+the Portuguese and English were the worst offenders—set
+tribe against tribe; and the better to stimulate the industry,
+imported wholesale guns and gunpowder, objects which
+they ascertained the Negroes greatly coveted. The blacks
+waged war right merrily upon one another, and their so-called
+prisoners of war filled the slavers’ hulks. Presently
+the tawny races beyond the forest belt joined in the game,
+desiring above all things the acquisition of guns and the
+wherewithal to use them, which meant power and increased
+facilities for plunder. Slave-raiding then assumed almost
+incredible proportions. Internecine warfare received a new
+and terrible impetus. No excuse, whether valid or imaginary,
+was henceforth needed to attack one’s neighbour; and
+where in former days contentment might have been secured
+by a rich booty of cattle and sheep, the requirements of the
+case now necessitated the capture of the human animal himself.
+In such a country, desolated by centuries of strife;
+among such a people, upon whose vices Europe had grafted
+her own; under such circumstances, has lain the destiny of
+France in Western Africa.</p>
+
+<p>A favourite argument used by those who favour a militarist
+policy in Northern Nigeria consists in pointing to the
+action of the French in the Western Sudan. It is held by
+some to be inconsistent to express approval of the military
+trend of French policy in regions adjacent to Northern
+Nigeria, and to disapprove of it in Northern Nigeria itself.
+I do not think that the charge of inconsistency will bear
+examination. In the first place, we should be careful not to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_256"></a>[256]</span>
+generalise. In West Africa proper—that is, in the coastwise
+regions, the home of the true Negroes—the military
+policy has, on the whole, been rarely resorted to by the
+French. In the Western Sudan, although, no doubt, a good
+deal of bloodshed might have been avoided at different
+times, I fail to see myself, bearing in mind the object of
+French policy, how that object could have been obtained
+without military conquest. As far as the purely moral
+aspect of the matter is concerned, the right of any European
+Power to interfere in the internal affairs of West Africa may
+be queried; but if a given region can, in West Africa, be
+pointed to where the results of such interference are of a
+beneficent nature, that region is the Western Sudan. France
+is restoring to the enormous expanse of territory between
+the Niger and the tropical forest belt the prosperity which
+it possessed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries under
+the Songhay, when Jenne was the granary and the store-house
+of the Niger countries. She is laying the basis of a
+prosperity far greater than in those days, because she is able
+to bring peace where the Songhays could not. Having conquered
+the cross-races, she wisely refrains from either
+interfering with their customs, such as domestic slavery,
+upon which the social fabric of West Africa depends, or
+from allowing, save in strictly circumscribed limits, Christian
+propaganda among them, being well aware that such
+propaganda in Mohammedan communities but newly subjugated
+is the certain precursor of trouble, bloodshed, and
+fanaticism. She has hunted down and destroyed the four
+tyrants who successively barred her way to the interior, and
+who had perpetrated untold miseries upon hundreds of
+thousands of human beings—El-Haji-Omar, Amadu, Samory
+and Rabah. Had she been able to acquire the services of
+these men, it would perhaps have been better, but the body
+of evidence is against the possibility of her power to have
+done so. But there is a limit to approval of French military
+action, and if, now that France’s political influence is internationally
+secure in the regions east and north of the Chad,
+she chooses to embark open-eyed in a struggle with the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_257"></a>[257]</span>
+Senussi, she will be making a grave mistake. Unless
+deliberately incited by unprovoked aggression, her game
+there is to sheath the sword and give diplomacy the
+innings, and those Frenchmen who see the danger of
+precipitate, immature action in Wadai and Kanem, and
+are strenuously agitating against it, are wise in their
+generation.<a id="FNanchor_203" href="#Footnote_203" class="fnanchor">[203]</a></p>
+
+<p>But, taken all in all, the circumstances in which England
+finds herself in Northern Nigeria, and the circumstances in
+which France found herself in relation to the Western Sudan
+before the conquest, are widely different. The aims pursued
+by France in the Western Sudan, and by the English in
+Nigeria, were not in their inception the same. The regions
+coveted by France were for the most part widely removed—at
+immense distances indeed—from her basis on the coast
+and her basis on the Senegal River. To make her claims
+to those regions <i>internationally</i> valid, it was requisite
+that France should wield some tangible influence over
+them, and in many cases that was impossible without
+conquest.</p>
+
+<p>But the British in Northern Nigeria were very differently
+placed. Northern Nigeria was the prolongation, so to speak,
+of the British base in “the Rivers.” It lay immediately at
+the back of them. The possession of the Niger’s mouth
+facilitated the extension of British influence up the River
+and its affluent the Binue. Moreover, British merchants
+and explorers had ascended both the Niger and the Binue
+many years before; they had paved the way for what was to
+follow; and for fifteen years before the advent of direct
+Imperial control in Northern Nigeria, its native potentates
+had been united in close ties of political relationship with a
+British Chartered Company. The Government stepped into
+the shoes of the Chartered Company, not to play the <i>rôle</i> of
+<i>conquisitador</i> and initiator, but to reap crops sown for it;
+to consolidate work already half accomplished. It should,
+in parenthesis, be stated that France manages the Western<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_258"></a>[258]</span>
+Sudan, a territory very much larger than Northern Nigeria,
+and where a state of continuous internecine warfare had
+existed for centuries, with an army not more than 3000
+strong. Again, if warfare has attended the establishment of
+French influence in the Shari region, it has been due to
+special circumstances. Thus Gentil acquired a Protectorate
+over Baghirmi without firing a shot. It was only when the
+country which France had placed under her protection was
+invaded and laid waste by Rabah that military action became
+a duty.</p>
+
+<p>No comparison is really possible between the respective
+parts of Great Britain and France. Both are distinct, and
+must be judged according to their antecedents and special
+features.</p>
+
+<p>In Northern Nigeria<a id="FNanchor_204" href="#Footnote_204" class="fnanchor">[204]</a> we have to do with native rulers
+with whom we have been in treaty relationship for fifteen
+years, and in commercial relationship for longer still. They
+are our wards, we are in a fiduciary capacity towards them;
+they are our <i>protégés</i>. We undertook by treaty to subsidise
+them; we pledged ourselves by treaty “not to interfere with
+the customs” of their people. It should be our object,
+following the precepts of Sir Andrew Clarke, to make those
+rulers “far bigger” men than they are, not to break them.
+They come of a proud race, a capable race, of superior
+mental calibre, possessed of statesmanship and skill. They
+have played a great part in the history of Western Africa.
+Barth, who knew them well, has said of them that “they
+are the most intelligent people in Africa.” To reduce them
+to impotence; to scatter their power; to break the organisation
+they have created into small pieces would be politically
+foolish, practically unwise, morally unjust, Imperially disastrous.
+To strengthen their rule where weak; to perfect it
+where oppressive; to assist them, work with them, and
+through them along their natural lines; to interfere as little
+as possible with the customs and habits of themselves and
+their people; to respect their religious beliefs; to work<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_259"></a>[259]</span>
+gradually, peacefully, tactfully, for the attainment of the
+only conceivable objects which have taken us to their
+country—commercial development, advancement, prosperity—those
+should be the political principles guiding us in
+Northern Nigeria.</p>
+
+<p>The accomplishment of the colossal plan sketched out
+by the <i>Figaro</i> in 1892, viz. the unification (if the word be
+permissible) of the French possessions in Africa by expeditions
+from north, west, and south, designed to meet on the
+shores of Lake Chad, may now be briefly given. It is a
+stirring tale. The first attempt—if we exclude that of
+Flatters from the north, of which the purpose was limited—was
+made from the south, by the blue-eyed, fair-haired
+enthusiast, Paul Crampbel. He fell assassinated by Rabah’s
+emissaries at El Kuti on April 15, 1891. Dybowski and
+Maistre, sent out by the French African Committee in
+Crampbel’s footsteps, had to retire without doing much more
+than useful exploring work. Then came Gentil’s turn, a
+modest naval lieutenant who, profiting by Rabah’s complications
+in Bornu, succeeded after incredible difficulties in
+reaching the mouth of the Shari (after signing a treaty of
+Protectorate with Baghirmi) and floating a small steamer
+upon the waters of the mysterious lake. But the success
+was short-lived. Rabah recrossed the Shari, forced the
+French to retire, and once again swept Baghirmi with fire
+and sword. France hurried fresh reinforcements to the
+spot, and these under Bretonnet were attacked by Rabah
+and decimated. A further and more vigorous effort was
+required.</p>
+
+<p>And here the scene shifts to the north. In October
+1898 that intrepid explorer, Foureau, left the oasis of
+Sadrata, near Wargla, in Algeria, at the head of a force of
+picked men, 310 strong, consisting of troopers from the
+Senegalese and Saharan <i>tirailleurs</i>, than whom there are probably
+no more splendid fighters in the world, unless it be
+our own Sikhs. Foureau was accompanied by three civilian
+friends. Commandant Lamy led the military portion of the
+expedition, which comprised four other officers besides<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_260"></a>[260]</span>
+himself. The object of the expedition was to cross the
+Algerian Sahara and reach the Chad, while Gentil and
+Bretonnet gained a firm foothold on its shores by working
+upwards from the Congo and Ubanghi. Foureau and his
+companions plunged into the unknown desert, and for ten
+months entirely disappeared from view. Frequent rumours
+of a wholesale massacre reached Europe, and remembering
+the fate of Douls, De Palot, Dournaux-Dupérré, and Joubert,
+Flatters and Bonnier, at the hands of the fierce nomads
+who roam the desolate wastes through which Foureau had
+to pass, France held her breath. If Foureau fell, it would
+not only be a frightful disaster, fraught with peril to French
+policy throughout her vast Mohammedan zone in Africa;
+it might also mean a revulsion of popular feeling, a hanging
+up of cherished schemes for a generation or more. But
+Foureau did not fall or fail. He reached the Asben oases
+in safety, and demonstrated to timid minds that the
+Tuaregs, when confronted by a well-armed and disciplined
+force, skilfully led and sufficiently numerous to inspire
+respect, prefer, in the main, to hold themselves at a
+distance.<a id="FNanchor_205" href="#Footnote_205" class="fnanchor">[205]</a></p>
+
+<p>Again the scene changes. The plan was half-performed.
+The third advance came from the west by the way of the
+Niger Bend. It was at first attended by the direst results.
+The gallant Cazemajou met a cruel and treacherous death at
+Zinder. Voulet and Chanoine, who succeeded him, showed
+what evil unlimited authority and the disordering effects of
+the African climate can work upon ill-regulated minds.
+Denounced by one of their subordinates for barbarous
+conduct towards the natives, they, having already forgotten
+the ordinary dictates of humanity, forgot alike honour and
+patriotism, foully murdered the superior officer who had
+been instructed to replace them, tore off their uniforms,
+declared themselves renegades, and perpetrated the wildest
+excesses. But their shrift was short, and they soon met<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_261"></a>[261]</span>
+their fate from the rifles of the native soldiers they had
+temporarily led astray.</p>
+
+<p>The French Government, however, did not relinquish its
+determination. The fragments of the Voulet-Chanoine
+mission were got together, and under the joint leadership of
+Captain Joalland and Lieutenant Meynier reached the Chad,
+subsequently joining Gentil’s forces in the Lower Shari. By
+this time Foureau had also gained the Chad. The three
+missions, which after so many vicissitudes thus met together
+in their common goal, were immediately called upon to face
+a new and most formidable danger. Against the town of
+Kusri or Kusseri, where the French had established their
+headquarters, Rabah was marching at the head of 5000 men,
+of whom 2000 were armed with guns of various patterns.
+He had also three fieldpieces, captured from Bretonnet.
+The French disposed of a total strength of 774 officers and
+men—the latter natives without exception—with four fieldpieces.
+They were assisted by 1500 Baghirmi auxiliaries,
+who do not appear to have been of much use, contenting
+themselves with looting after the battle was over. Rabah
+pitched his war camp three miles from Kusri, and awaited
+the onslaught of the French. It proved to be irresistible.
+Rabah himself perished. His losses amounted to 1000 killed
+and wounded, and his camp, with the whole of its contents,
+fell into the hands of the French. The French losses were
+severe. They included the brave Lamy, Captain Cointet, a
+white non-commissioned officer and seventeen men killed.
+Their wounded amounted to sixty, among them Captain
+Lamothe and Lieutenants Meynier and Galland. But the
+victory was complete, and Rabah, the noise of whose conquests
+had filled Central Africa for close upon a quarter of a
+century; whose destructive strides had left a bloody track
+from the Bahr-el-Ghazal to the Chad; Rabah, the last of the
+great <i>conquisitadores</i>, had gone the way of El-Haji-Omar, and
+of Samory. The plan elaborated by the <i>Figaro</i> eight years
+previously was an accomplished fact.</p>
+
+<p>Since Rabah’s overthrow the French have been engaged
+in systematically consolidating their hold upon the Central<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_262"></a>[262]</span>
+Sudan and the lower Shari. M. Terrier, the able Secrétaire-Général
+of the French African Committee, explains in the
+Committee’s Bulletin for April 1901 the procedure which is
+being adopted. One cannot but be impressed with the
+grasp, the sagacity, and the statesmanship displayed. The
+Shari region has been divided into two districts, the most
+northerly of which abuts on Lake Chad, and includes Baghirmi
+and the Shari mouths. It is administered on military
+lines. The southern district, comprising the upper reaches
+of the river and its affluents, is administered on civil lines.
+The population of the southern district is composed of
+Negroes, whose religion is fetishism, or what it pleases us to
+call fetishism. The northern district is inhabited by various
+branches of the Negroid Baghirmis; by the Kotokos; by the
+Shuwa Arabs, and by a few pastoral Fulani. The pagans
+of the southern district have for centuries been subjected to
+the raids of the Arabised-Negroes of Bornu and Baghirmi.
+It was from among them that the principal supplies of
+slaves which used to find their way across the desert route
+to Tripoli before the Firman of 1865 were drawn. France,
+by ridding them of their external foes, claims the right to
+make them share in her administrative expenses. She is all
+the more justified in doing so, as for many years to come,
+and until the Shari is connected with the Ubanghi by a
+railway, there will be no trade upon which to levy duties in
+order to obtain revenue. One-half of the population is
+expected to furnish carriers, and the other half pays an
+annual tax of four pounds of rubber per hut, of which two
+pounds is returned to the chiefs as commission. We are
+assured—on the authority of M. Terrier—that the chiefs are
+bringing in the tax voluntarily from long distances. In the
+northern district, which was directly under Rabah’s influence,
+the French found an existing organisation which they have
+in the main retained, but the tax levied by the Emir of
+Baghirmi upon his subjects being considered too heavy, the
+French have reduced it by two-thirds, thus relieving the
+population from an undue burden of taxation. The Emir
+and his chiefs—through whom French influence is exercised—benefit<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_263"></a>[263]</span>
+by this reduced tax; that is to say, they keep it for
+themselves. Contributions of slaves to the Emir and chiefs
+in the form of tribute by the sub-chiefs are, of course, suppressed.
+The revenue of the Emir being thus limited, but
+nevertheless assured to him, together with the continuation
+of his prestige, the Emir himself, who owes his throne to the
+French, and has, moreover, been relieved by them of the
+necessity of paying an annual tribute to Wadai, is expected
+to furnish annually to the Administration 240 pounds of
+millet, 500 cloths, and 100 oxen, amounting roughly to
+£1680.</p>
+
+<p>Here, then, as in the Western Sudan, the words of Faidherbe
+ring sound; and M. Etienne, speaking at a Conference
+held the other day at the Paris Colonial School, was
+only saying what has hitherto been true when he asserted
+that:</p>
+
+<p>“France can in all sincerity maintain that she has delivered
+the peoples of inland Africa from an intolerable yoke.
+She has liberated millions of human beings from sanguinary
+tyrants who had reduced them to slavery. She has accomplished
+a work of emancipation, of liberty, and of generosity.”
+It would be sad indeed if, led astray by evil
+counsels, France should be induced in another portion of
+her West African domain, viz. French Congo, to tarnish the
+great reputation she has undoubtedly built up.</p>
+
+<p>It may be doubted whether the problems with which
+France has had to contend in West Africa have ever been
+rightly understood among us, for Englishmen are usually
+generous-minded enough to appreciate good work carried
+out by others, even though the others are sometimes rivals.
+Certain is it that of the nature of French exploits in West
+and Central Africa the average Englishman is hopelessly
+ignorant, and even English writers of repute persist in
+shutting their eyes to the great, the almost revolutionary
+changes which experience, dearly bought, has wrought in
+French Colonial conceptions. We have failed as a nation
+in doing justice to the actions of the French in Africa. We
+have underrated their capacity and refused to admit the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_264"></a>[264]</span>
+existence at their council boards of a central plan carefully
+matured which the frequent shuffling of Ministerial portfolios
+merely retarded but did not alter. At the present
+moment we apparently will not realise that France is
+applying to the economic development of her vast territories
+the same strenuousness of purpose with which she steadily
+pursued her work of conquest and absorption.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_265"></a>[265]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVI">CHAPTER XXVI<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE COMMERCIAL AND FINANCIAL CONDITION OF THE FRENCH POSSESSIONS</span></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The logic of facts is gradually bringing home to Englishmen
+that the French have within recent years revolutionised the
+commercial position of their West African possessions; of
+those possessions, that is, which are at present commercially
+exploitable. But a singular amount of ignorance continues
+to prevail on the subject, and in non-specialist circles the
+French possessions are still in a sorry condition both commercially
+and financially. So far is that deep-rooted idea
+from the truth, that not only are the French doing exceedingly
+well commercially in West Africa; but they are doing
+comparatively better than we are. Moreover, their possessions
+are actually costing less to manage, and economy
+in administration is not secured at the expense of
+requisite public works; quite the contrary. The days
+when Englishmen could represent the ideals of French
+Colonial management in West Africa in the light of a
+custom-house official and a soldier; an expenditure
+overlapping revenue; constant grants from the mother
+country; an embryonic trade and a growing budgetary
+deficit, have passed and gone. In some respects the French
+are turning the tables upon us. Even so distinguished an
+authority as Sir Harry Johnston falls into the popular
+error when he says that “with the exception of Tunis, there
+is not a single French possession in Africa which is self-supporting
+or other than a drain upon the French exchequer.”
+It is a complete fallacy, and it can be proved so<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_266"></a>[266]</span>
+up to the hilt. Here and there, it is true, the old, bad,
+paralytic red-tape conception remains, but on the whole the
+French possessions north of the Bights are progressing with
+an astonishing rapidity; able to construct important public
+works out of their own surplus revenues, and to enter into
+railway contracts on guaranteed loans of their own raising.
+Miss Kingsley, in her “West African Studies,” suggested that,
+granting the possibility of France becoming “commercially
+intelligent,” she might “pocket the West African trade
+down to Lagos from Senegal,” and there can be no doubt
+that if British policy in West Africa continues to be carried
+out on the present lines, and if French policy in West Africa
+can escape the contamination of the concessionnaire <i>régime</i>
+applied with such deplorable results in French Congo,
+France can and will do an enormous amount of commercial
+damage to our possessions in West Africa, and on a fair
+field, in legitimate competition. Senegal, French Guinea,
+the Ivory Coast and Dahomey are all self-supporting,
+and the growth of trade in these possessions is in all
+conscience eloquent enough, as the following figures
+show:</p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th><span class="smcap">Senegal</span></th>
+    <th><span class="smcap pad">Guinea</span></th>
+    <th><span class="smcap">Ivory Coast</span></th>
+    <th><span class="smcap">Dahomey</span></th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1889</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£1,520,000</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">£320,000</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">£160,000</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£360,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2,920,000</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">1,000,000</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">520,000</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3,189,400</td>
+    <td class="tdr">973,000<a id="FNanchor_206" href="#Footnote_206" class="fnanchor">[206]</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr">686,300</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,101,084</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="noindent">None of our Colonies can show such a rate of progress as
+their young (Senegal excepted) Gallic competitors. The
+increase is really phenomenal. In the French Colonies
+mentioned the expenditure is well within the revenue. In
+French Guinea conspicuously so. Would that we could
+say the same of our possessions! In all these Colonies
+the French are spending less than we are in the work of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_267"></a>[267]</span>
+administration. In some of them they are nevertheless
+spending more in public works, and before long their expenditure
+in that respect will in the aggregate far exceed
+ours. It will suffice to give one or two instances in support
+of these general statements.</p>
+
+<p>The position of Dahomey is particularly interesting,
+because it adjoins Lagos, because Lagos is one of the transit
+ports for Dahomey, because both Colonies are building a
+railway in the same direction, and because both Colonies
+aim at capturing the bulk of the interior trade. Compared
+with Lagos, Dahomey is, of course, only an infant in
+years, but an infant of sturdy growth. Its trade has
+jumped from nineteen million francs in 1893 to twenty-seven
+million francs in 1900. The growth in its export
+trade is very noticeable. In 1893 it amounted to
+£347,258 (8,681,463 francs), and in 1900 had grown to
+£502,350. In 1893 the export trade of Lagos was
+£836,295; in 1900 it was £885,111. True, Lagos saw better
+days in 1896 and 1899 (£975,203 and £915,934 respectively),<a id="FNanchor_207" href="#Footnote_207" class="fnanchor">[207]</a>
+but the ratio of increase has not been equal to
+that of Dahomey. In 1894, on an export trade of £821,682,
+the expenditure of Lagos amounted to £124,819; in 1900,
+on an export trade of £885,111 the expenditure was
+£187,124, including £37,214 for public works and £18,169
+on account of public debt. In 1900, on an export trade of
+£502,350 Dahomey spent £119,664, of which £29,000 in
+public works, and in 1901 contributed £60,000 from its own
+local revenue for the railway.<a id="FNanchor_208" href="#Footnote_208" class="fnanchor">[208]</a> In 1900 Dahomey spent
+£8000<a id="FNanchor_209" href="#Footnote_209" class="fnanchor">[209]</a> in military and police; Lagos spent £39,095.<a id="FNanchor_210" href="#Footnote_210" class="fnanchor">[210]</a>
+For some unexplained reason Dahomey does not export
+timber, but her exports of palm-oil and palm-kernels are
+increasing yearly. Dahomey is now actually exporting<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_268"></a>[268]</span>
+very nearly as much palm-oil as Lagos.<a id="FNanchor_211" href="#Footnote_211" class="fnanchor">[211]</a> In palm-kernels
+Dahomey has not yet reached the level of Lagos,
+but is forging ahead, having exported 24,211,614 kilos,
+or roughly 24,000 tons, in 1901, against 21,986,043
+kilos in 1900, and 21,850,982 kilos in 1899. Lagos
+shipped in 1900-1901 over 47,000 tons of kernels. Some
+years ago the French, annoyed at being dependent upon
+Lagos as the only port of transit for the trade of their
+Colony (Lagos is connected with Porto Novo, the capital
+of Dahomey, by a lagoon, and the facilities of the Lagos
+route were, and still are, for certain classes of goods very
+much greater owing to the bar service), constructed at
+Kotonu one of the few wharves which exist on the West
+African coast-line. This wharf, aided by the duty imposed
+on the Dahomey transit trade <i>viâ</i> Lagos by the Lagos
+authorities, has succeeded in its object, and the bulk of
+Dahomey’s trade now passes through Kotonu instead of <i>viâ</i>
+Lagos. In this way has Lagos, for temporary revenue
+purposes, played into the hands of her competitors. The
+Colony is also building a railway<a id="FNanchor_212" href="#Footnote_212" class="fnanchor">[212]</a> which is likely to prove a
+most important undertaking. The fiscal policy adopted
+by France in Dahomey since the 1898 agreement, abolishing
+the differential tariff for thirty years, has been well calculated
+to bring about the conspicuous advancement observable,
+and unless the railway concessionnaire, under his agreement
+with the local government,<a id="FNanchor_213" href="#Footnote_213" class="fnanchor">[213]</a> is allowed to interfere in the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_269"></a>[269]</span>
+territories ceded to him with the freedom of trade, and with
+native rights of land tenure, the wisdom of Dahomey’s fiscal
+policy will continue to bear fruit. Most people will be
+astonished to learn that Dahomey taxes her trade, in the
+main, at a lower rate than Lagos, and it is unquestionable
+that the circumstance acts in the former’s favour and to the
+latter’s detriment. There is so much misconception about
+on subjects of this kind, which nevertheless have so direct
+a bearing upon the prosperity and commercial position of
+our West African possessions and of their rivals, that it has
+been thought advisable to give in the <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a> as complete
+a comparative table as possible of the duties in both
+Colonies.<a id="FNanchor_214" href="#Footnote_214" class="fnanchor">[214]</a> To that list the reader may be referred. On all
+articles but cottons Dahomey charges lower duty than
+Lagos. If Dahomey can manage her affairs, and get a
+surplus revenue to boot by charging 2<i>d.</i> a pound on
+tobacco and gunpowder, and 11<i>s.</i> 4<i>d.</i> and 4<i>s.</i> 10<i>d.</i> respectively
+on rock salt and sea salt, why in the world cannot
+Lagos do the same, instead of charging 8<i>d.</i> and 4<i>d.</i> a pound
+on tobacco, 6<i>d.</i> a pound on gunpowder, and 20<i>s.</i> on both
+classes of salt? The answer is, because the Crown Colony
+system is infinitely more costly than the French system of
+administration.</p>
+
+<p>France’s oldest Colony in West Africa, Senegal, despite
+the periodic ravages of yellow fever, against which it is to
+be hoped science will now be in a better position to struggle
+with success, is in a very healthy condition commercially
+and financially, although rather too dependent upon a
+single industry, viz. ground-nut production.<a id="FNanchor_215" href="#Footnote_215" class="fnanchor">[215]</a> Its export<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_270"></a>[270]</span>
+trade has increased from £517,934 in 1891 to £1,000,000 in
+1900; but its expenditure, instead of increasing in similar or
+greater proportion, as is generally the case with British
+Possessions; has remained practically stationary, at about
+£150,000; while surplus revenues have enabled her to agree
+to pay a yearly subsidy of £36,000 for a period of twenty-two
+years to the Western Sudan (Kayes-Niger) railway, from
+the completion of which she is sure to largely benefit. In
+the construction of public works Senegal is easily ahead of
+any European possession of West Africa. A railway 250
+kilometres long connects St. Louis, the capital, with Dakar,
+the principal seaport, and the best on the coast. St. Louis,
+Dakar and Rufisque have all been provided with fresh
+water. The Faidherbe bridge is a great engineering triumph,
+and the wharves at Rufisque and Dakar are well organised.
+Surveys for another railway through the Salum district, with
+prolongation to Kayes, are being undertaken, and there is a
+project on foot for improving navigation on the Senegal
+River. Senegal seems destined to have a brilliant future.</p>
+
+<p>The Ivory Coast has come very much to the fore of late
+as a possible goldfield, to rival if not to surpass the Gold
+Coast. <i>Le Transvaal français</i> is the title already given to it
+by enthusiasts. Prospecting work is being undertaken, and
+hundreds of permits have been granted. A good deal of
+secrecy is being observed in connection with the matter,
+and a wise check appears to have been kept upon the flotation
+of bogus companies. There seems to be good ground
+for believing that auriferous deposits exist in considerable
+quantities, and recent explorations have revealed the existence
+of many old native workings, and even of a mine actually
+being exploited by the natives, that of Kokombo in the Baoule
+district. Experts think that the Ivory Coast will prove
+particularly rich in dredging propositions. The Baoule,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_271"></a>[271]</span>
+Indenie, Attie and Jaman countries are reported to be the
+four districts in the Colony which will repay the gold-seekers.
+Commandant Binger, who has travelled all over
+the country, is a great believer in its gold-bearing capacity,
+and in Dr. Freeman’s opinion, South-West Jaman is the gold
+country <i>par excellence</i> of the entire region; richer than
+Ashanti and other portions of the British Protectorate.<a id="FNanchor_216" href="#Footnote_216" class="fnanchor">[216]</a> At
+the Paris Exhibition of 1900 many samples of auriferous
+quartz from the Ivory Coast were exhibited, from Kuadikofi,
+Nangu-Kru, Alepe and Adokoi, and also some specimens of
+native gold workmanship from Baoule and Jaman which
+point to a high degree of artistic talent on the part of the
+workmen. Gold dust has been exported from the Ivory
+Coast for many years, of an average annual value between
+1890 and 1897 of £25,000. At present the trade of the
+Ivory Coast, which is steadily increasing, is chiefly remarkable
+for its timber export. The ports of Grand Bassam,
+Lahou and Assinie are among the most important timber-shipping
+centres on the coast. In 1892 the Ivory Coast
+exported mahogany to the value of £23,000; in 1900, to the
+value of £44,000. Nearly all the mahogany comes to Liverpool,
+which imported in 1899 from the Ivory Coast 4714
+logs measuring 2,727,349 cubic feet, and in 1900, 5748 logs
+measuring 3,697,416 cubic feet. In the old days the Ivory
+Coast, the “Elfenbein Küste” of the Germans, was celebrated
+for the article its name implies.</p>
+
+<p>Writing in 1730, Barbot says that “the inland country
+affords yearly a vast quantity of fine large elephants’ teeth,
+being the best ivory in the world, most of which is constantly
+bought up along this coast by the English, Dutch, and
+French, and sometimes by the Danes and Portuguese.” In
+quaint language, he goes on to tell us how important the
+ivory trade of the Ivory Coast was in those days, and how<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_272"></a>[272]</span>
+the natives profited thereby. “This great concourse of
+European ships,” he writes, “coming hither every year, and
+sometimes three or four lying together at anchor in the road,
+has encouraged the blacks to set so dear a rate on their
+teeth (<i>sic</i>), and particularly on the larger sort, some of them
+weighing two hundred pounds French, that there is not
+much to be got by them, considering the vast charges that
+commonly attend such a remote trade.” Barbot describes
+his own trading operations on the Ivory Coast, and speaks
+of having “six large canoes about the ship full of fine
+elephants’ teeth, each canoe manned by five or six hands
+at least—and all lusty, resolute men.” Quoting some
+Hollanders, the same author writes that “it is scarce to be
+conceived what a multitude of elephants there is about this
+country.” It is quite clear that in those days ivory was
+practically the only product exchanged by the natives
+against the iron bars and rings, beads, kettles, cotton, brandy,
+and other articles brought by European traders in their sailing
+vessels. Now the ivory trade has practically disappeared,
+owing, no doubt, to the extermination of the elephants in the
+coastal regions. What small quantity does come down for
+shipment appears to be brought by caravans from the
+Western Sudan. This disappearance of a trade which was
+flourishing enough at one time to become the synonym of
+an extensive portion of the West African coast-line, is one
+of those curious facts of which West Africa affords us so
+many examples. It seems to me that we have one of the
+most striking proofs of the highly developed commercial
+instinct of the West African native, in the circumstance that
+no sooner has one branch of trade fallen off than he replaces
+it by another. No doubt the initiative is not his own,
+but the motive power is, and the very adaptability which he
+displays in meeting the new demands of commerce affords
+the clearest indication of the progressiveness of his race.
+Thus in the Ivory Coast; the ivory trade has gone, and has
+been replaced by the oil, kernel, and rubber trade; and, of
+quite recent years, by the mahogany trade.</p>
+
+<p>So far, the Ivory Coast is the most backward of the French<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_273"></a>[273]</span>
+West African possessions in the shape of public works,
+although there is a wharf at Grand Bassam; but a very big
+scheme is in contemplation including the construction of a
+harbour and railway, the piercing of the sandbank at little
+Bassam opposite to the well-known “bottomless pit” so
+dreaded by mariners, and the dredging of the Bingerville
+lagoon. The future of the Ivory Coast would appear to be
+in good hands, so far as a very efficient staff of administrators
+is a guarantee;
+M. Clozel and
+M. Maurice Delafosse
+in particular
+having distinguished
+themselves
+of late in
+studying the aboriginal
+tribes, and
+in laying the basis
+of an intelligent
+native policy
+which, if pursued,
+will make of that
+possession a
+second French
+Guinea. Just now,
+however, the military
+element appears
+to have the
+upper hand, and
+there has been a regrettable collision between the French
+authorities and the powerful Baoules, which has undone the
+work of years of pacific endeavour, and which might, in the
+opinion of those Frenchmen who know the country best,
+have been avoided. Archæological discoveries of profound
+interest have been made in the Baoule country, pointing to
+former intercourse with a more advanced people, whom
+M. Delafosse thinks must have been the Egyptians.<a id="FNanchor_217" href="#Footnote_217" class="fnanchor">[217]</a></p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp56" id="map3" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/map3.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>MAP SHOWING THE LOCALITY AND NATURE OF HARBOUR
+IMPROVEMENT SCHEME IN THE IVORY COAST</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_274"></a>[274]</span></p>
+
+<p>French Guinea can serve as a model of what a common-sense,
+commercial, sympathetic administration is able to
+achieve in West Africa; and the late Dr. Ballay, its founder
+and for more than a decade its governor, will rank as the
+best type of Colonial Administrator, a worthy emulator of
+his countryman, le Sieur de Brüe, and of our own Sir John
+Glover. The strides which French Guinea has made since
+its birth in 1889 are really phenomenal. In 1890, Konakry,
+the capital, was non-existent. To-day it numbers 10,000 inhabitants,
+of whom some 300 are Europeans. The trade of
+French Guinea, which in 1890 only amounted to £300,000,
+reached in 1899 and 1900 about £1,000,000. It is one
+of the most cheaply and yet most effectively administered
+possessions on the coast. Its revenue is buoyant, owing
+largely to the successful collection of a poll-tax, and
+although a railway to Kurussa, on the Niger, is in
+course of construction, the expenditure is well beneath
+the revenue. A magnificent carriage-road 137 kilometres
+in length has been built from Konakry to the
+foot of the Futa-Jallon plateau. Its import duties are, with
+the exception of one or two articles, lower than in that of
+its moribund neighbour, Sierra Leone. On the other hand,
+there is an export duty of 7 per cent. on rubber and gum
+copal. Its condition as compared with that of Sierra Leone
+can best be set forth in tabular form:</p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th colspan="2"><span class="smcap">French Guinea in 1900</span></th>
+    <th colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Sierra Leone in 1900</span></th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Total trade</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£962,209</td>
+    <td>Total trade</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£921,017</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Export trade</td>
+    <td class="tdr">391,191</td>
+    <td>Export trade</td>
+    <td class="tdr">362,741</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Expenditure</td>
+    <td class="tdr">116,699</td>
+    <td>Expenditure</td>
+    <td class="tdr">156,421</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <th colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Expenditure analysed</span></th>
+    <th colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Expenditure analysed</span></th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Public works and railway</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£57,478</td>
+    <td>Public works and railway</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£36,084</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Other expenditure</td>
+    <td class="tdr">59,221</td>
+    <td>Other expenditure</td>
+    <td class="tdr">120,337</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>It remains to be said that last year (1901) the export trade<a id="FNanchor_218" href="#Footnote_218" class="fnanchor">[218]</a><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_275"></a>[275]</span>
+of Sierra Leone fell from £362,741 in 1900 to £304,010,
+reckoning specie, and from £317,980 to £265,433, excluding
+specie, the latter figure being the lowest for twenty-one
+years. At the same time the expenditure increased from
+£156,421 to £173,457, only £91,976 less than the purchasing
+power of the Colony.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_276"></a>[276]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVII">CHAPTER XXVII<br>
+<span class="smaller">FRENCH AND BRITISH MANAGEMENT IN WEST AFRICA</span></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Apart from the belief, which has been dealt with in the
+previous chapter, that France cannot manage her West
+African possessions successfully, another idea appears to be
+widely entertained. It is said that French methods of rule
+in West Africa are excessively harsh. I cannot find any
+evidence to support this view. The records of all the
+Powers who have possessions in West Africa are tarnished
+by acts of oppression and injustice to the native, but I have
+seen no proof that in this respect France compares unfavourably
+with either England, Germany, or Portugal. On the
+whole, France’s record is perhaps cleaner than that of
+most other Powers. North of the Bights, the portion of
+West Africa which has engaged our attention hitherto, I
+should say the balance of evidence is decidedly to France’s
+credit. That is the opinion of Sir Charles Dilke; it was the
+opinion of the late Miss Kingsley, and one or two other
+competent authorities. Speaking in September of last year
+at a meeting of the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, an
+African of the Africans, and a distinguished scholar,
+Dr. Blyden, who has had exceptional facilities for judging,
+and who, withal, holds an official position under the Sierra
+Leone Government, made a striking reference to the
+subject.</p>
+
+<p>“France,” said Dr. Blyden, “has a peculiar work to do
+for Africa—a work much needed and suited to the genius
+of the Celtic race.... The contribution of the French to
+the civilisation of Africa evidently springs not only from
+what they have in common with all mankind, but from<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_277"></a>[277]</span>
+what is special to themselves. France is France. England
+is England. France can do for Africa what England cannot
+do, and England can do for Africa what France cannot
+do. This all thinking Africans recognise, and all gladly
+co-operate with each nation according to the measure in
+which their systems agree with native ideas and customs
+and traditions. And there seems to be more of conformity
+in the French methods than in the more rigid and unimaginative
+system of the Anglo-Saxon. Whatever there is
+among the natives of original, racy, or romantic interest is
+not perishing under French administration.”</p>
+
+<p>That is a true saying, and it goes far towards explaining
+the political success of the French in West Africa.</p>
+
+<p>It is surely a circumstance which should impress us that
+the French have been able to successfully apply direct
+taxation in their possessions without bloodshed or disturbance,
+while in Sierra Leone we have failed so disastrously.
+As direct taxation in West Africa is a problem fraught with
+great danger, one needing the utmost care and discrimination,
+it seems worth while to give more than passing notice
+to what has already been done by the French and ourselves
+in the matter. A poll-tax was applied in French Guinea
+in 1897. In 1900 it yielded £90,000, and I am informed
+on good authority that the returns for 1901 will reach
+£140,000, and will still further increase, as the taxable radius
+has not yet been reached. It has been peacefully collected.
+Was this the result of overwhelming military strength? Not
+at all, for although French Guinea is now about three times
+the size of Sierra Leone, the military, or rather the police,
+force of the French Protectorate is just a little over half
+what it is in Sierra Leone. The “show of force” theory
+has, therefore, been conspicuous by its absence. It has
+been replaced by a plentiful supply of imagination, plus
+the appreciation of certain scientific facts. What, in the
+first place, are the scientific facts? The tax in French Guinea
+is a poll-tax, the tax in Sierra Leone is a property-tax. In
+the one case there was no interference with native land
+tenure; in the other there was indirect interference with<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_278"></a>[278]</span>
+native land tenure. Mr. Chamberlain<a id="FNanchor_219" href="#Footnote_219" class="fnanchor">[219]</a> himself was “disposed
+to think that the natives saw in the tax an attempt to
+interfere with their property.” Yet Mr. Chamberlain has
+maintained the tax. Farther on Mr. Chamberlain says,
+“that the aversion of the natives to the payment of the tax
+is not insuperable may be inferred from the fact that a
+similar tax is levied without difficulty from similar races by
+the French in the neighbouring territory.” There Mr.
+Chamberlain showed that he was not properly informed.
+The tax was not a “similar” tax, and the “races” in
+French territory are not “similar” but dissimilar. What
+ethnic similarity is there, for instance, between the Fulani,
+the ruling race in a large portion of French Guinea, and
+the Mendi, Timini, Konnos and Sulimas of Sierra Leone?
+Such confusion is extraordinary. The peoples of French
+Guinea are either Mohammedan, or for the most part
+inured to direct taxation for many centuries past by
+Mohammedan conquest.<a id="FNanchor_220" href="#Footnote_220" class="fnanchor">[220]</a> The peoples of Sierra Leone were
+independent races, who have beaten back every attempt at
+Mohammedan conquest, and among whom a regularly
+recurring impost is unknown, and contrary to all native
+ideas. An almost identical argument has been made use of
+in regard to the Gambia. We collect a hut-tax in the
+Gambia; why not in Sierra Leone? For the same reason
+that what may be sound in one place is not sound in
+another. You cannot lump West Africa together and
+evolve identical legislation for the whole! The passion for
+assimilation is fatal to good government in West Africa.
+The peoples of the Gambia are, again, either Mohammedan
+or have undergone conquest by Mohammedans. The case
+of the Gambia, moreover, is in another sense quite different
+from Sierra Leone. Sierra Leone is covered with dense
+forests. Gambia is a small strip of territory on either bank
+of a river. The villages along its shores can be raked by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_279"></a>[279]</span>
+gun-boats. Every part is easily accessible, and on the other
+side of the border the French are in occupation. What
+chance is there of resisting Government demands, even
+though the tax were bitterly opposed, which is not the case
+for the reasons already given; although the Gambia natives
+are probably no more in love with it than we are with our
+income-tax? Direct taxation is ever unpopular; among
+primitive peoples particularly so. Finally, the natives of
+French Guinea are much richer than those of Sierra Leone.
+So much for the scientific facts. Is it not about time that
+the Colonial Office took over the services of a trained
+ethnologist, or created independent native councils in West
+Africa in touch with the Administration?</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp48" id="illus33" style="max-width: 28.125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus33.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>SUSU CHIEF AND STAFF</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>Dahomey and Ashanti also offer a parallel in another way.
+In Dahomey the poll-tax was applied for the first time since
+the Conquest (1892) in 1899. It yielded £8200 in 1899
+and £22,290 in 1900. There has been no trouble, and as
+in French Guinea, the tax has not prevented a steady increase
+in the export trade, notwithstanding the thousands of able-bodied
+men employed on the railway. In both Dahomey
+and Ashanti the people taxed are Negroes, and were formerly
+subject to an unusual state-form in West Africa, viz. a
+despotism. They have been conquered, and conquest implies
+a tacit right to levy an impost. But conquest involves
+great hardships on the conquered in West Africa. Villages
+and granaries are destroyed, crops burnt, acres of land laid
+waste; many of those who would be sowing and reaping
+and gathering produce have been killed, and general distress
+ensues. That is the time for the conqueror with his higher
+culture, and the lofty ideals of the religion he professes, to
+take the conquered by the hand and try to renovate what
+he has shattered, but on better lines; to act, since he chooses
+to call the Negro a child, as a parent, who, after administering
+castigation, makes friends once more with the offender.
+Put differently, every assistance should be given, and due
+latitude allowed to a tribe which has been so unfortunate
+as to incur the wrath of the superior people, whose reforming
+zeal is nothing if not drastic. The French gave the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_280"></a>[280]</span>
+Dahomeyans seven years’ breathing space before they
+taxed them.<a id="FNanchor_221" href="#Footnote_221" class="fnanchor">[221]</a></p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus34" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus34.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>ASHANTI FIELD FORCE AT CAPE COAST <i>EN ROUTE</i> FOR KUMASI</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>What has been our action in Ashanti? No sooner has
+a desolating war been ended, a war attended by certain incidents
+which do not reflect credit upon us as a nation; a war
+which was caused by a series of official blunders of the
+grossest kind, than we clap on direct taxation, and in
+such a form that a premium is put upon future troubles. In
+fact, shortly after this taxation was announced to the beaten
+chiefs, yet another rising was only averted by the prompt
+despatch of more troops to Kumasi.<a id="FNanchor_222" href="#Footnote_222" class="fnanchor">[222]</a> Could anything less
+imaginative—to put it mildly—be devised than this application
+of a war indemnity nearly thirty years old, previous
+non-payment of which was made the excuse for the arrest
+and deportation of Prempreh and the annexation of the
+country; and when the revival of the claim by the authorities
+in 1900 is admitted to have been one of the contributory
+causes of the last rising? As Sir William Geary pointed
+out in 1900:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“To take a metaphor from private property, one cannot foreclose a
+mortgage, receive the rents and profits of the land, and then beyond
+that ask for interest on the debt when one has helped oneself to payment.
+We annexed Ashanti in 1896, and not only have we obtained
+formal sovereignty, but the matter has turned out a good bargain for
+us. We are carrying away the natural gold of the country for the
+benefit of European shareholders. Now we want to tax the natives.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Is policy of this kind calculated to bring prosperity to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_281"></a>[281]</span>
+British West Africa? In 1864 the <i>Times</i> expressed itself as
+follows with regard to the ruler of Ashanti:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“Instead of harbouring culprits against his crown, instead of disregarding
+the treaties between himself and us, instead of trying to sap
+the foundations of his throne, we should strive to cultivate acquaintance
+with him by the tranquil arts of trade. At the back of his vast
+dominions, receding to the foot of the Kong mountains, reside natives
+who owe and yield him obedience. What benefits might be showered
+on the Protectorate if we would set our heads together to foster and
+consolidate an intercourse based on amity and on the extension of
+legitimate traffic!”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Wise words, excellent precepts. Why does not the <i>Times</i>
+preach them now for application in other parts of West
+Africa, where the Crown Colony system has not yet quite
+succeeded in undoing the work of generations of peaceful,
+commercial efforts? If there be still life left in this miserable
+residue of the once powerful Ashanti nation, no doubt
+but that more trouble arising out of the tax will ensue. It
+does not seem as though the contingency were looked upon
+as altogether remote even in official eyes, and there are some
+significant passages in the last Blue Book on the subject.
+Happily at present we have an excellent resident at Kumasi
+in the person of Captain Donald Stewart, a man of broad
+sympathies, and it may be that his personal influence will
+prevail against the slumbering discontent which the policy
+of his chiefs renders inevitable in the country, whether it
+be given open expression to or not.<a id="FNanchor_223" href="#Footnote_223" class="fnanchor">[223]</a></p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp100" id="illus35" style="max-width: 43.75em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus35.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>RETURN OF ASHANTI FIELD FORCE</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>There is a passage in the evidence of one of the European
+witnesses before Sir David Chalmers, in the course of the
+inquiry into the hut-tax war, which explains better than anything
+else perhaps the difference between the procedure of
+the French in Guinea and that of the British authorities in
+Sierra Leone. “They are not so particular there. The great
+man Alimami Dowla is supposed to collect the tax, and he
+brings the money to the Governor and says, ‘This is what I
+have been able to collect,’ and the Government say, ‘Thank
+you.’” That is precisely what the French have done all through.
+They have gone to the chiefs as “big friend”; explained to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_282"></a>[282]</span>
+them that they required money for the railway, roads, and
+so on; pointed out the advantages; asked them to contribute;
+presented them with an extremely handsome commission of
+one-third of the moneys collected (in other words, subsidised
+them) in their respective districts, and “winked the other
+eye,” so to speak, when the moneys presented have not
+equalled the amount due. At the same time the prestige of
+the chiefs has been everywhere upheld; the native courts
+preserved; vexatious European legal formulas kept out of
+the country; European merchants encouraged to come in,
+and regularly consulted in the work of administration; the
+numbers of officials restricted; economy practised in every
+branch of the service, and military methods tabooed.
+Result, a magnificent success politically, commercially,
+financially. Compare this with what has taken place in
+Sierra Leone. We are taking away the power of the chiefs
+instead of strengthening it.<a id="FNanchor_224" href="#Footnote_224" class="fnanchor">[224]</a> The hut-tax was originally
+enforced in a hasty, not to say brutal manner. Instant payment
+was demanded. Chiefs were dragged from their
+villages, treated as felons, handcuffed and marched off to
+gaol under the eyes of their unresisting people. The
+Frontier Police, an ill-disciplined force<a id="FNanchor_225" href="#Footnote_225" class="fnanchor">[225]</a> recruited from the
+dregs of the Protectorate, committed all sorts of abuses, and,
+to use the words of the Royal Commissioner, “oppressive
+severity” was exercised, and this most delicate business was
+approached in a general spirit of “imperious and uncompromising
+force.” A rising very naturally ensued which
+convulsed the whole Protectorate. Sir David Chalmers’
+subsequent report, which condemned the hut-tax and
+recommended its withdrawal, was not acted upon; the hut-tax
+has been maintained, and an expensive civil, military
+and magisterial <i>régime</i> set up, unsuited to the country and
+beyond its power to maintain. Result, the expenditure has<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_283"></a>[283]</span>
+risen to about 60 per cent. of the producing power of the
+Colony, which is steadily decreasing; and the up-keep of
+the machinery to collect the tax costs more than the tax
+produces. The Colonial Office, which exhausted itself in
+ingenious explanations to disconnect the rising with the
+hut-tax, has recently issued an optimistic statement—on top
+of many others of a similar kind—containing the report of
+the new Governor’s tour in the hinterland.<a id="FNanchor_226" href="#Footnote_226" class="fnanchor">[226]</a> It seems that
+everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.
+The natives are delighted with everything, the hut-tax
+included. The fall in the exports (the true test of prosperity
+of a West African colony), which have been on the
+downward grade since the hut-tax was introduced, and
+were lower last year than they have been for twenty years
+(the year of the rebellion excepted), is accounted for by
+“want of activity on the part of native producers,” and to
+the action of the French. With regard to the latter, the
+French have for many years levied a tax upon native
+caravans crossing the frontier, and the rapid development
+and the judicious management of French Guinea have killed
+the transit trade which used to pass <i>viâ</i> Freetown, and is
+now concentrated at Konakry. Yet, in view of French competition,
+the authorities deem it politic to keep up the tax
+and all the incidental expenses it involves. The caravan
+traffic with the far interior was doomed when the French
+secured the back country; and the revival of the complaint
+about taxing caravans strikes one as a little insincere for
+several reasons, and among them because, although it is
+natural that the natives of our Protectorate adjoining the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_284"></a>[284]</span>
+French possession should be sorry to lose the profits they
+derived from the passage of caravans through their districts,
+and complain accordingly, no evidence has been adduced
+to show that the natives from the remoter hinterlands
+beyond the frontier, which, be it remembered, belong to
+France, are desirous of travelling all the way to Freetown to
+dispose of their products, when there are French factories
+quite as near where as good prices can be obtained for
+produce. It is curious, too, to contrast these explanations
+with other official assurances given out both in 1899 and
+1900, that the country would soon recover from the hut-tax
+war and the export trade regain its normal dimensions.
+French competition is no new thing. To conclude, the
+export trade of Sierra Leone twenty years ago is given at
+£366,000 for an expenditure of £72,000: last year the
+expenditure was £173,457 including the railway expenses,
+and £154,210 minus the railway expenses. The expenditure
+has, therefore, excluding the railway expenses, increased
+by over 100 per cent. in the face of a decline in the producing
+power of the country. That is the road to financial
+ruin, and those concerned know it well enough; but until
+the British public makes up its mind to seriously tackle
+these West African questions, the few who say so will, no
+doubt, continue to be looked upon as pessimists, “sentimental
+theorists,” or fools, until the inevitable day of reckoning
+comes.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_285"></a>[285]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="PART_V">PART V</h2>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXVIII">CHAPTER XXVIII<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE CONCESSIONS <i>RÉGIME</i> IN FRENCH CONGO</span></h3>
+
+<p>“What is important in colonial matters is that the Governments, in their
+difficult and uncertain, but systematic, march, should have increasingly
+before them the ideal which they proposed to themselves, and which they
+never lose sight of in the darkest nights, the star which shines in the heavens,
+and of which the beams are justice and humanity.”—<span class="smcap">M. Décrais</span>, Colonial
+Minister in the Waldeck-Rousseau Cabinet.</p>
+
+<p>“We even think that on account of the difficulty, of the impossibility, in
+which the natives find themselves of making known their feelings and expressing
+their grievances, the interests of those natives should be the object of
+special kindness and solicitude....</p>
+
+<p>“Can we allow these natives to be subjected to the unbridled exploitation,
+to the economical servitude with which they are threatened? The exclusive
+right which the Concessionnaires will arrogate to themselves of buying from
+the natives living upon their concessions at such prices as they, the Concessionnaires,
+choose to impose, the natural products of the soil, or the harvest
+which their labour has produced, is but a disguised form of slavery.... In
+conclusion, we can but say that this Concession <i>régime</i> is antagonistic to the
+well-being, to the material and moral progress of our natives, and to the
+responsibilities we have assumed in submitting them to our domination.”—“Memorial”
+of the “French West African Company”<a id="FNanchor_227" href="#Footnote_227" class="fnanchor">[227]</a> to M. Décrais.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>By one of those extraordinary contradictions of which
+French history affords so many curious examples, liberty-loving
+France, with her splendid record in West Africa,
+having proved her capacity to successfully manage possessions
+in West Africa; numbering among her officials and
+merchants connected with West Africa men of the highest
+moral calibre, imbued with humanitarian instincts and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_286"></a>[286]</span>
+earnest advocates of a sound native policy; has within the
+last few years sanctioned the institution of a <i>régime</i> of
+territorial monopolies in the French Congo which has
+already led to deplorable occurrences, and cannot fail to
+cause still greater evils if permitted to continue. To explain
+all the phases of this grave departure from French traditions
+in West Africa would require a great deal more space than
+is here available. One can only give its origin, indicate its
+main lines and the events which have hitherto taken place in
+connection with it, and briefly discuss how it affects the
+general relationship of Western Europe with Western
+Africa and the interests of British subjects in the maritime
+zone of the French Congo.</p>
+
+<p>Some three years and a half ago the huge profits earned
+by certain rubber companies, so-called, in the Congo State;
+the enormous premiums at which their shares stood on the
+Antwerp Stock Exchange; the wild speculations which anything
+to do with Congo rubber gave rise to in Belgium; the
+colossal increase in the yearly output of rubber from the
+Congo State, which from a value of 260,000 francs in 1888
+had risen to 15,850,000 francs in 1898,<a id="FNanchor_228" href="#Footnote_228" class="fnanchor">[228]</a> provoked in France—or,
+at any rate, among some influential Frenchmen, notably
+in Government circles—a desire that similar results should
+accrue in the French Congo. “Here,” ran the argument,
+“we have an immense territory as rich in forest products,
+notably rubber, as the Congo State, which is doing very
+little, which for years has been a drag upon the metropolis;
+while the Belgians—these new-comers in Africa, these tyros
+at tropical colonisation—are making fortunes every day.
+Why cannot we imitate them?” The feeling was thoroughly
+natural. Those who entertained it, however, forgot four things—three
+of which may at this stage be referred to—or, if they
+did not forget them, they at all events brushed them aside
+in the enthusiasm of the moment. They forgot the causes
+which had led to the comparative stagnation of French
+Congo on the one hand and the causes which were moulding
+a state of prosperity in the remaining French Colonies<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_287"></a>[287]</span>
+on the other. They forgot the political ambitions of the
+astutest diplomatist in Europe—the Sovereign of the Congo
+State. They forgot <i>how</i> the inflated premiums, colossal
+profits, and the exaggerated production had been and were
+being brought about. If the latter point did present itself
+to the minds of a minority, it was assumed that, under a
+French administration, abuses such as those known to exist
+in the Congo State were impossible, and that results in
+every sense equal to those obtained in the Congo State
+could be secured in French Congo without them. Swayed
+by these considerations, the French Government and French
+Colonial public, with the exception of a handful of far-seeing
+and experienced men, sought to carry out the new
+programme without delay.</p>
+
+<p>King Leopold foresaw at once the danger and the opportunity;
+the danger if a sudden influx of French capital into
+French Congo should lead to the construction of a railway
+from the French coast-line to Brazzaville on the Upper
+Congo, to threaten the monopoly of traffic with the interior
+enjoyed by the Matadi-Stanley Pool railway; the necessity
+of averting it by placing the financial control of the French
+concessions in Belgian hands, whereby the construction of
+such a line could be delayed <i>ad infinitum</i>; and the double
+advantage of (1) fostering the movement in France, on
+account of the increased railway freight the development of
+the movement would bring for the existing Belgian line, to
+say nothing of the increased customs duties on goods and
+material for the French Upper Congo (whose only practical
+route was, of course, <i>viâ</i> Congo State territory), which would
+accrue to the Congo State for the same reason; and (2) of
+securing for the small but influential Belgian group of
+which he is the supremely able leader a preponderating
+position in the possessions adjoining his own.<a id="FNanchor_229" href="#Footnote_229" class="fnanchor">[229]</a> Gathering<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_288"></a>[288]</span>
+his financiers and co-partners in that vast Trust—which is
+called the Independent State of the Congo—King Leopold
+flung himself into the breach, and with such good effect
+that French Congo was in an incredibly short space of time
+partitioned on paper into some forty odd concessions of all
+shapes and dimensions, with nominal French heads, but
+with Belgians on the board of administration, a majority of
+Belgian shareholders behind, with Belgian capital either
+openly or in disguised form the controlling factor, with strings
+pulled in Belgium, ideas borrowed from Belgium, Belgian
+methods of tropical African development and Belgian
+methods of rigging the home markets writ large all over
+them.<a id="FNanchor_230" href="#Footnote_230" class="fnanchor">[230]</a> With what consummate skill the Sovereign of the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_289"></a>[289]</span>
+Congo State weaved his nets, flung them forth and landed
+his fish, only those who have had a glimpse of what has
+gone on behind the scenes can describe. It would make a
+curious story, and not an altogether savoury one, and
+perhaps some day it will be fully told.<a id="FNanchor_231" href="#Footnote_231" class="fnanchor">[231]</a> The clever
+manipulating tactics of the king were only equalled by the
+infatuation, the heedlessness, the utter want of reflection
+which characterised the action of the French Government
+of the day and the noisiest section of the French Colonial
+party. A policy involving the most far-reaching consequences
+was suddenly adopted with, as a French writer
+of distinction has said, “une insouciance, une désinvolture
+presque criminelles.” Seemingly hypnotised, France
+plunged headlong into an abyss whence she is vainly
+seeking to emerge, and in which she has already soiled her
+hands, and as De Brazza rather nobly puts it, “compromised
+her dignity.”</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the French Congo Concessions are in being,
+and what has been the outcome up to the present after
+more than two years of the experiment? The promoters
+have done excellently well. Floating their concessions at
+absurd premiums on the Antwerp market, and coming on
+the crest of the rubber wave, they were able—not in all
+cases perhaps, but generally—to dispose of their holdings
+at substantial profits. The shareholders who imitated their
+example showed prescience, for, with the exception of two
+companies, there has not been one single transaction this
+year in the shares of forty-three of these companies which
+are still quoted in the Antwerp financial and Congo organs!
+Their paper, in fact, is unsaleable. Several of the companies
+have fizzled out. Those who have not been allowed to prey
+on the legitimate barter trade existing in the Maritime Zone<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_290"></a>[290]</span>
+are in more or less of a moribund condition, and after
+squandering their shareholders’ money have accomplished
+absolutely nothing. But what of the effect upon the
+country? Free trade in the Maritime Zone has disappeared,
+and with it the revenue it supplied to the Administration.
+The export trade has actually decreased. The finances
+are so gravely compromised that a loan of 10,000,000 francs
+is spoken of, and at one period last year there was not even
+available in the local treasury sufficient cash to pay the
+salaries of officials. All public works and improvements of
+any kind are, of course, suspended. The local Courts are
+kept busy with endless litigation between Concessionnaire
+Companies who accuse one another of poaching upon their
+respective preserves, the boundaries of none of which have,
+by the way, ever been delimited. There have been two
+native risings attended with considerable loss of life and
+destruction of property, and chaos reigns supreme. The
+Paris Colonial organs are filled with suggestions, exhortations,
+threats, revilings, but with the solitary exception of
+one Deputy<a id="FNanchor_232" href="#Footnote_232" class="fnanchor">[232]</a>—M. le Comte d’Agoult—and a handful of
+courageous journalists, such as M. Jean Hess, the African
+explorer, and M. Serge Basset, of <i>La Revue</i>, no one of note
+in French Colonial circles has boldly tackled the subject,
+gone to the root of it, or preached the only possible solution.
+The fact that the affair has raised an international problem—or
+rather two—of great delicacy, may have something
+to do with the unwillingness to come to close quarters displayed
+by the leading organs of the French Press. But it
+is lamentable, in every sense of the word, that France with
+all her generous instincts should be able on this occasion to
+record but very few protesting voices against the fatal reversal
+of the wise and just native policy she has hitherto
+pursued in the main, and with such conspicuous success, in
+her other West African possessions.</p>
+
+<p>For it is in the relation it bears towards the natives that
+the concession <i>régime</i> in French Congo offers the strongest
+ground for criticism. The saying that “evil communications<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_291"></a>[291]</span>
+corrupt good manners” was never more applicable
+than in this case. Once started on the road mapped out
+three years ago, subsequent events became inevitable. It
+would have needed a man of iron—and the warmest friends
+of the ex-French Colonial Minister, who was not the initiator,
+but the successor to a heritage of trouble, would not credit
+him with such proclivities—to have stemmed the tide
+and refused, even at the risk of resigning, to allow his
+country to be dragged along the path of reaction towards
+which the concession <i>régime</i> infallibly tended. Step by
+step the French Government has found itself impelled to
+gravitate nearer to the Belgian conception. The Concessionnaires
+found English and German merchants trading
+peacefully with the natives on what they claimed, according
+to their contracts with the French Government, to be their
+own property. Disputes arose, seizures of produce took
+place, and it became increasingly urgent to define the
+“rights” of the concessionnaires. M. Décrais hung back
+a long time, but goaded by nearly all the Colonial and some
+of the daily newspapers, with constant pressure brought to
+bear upon him from influential quarters, he was fain at last
+to take the leap. He took it, and through the Governor of
+French Congo issued a decree (March 20, 1901) as to which
+one can only say that, if a few years ago it had been predicted
+that a French Minister could have framed such a
+document, the prophecy would have earned the contemptuous
+unbelief of all Frenchmen, or foreigners acquainted
+with the part played by France in Western Africa.</p>
+
+<p>The decree declared that one idea dominated<a id="FNanchor_233" href="#Footnote_233" class="fnanchor">[233]</a> the entire<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_292"></a>[292]</span>
+concession policy, viz. that the products of the soil
+belonged to the concessionnaires, who alone had a right to
+dispose of them, the natives not being entitled to sell them
+to any one but the concessionnaires. To tone down the
+arbitrary nature of this promulgation, mention was made of
+native reserves, where the natives would be free to do what
+they liked. But this apparent modification of the absolutism
+of the decree is entirely illusory for three reasons:
+(1) the area of the reserves was not delimited, and in view
+of the enormous difficulty and expense delimitation would
+involve, could not hope to be for many years to come;
+(2) a decision of the local courts had ordained that, pending
+delimitation of the reserves, the reserves were legally non-existent,
+and that the whole country was therefore exploitable
+by the concessionnaires; (3) an antecedent ministerial
+decree had announced that, when the reserves were delimited,
+the areas reserved should not include any land producing
+saleable products.<a id="FNanchor_234" href="#Footnote_234" class="fnanchor">[234]</a> Whatever may have been the
+difficulties with which the French Colonial Minister was beset,
+the issue of the above decree cannot in equity be defended.
+It virtually handed over the population of French Congo to
+the mercy of European speculators, of Belgians grown fat
+on the misery and the degradation of the natives in the
+Congo State. It left the door open to the grossest abuses,
+the most cynical outrages against humanity. It let loose
+the tongues and pens of all the apostles of force and coercion
+for Africa. It reduced the natives to the level of
+servants and serfs of the greedy clique which had fastened
+its talons in the country, and it strengthened the position of
+the Congo State in Europe.</p>
+
+<p>Secure in the official recognition of their “rights,” the
+concessionnaire companies’ next move was precisely what<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_293"></a>[293]</span>
+might have been expected in view of the class of men controlling
+them. Legitimate commerce having no place in
+their calculations, they at once started a “campaign” for
+the purpose of forcing the French Government to coerce
+the natives into bringing rubber and other forest produce to
+their factories, on such terms as they, the concessionnaires,
+chose to pay for the labour expended by the natives in
+collecting it. While their subsidised organs daily devoted
+reams to prove that compulsion was essential in dealing
+with primitive peoples, their agents in Africa hastened, as
+far as possible, to put these principles into practice. Arms
+of precision were smuggled into the country, and soon the
+concessionnaires were attempting on a smaller scale to copy
+the exploits of their countrymen on the other side of the
+Congo River. <i>Facilis descensus Averni.</i> The agitation was
+partly met by the application of a hut-tax paid in kind, the
+produce to be handed in by the natives to the Government
+authorities, who would dispose of it to the concessionnaires
+at a nominal price; thus giving an appearance of legality
+to the transaction, and disguising coercion in the garb
+of administrative requirements. The Government having
+accomplished nothing whatever in the way of bettering the
+country, improving communication, or constructing public
+works from which the natives might be expected to derive
+some benefit, the hut-tax was naturally resented; its application
+in French Congo being, moreover, scientifically unsound,
+and only feasible of accomplishment by a long course
+of preparation. Grafted upon the action of the concessionnaires,
+the measure was followed by outbreaks in various
+directions, especially among the warlike Fans of the Ogowe
+and the Upper Sangha people.</p>
+
+<p>This new step on the part of the French Government
+stirred up for a time the opponents of the concessionnaire
+<i>régime</i> in France. De Brazza sent a memorable protest to
+the <i>Temps</i>. Its concluding passage is well worth quoting:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“France has assumed a duty towards the native tribes (of French
+Congo) who for twenty-seven years have lent their assistance in the
+work of expansion. These people have received from us the seal of<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_294"></a>[294]</span>
+their future liberties.... We must not sacrifice them to the vain hope
+of immediate results by thoughtless measures of coercion opposed to
+the generous ideas which our flag personifies. We should be committing
+a great mistake to discount that result, by enforcing at the
+present time taxes upon the products of the soil, or by compelling the
+natives to work in the form of forced labour or military service. It
+would constitute a great blow to our dignity if such labour and such
+taxes were converted into a sort of draft-to-order in favour of the concessionnaires....
+It is to recall these considerations to men’s minds,
+and to avoid the moral bankruptcy to which economic and financial
+disasters may lead us, that I have emerged from the reserve I had
+imposed upon myself.”<a id="FNanchor_235" href="#Footnote_235" class="fnanchor">[235]</a></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Just then, too, one of the very few genuine French
+concerns among the concessionnaire companies, managed
+by a Frenchman distinguished for his explorations in
+the country, M. Fondère, wrote publicly to the Colonial
+Minister, abandoning his concession:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“Experience has convinced us,” he wrote, “that, notwithstanding
+any modifications of detail which your department might suggest,
+either in the administrative organisation of the Congo Colony or in
+the agreement between the Government and the Concessionnaires, the
+exclusive monopoly of the concessions is a vain epithet. The right to
+sell his products to whomsoever he may please cannot be denied to the
+native, because he has always possessed it. Moreover, all stipulations
+to the contrary notwithstanding, it would be quite illusory to think of
+taking this right away from the native. That could only be done by
+force of arms.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Shortly afterwards, M. Albert Cousin, also a well-known
+man in French Colonial circles, who had previously been a
+warm defender of the concessions <i>régime</i>, published a
+pamphlet to the effect that he had changed his mind, and
+was now convinced the experiment was a mistaken one.<a id="FNanchor_236" href="#Footnote_236" class="fnanchor">[236]</a></p>
+
+<p>These repeated blows staggered for a moment the
+defenders of the Belgian conception in France. The newspaper
+which had the most largely contributed to influence
+French Colonial opinion even went so far as to admit that it<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_295"></a>[295]</span>
+could not but be “very much impressed by the new ideas
+which are coming to light.” The ideas are not new. They
+are as old as the hills. They date back from the time when
+man, evolving from the brute, became a law-maker, and
+decided that certain fixed principles of morality should form
+the basis of social order.</p>
+
+<p>That temporary hesitation offered a great opportunity for
+French statesmanship, but no one came forward to enforce
+the lesson. And so the powerful influences which had been
+at work from the first set themselves to destroy the “impression”
+created. They partially succeeded, but they could
+not destroy it altogether, and I rather fancy it is becoming
+more pronounced and will eventually carry the day. One
+factor, at any rate, is likely to assist its growth not a little—the
+extravagant demands of the concessionnaires and the
+violent attacks on the French Government on the part of
+the Belgian organs devoted to the interests of their compatriots
+in French Congo. The institution of the hut-tax
+was merely a sop. It staved off the clamour for a time, but
+in the nature of things could not last for long. To feed the
+army of concessionnaires with the proceeds of a hut-tax an
+army of native levies is required. That is what the concessionnaires
+claim must be organised, and once more the same
+strings are being pulled, the same arguments put forward,
+the same machinery set in motion. The French Government
+must do what the Congo State has done. It must
+raise 15,000 or 20,000 men, arm them with weapons of
+precision and turn them loose upon the population in order
+to enforce a tribute on the yield of which the concessionnaires
+shall not only live but run their shares up to high premiums,
+present respectable dividends to their Belgian holders, and
+generally make money at the expense of the natives of the
+French Congo, using the French Government as a sort of
+decoy-duck the while. I doubt if it will work. I fancy
+King Leopold and his friends are going rather too far. But
+one thing at least is certain. Either the concessionnaires,
+who know nothing of trade and are not concerned with
+mere matter-of-fact commercial considerations, who have<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_296"></a>[296]</span>
+never looked upon commerce as an element in their “business,”
+will themselves be compelled to throw up the sponge;
+or they will compel in one shape or another the French
+Government to give them physical means to establish
+slavery in the French Congo, as it has been established in
+the Congo State. To suppose the latter is almost an impossibility,
+notwithstanding all that has happened, and it is
+perhaps not displaying too great an optimism to hope that
+the concession <i>régime</i> in French Congo may perish from its
+own internal corruption. Meanwhile it remains to be seen
+how that <i>régime</i> has affected and continues to affect British
+interests, and the part it plays in the international situation
+created by the proceedings of the Congo State.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_297"></a>[297]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXIX">CHAPTER XXIX<br>
+<span class="smaller">INTERNATIONAL INTERESTS AND MONOPOLY</span></h3>
+
+<p>“As to the ground on which we contend for the rights we have in the
+interior of Africa, they have really been our own guiding principles throughout.
+<i>It is not territory, it is freedom of trade</i>, and on that ground we are strong
+and shall do our very utmost.”—Extract from a speech by <span class="smcap">Lord Salisbury</span>
+to a deputation of Chambers of Commerce, 1898.</p>
+
+<p>Speaking at Manchester in 1884, Sir H. M. Stanley prophesied, as a
+result of the creation of the Congo State, an export of British cotton goods to
+the Congo State of £26,000,000 annually. According to the same speaker,
+one firm on the Congo River alone imported, in 1879, British goods to the
+value of £185,000. After seventeen years’ existence, the <i>total</i> imports of
+British goods to the Congo State is far below that figure—viz. £133,200 in
+1901!</p>
+
+<p>The importance of British trade interests in French West Africa may be
+estimated from the fact that in 1900 the French possessions absorbed British
+goods to the value of £709,900, and sent £534,727 of produce to British
+ports.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In the <i>cahier de charges</i> or agreements between the French
+Government and the Concessionnaire Companies the latter
+were held to respect the “acquired rights of third parties,”
+and the “general rights created by the Berlin Act.”
+Who were the “third parties”? What were their
+“acquired rights?” What were the “general rights created
+by the Berlin Act”?</p>
+
+<p>When in the early part of the nineteenth century the
+European nations put a stop to the export slave trade, Great
+Britain, having led the way in securing this reform, entered
+into treaties with most of the chiefs and head-men along
+the West Coast, giving some of them subsidies and, by
+means of consular and naval visitations, encouraging them
+to give their attention to the gathering of their forest products
+for sale to Europeans in exchange for the merchandise
+of Europe. In this way the trade in palm-oil was
+stimulated in the Niger Delta and Windward Coast; whilst<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_298"></a>[298]</span>
+in Gaboon it took the shape of barwood, ebony and ivory,
+and in the River Congo palm-oil and ivory. At that time
+there was no European Government established on the
+African coast between the Gold Coast and Ambriz. The
+Europeans who settled along the coast traded from their
+vessels. After the introduction of steam, the European
+traders (chiefly British) traded in hulks in the Niger Delta,
+and built houses and stores at various points along the
+whole coast-line down to Ambriz. Small sailing vessels
+plied between these trading places and the terminus of the
+ocean steamers (then Fernando Po, or Cameroons), and
+sailing vessels from Europe sailed regularly to and fro,
+bringing their goods and taking home their cargoes of
+vegetable and animal products. Soon after the establishment
+of steam the French Government made a treaty with the
+chiefs of the Gaboon River, by which ground was ceded for
+a coaling station for the French men-of-war then plying
+on the African coast to put down the foreign slave trade.
+Shortly afterwards, an American citizen established in Fernan
+Vaz discovered a vine, of which the sap, when exposed to
+the atmosphere, was found to yield india rubber, and in
+course of time this new industry was fairly started and
+gradually spread over the adjoining territory. It was a slow
+process, but in a few years the gathering of rubber became
+general in that part of the coast, and in Gaboon the
+French naval officers saw that there was a trade to be
+taxed, and forthwith a Custom House was built and duties
+placed on imports.</p>
+
+<p>When British merchants first established themselves in
+Gaboon the political authority of the French Government
+was confined to the Gaboon River estuary, and the up-river
+trade was carried on at our merchants’ personal risk. In
+order to induce the natives to collect rubber, European
+traders had perforce to let the natives have goods on credit,
+as those natives near the coast had to go far into the interior
+to buy from other natives; who, in their turn, had to be
+given credit wherewith to buy from natives still farther
+inland, and induce them to seek the vines and make the<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_299"></a>[299]</span>
+rubber. In this way the credit system, as it exists to-day,
+was created.</p>
+
+<p>In the pursuit of this rubber trade, fostered by British
+merchants, the natives of Gaboon, crossing their country to
+the South, struck the Ogowe River, which gave them easy
+access to a wide field from which to collect produce. In
+course of time the European traders followed the natives
+across country, and meeting the river,<a id="FNanchor_237" href="#Footnote_237" class="fnanchor">[237]</a> lost no time in
+tracing its course to the sea and at once establishing sea
+communication between Gaboon and the Ogowe. Their
+example was imitated by the French Government, and in
+due course possession was taken by France of the Ogowe
+and Fernan Vaz; but when at Berlin the Governments of
+Europe settled who were to become the owners of the
+Congo and the adjoining maritime territories, France had, in
+point of fact, no political influence south of Fernan Vaz.
+This expansion of Gaboon was initiated by British and
+German enterprise, French white traders coming in after
+the pioneer work was accomplished. When 2° 30´ of South
+latitude was fixed as the northern boundary of the free-trade
+zone, it was expected that that line would include
+within it the trade of Sette Camma, the trade of which was
+British and German entirely. The Chambers of Commerce
+of Liverpool and Manchester set forth these facts at the
+time: before the treaty was made, and when urging the principle
+of free trade within the zone fixed by treaty, no idea
+was in the mind either of the traders, the Chambers of
+Commerce, or the representatives of the various Governments
+concerned in the making of the Berlin Treaty, other
+than that the freedom of trade therein referred to applied
+to the only known trade in existence, viz. the collection
+and sale by the natives of the vegetable and other products
+of their country in exchange for European merchandise.
+Any legislation, therefore, of which the effect is to alienate
+the rights of the natives to collect the produce of their
+country, and to dispose of those products freely to whomsoever<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_300"></a>[300]</span>
+they wish, is a direct violation of the principles of
+equitable treatment towards the natives which animated
+the Conference and the rights of the signatory Powers of
+that Conference.</p>
+
+<p>It is then perfectly clear (1) that the “third parties”
+mentioned in the <i>cahier de charges</i> were the European
+merchants who had created the existing trade of the French
+Congo, the taxes upon which supplied the local administration
+with funds for purposes of revenue; (2) that the
+“acquired rights” of those merchants consisted in the right
+to continue their trade, the freedom of which was guaranteed
+under the Berlin Act; (3) that the “general rights created
+by the Berlin Act” were, on the one part, the rights of the
+natives (“whose moral and material well-being” the contracting
+Powers to the Berlin Act bound themselves to
+“care for”) to their land and the produce thereof; and, on
+the other part, the rights of each of the signatory Powers
+to ensure that the principles of the Berlin Act were not
+violated by any one of the parties to that Act. The way in
+which the rights of the natives are “cared for” under the
+concessions <i>régime</i> was dealt with in the last chapter. It
+remains to be said to what usage the “acquired rights”
+of the merchants trading in the country have been
+subjected.</p>
+
+<p>Two of the most important firms trading in the French
+Congo at the time of the issue of the Decree of Concessions
+(March 1899) were British.<a id="FNanchor_238" href="#Footnote_238" class="fnanchor">[238]</a> They were among the very
+first to open up the country to trade, their representatives
+had always been law-abiding citizens under the French flag;
+they had ever worked harmoniously with the French
+officers, who from time to time had sought their assistance<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_301"></a>[301]</span>
+in developing this or that district, had asked them to send
+their native traders into such and such a region, and
+generally encouraged them in every way to promote and
+extend the area of their trading operations. In the course
+of over a quarter of a century’s trade in the country the
+British firms had contributed large sums to the local
+revenue, and had cheerfully paid the enormous differential
+customs tariffs levied upon British goods, the taxes, the
+licences, the duties of all sorts affecting the various branches
+of their businesses prescribed by the law of the land. Their
+standing was, of course, well known to the French Government,
+and in a secret letter of instructions<a id="FNanchor_239" href="#Footnote_239" class="fnanchor">[239]</a> communicated
+to the concessionnaires by the French Colonial Minister, the
+former were required to pledge themselves “to leave entire
+latitude for two years to the existing foreign firms for all
+the commercial undertakings which they may perform in the
+territory conceded” to them; and further, that they should
+propose to the said foreign firms at the end of the two years,
+and in the event of difficulties arising with the latter, to buy
+up their establishments. The pledge was duly given. But
+it was not carried out. The French Government, finding
+itself incapable of compelling obedience, allowed the matter
+to slide, and was brought by successive stages in the
+development of affairs to the issue of the Decree of
+March 26, 1901 (mentioned in the previous chapter), which
+declared, as has already been stated, that the products of the
+soil—that is to say, the only medium of trade in the country—belonged
+exclusively to the concessionnaires, and that the
+natives were not free to dispose of them to any one but the
+concessionnaires. The “acquired rights of third parties,”
+and the rights of the natives, had gone by the board; the
+rights of England as a signatory Power of the Berlin Act had
+been infringed; and the Act itself had been violated in one
+of its most essential articles, viz. Article V., which says
+that “no Power which exercises, or shall exercise, sovereign
+rights in the above-mentioned regions shall be allowed to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_302"></a>[302]</span>
+grant therein a monopoly or favour of any kind in matters
+of trade.”</p>
+
+<p>To describe the series of outrages<a id="FNanchor_240" href="#Footnote_240" class="fnanchor">[240]</a> perpetrated by the
+agents of the Belgian groups, masquerading as French
+patriots, upon our merchants which took place during the
+two years that the Concessionnaire Companies had bound
+themselves to allow “entire latitude” to the firms trading
+in the country; the protests of our merchants, who were
+never informed by the French authorities that their <i>locus
+standi</i> had become modified; who continued on the one
+hand to pay customs dues on their imports, licences for the
+factories and native traders, while forcibly prevented, under
+the eyes of the same authorities and with their tacit assent,
+from disposing of their goods to natives against produce;
+the expostulations of Sir Edmund Monson, our Ambassador
+in Paris; the promises of M. Décrais which were never
+fulfilled; the actions at law brought by our merchants at
+great expense in the Congo to test the legality of the concessionnaires’
+proceedings; the deputation of nine Chambers
+of Commerce to Lord Lansdowne; the upholding of the
+concessionnaires’ claim by the local courts, whose judgments
+as <i>Le Temps</i> (which has pleaded, together with one or two
+other French papers,<a id="FNanchor_241" href="#Footnote_241" class="fnanchor">[241]</a> for justice to our merchants) has
+pointed out, was based not upon law, but upon the Decree
+of March 1901, which the judges could not go beyond; the
+persecution of our merchants by the concessionnaires for
+purchasing produce from their concessions on the strength
+of the said judgment; the infliction of heavy fines upon our
+merchants; the entire stoppage of their trade; the seizure
+of their produce at African ports and even at a French port;<a id="FNanchor_242" href="#Footnote_242" class="fnanchor">[242]</a>
+the evacuation of our merchants which is now proceeding;<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_303"></a>[303]</span>
+the renewed representations of British Chambers to
+the Foreign Office; above all, the unaccountable lethargy
+of the British Government,<a id="FNanchor_243" href="#Footnote_243" class="fnanchor">[243]</a> and, with one or two honourable
+exceptions,<a id="FNanchor_244" href="#Footnote_244" class="fnanchor">[244]</a> the indifference of the British Press—to
+adequately describe these things would require a couple of
+chapters at least.</p>
+
+<p>The position to-day is this, that from the greater part
+of the Ogowe Basin, which alone is unaffected by the
+Berlin and Brussels Acts, being outside the Conventional
+Basin of the Congo, our merchants have been expelled,
+without a penny compensation. In the Conventional
+Basin of the Congo, where—as in the Ogowe—our
+merchants have been established for upwards of twenty
+years; where their rights to trade freely with the natives are
+solemnly guaranteed by International Treaties, British
+subjects are being expelled, not only without compensation
+but with ignominy and insult, after suffering heavy
+losses; the trade which they brought into being ruined, the
+trading stations they have built deserted, themselves arbitrarily<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_304"></a>[304]</span>
+removed from regions where they have laboured for
+so long.<a id="FNanchor_245" href="#Footnote_245" class="fnanchor">[245]</a></p>
+
+<p>It is a shameful, a discreditable episode. But if it be true
+that out of evil good may come, there is still some hope that
+out of the treatment—treatment which to those who know
+all the details is beyond the reach of Parliamentary language
+to characterise—meted out to British merchants in the
+French Congo may come the liberation of the peoples of
+the Congo State from the Belgian yoke, and an international
+understanding binding upon the Powers whereby a rational,
+common-sense, and just native policy may be mutually
+agreed upon, and the vast region of the Congo Basin thrown
+open to the legitimate commerce of all nations. The movement
+against monopoly based upon force in West Africa;
+against the evil which King Leopold has sown; against the
+follies as well as the horrors which that evil has engendered,
+is growing apace. The expulsion of British subjects from
+French Congo may yet serve as the lever whereby the
+edifice of fraud and greed and cruelty reared by Africa’s
+self-styled “regenerator” may be overthrown. And the
+reason is this.</p>
+
+<p>The British Government has for years been pressed to
+inquire into the doings of the Congo States upon humanitarian
+grounds. The German Government, the Governments
+of the United States and of France have been
+similarly approached. None of them have taken definite
+steps in the direction desired. The chief reasons in the
+case of England, France and Germany are probably three.
+First, international rivalries in the partition of Africa and
+the political ambitions which those rivalries have begotten.
+By a combination of circumstances of which King Leopold
+took full advantage, the Sovereign of the Congo State has
+been able to intrigue first with France against England
+(1892-94), with England against France (1894), with France<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_305"></a>[305]</span>
+against England (1897-99). When the expedition of Major
+Marchand—who would never have reached Fashoda but
+for the reinforcements in men, ammunition and stores despatched
+to him over the Congo Railway, through Congo
+State territory—was seen to be a political failure, King
+Leopold turned fawning upon England, and attempted
+to gain our consent to his appropriation of the Bahr-el-Ghazal.
+With his usual astuteness he endeavoured to
+strengthen his diplomacy at the Court of St. James by securing,
+meanwhile, a <i>fait accompli</i> in Africa. In this he failed,
+mainly through journalistic enterprise in exposing his carefully
+laid plans (that also, by the way, would make an
+interesting little story). After the Fashoda episode King
+Leopold was again pro-British for a short time, until he
+became once more France’s good friend, and plunged the
+French Congo into chaos. In the interval of acting honest
+broker to England and France alternately, he has tried to
+play Germany off against England in sundry matters, such
+as the Trans-African railway scheme. So much for international
+rivalries on the Western Central African field, in
+which the Sovereign of the Congo State has held most of the
+trumps. To these must, of course, be added other rivalries
+on a wider field amongst the Powers in question, which
+tended still farther to paralyse all useful, disinterested and
+combined action for humanitarian ends in the Congo. The
+second reason is dynastic. King Leopold is connected with
+the Royal Families of England and Germany. Only those
+who are in Court secrets know the exact extent to which
+the Sovereign of the Congo State has profited by that, to
+him, happy circumstance. It has, undeniably, been considerable.
+The third reason is the self-imposed halo of
+sanctity with which the public press has been gulled for
+years by the happy knack of attributing abuses of a more
+than usually flagrant character to individual wrongdoing
+of agents—a plea used again and again with never-failing
+results. To these reasons—there are others, no doubt,
+and two of them are briefly touched upon in the next
+chapter—are mainly due the failure of the Powers to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_306"></a>[306]</span>
+fulfil their duties under the Berlin Act <i>upon humanitarian
+grounds</i>.</p>
+
+<p>But now an altogether different aspect of the Congo problem
+has sprung up. So far the Stokes affair<a id="FNanchor_246" href="#Footnote_246" class="fnanchor">[246]</a> has alone
+provided what might be termed a <i>material</i> cause of complaint
+against the Congo State. The effect of this outrage was
+modified by renewed international rivalries which occurred
+shortly afterwards, and even the subsequent appointment
+of Major Lothaire as Managing Director in Africa for one
+of the “Companies” in which the Congo State holds 50 per
+cent. of the shares, and of which King Leopold appoints
+the agents, failed to exercise the influence which, but for
+the international rivalries aforesaid, it would otherwise have
+wielded. But the horizon has cleared of late. The scramble
+for Africa is over. The Powers are beginning to think
+seriously of the immense problems which beset them in
+Tropical Western Africa. And it is precisely at this turning-point,
+as it were, in European policy in Western Africa
+that the material side of the question has risen. England
+and Germany have both in their respective ways been
+sharply confronted with the Nemesis of their past indifference
+to the repeated violation of the Berlin Act by the Congo
+State. Germany has seen her ivory trade in German East
+Africa disappear, her protected natives driven out of Congo
+State territory, forbidden to purchase ivory or produce of
+any kind from the natives on the Congo side of the German
+Congo State frontier, because by the laws of the Congo
+State every product of the forest, whether vegetable or
+animal—when either is of intrinsic value—belongs not to
+the native owner of that forest, whose ownership the State
+does not recognise, but to the State itself. England has
+seen her merchants expelled from the French Congo by an
+extension of the system of territorial monopolies involving
+absolute rights over the products of the soil, inaugurated by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_307"></a>[307]</span>
+the Congo State in 1892. The Belgian conception has
+thrived upon the Powers’ <i>non possumus</i>. The African cancer
+has attacked both banks of the Congo, and wherever spreads
+the fell disease, liberty, legitimate commerce, free trade, alike
+for white man and black, disappear.</p>
+
+<p>The Belgian conception of development in Tropical
+Western Africa is observed a little late in the day to have
+another side to it. It is not now merely an institution for
+earning dividends and reducing the African population. It
+stands forth as a menace to all legitimate European interests
+in West Africa. What England and Germany could not
+agree to do when humanitarian considerations alone were
+in question, they can no longer ignore with safety to their
+interests in Africa. The tentacles of the Belgian octopus
+are flung wider and wider, French Congo, Fernando Po,
+the Muni Territory, Dahomey, the Ivory Coast and South
+West Abyssinia are all alike either threatened, or victims to
+the insidious embrace which breeds death and devastation
+to the natives of Africa.<a id="FNanchor_247" href="#Footnote_247" class="fnanchor">[247]</a> The treatment of our merchants
+in French Congo has given a fresh impetus, and an added
+motive, to the demand of public opinion that the Congo
+State shall be called to the bar of international inquiry; for
+if the expulsion of British subjects from a region solemnly
+declared internationally free commercial land, necessitates
+specific action on the part of the British Government in the
+form of a request for arbitration, which is the line I have
+reason to believe our Government has taken, there remains the
+larger question behind—the question of the violation of the
+Berlin Act by the Congo State, originator of the new African
+slavery. The Upas-tree has thrown up a new sucker, and
+although the fresh growth may be removed, no permanent
+good will ensue unless the tree itself be rooted up and destroyed.
+The whole scheme, the <i>raison d’être</i>, the entire
+future of European action in Tropical Western Africa is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_308"></a>[308]</span>
+involved in this question. If the Governments are still
+slow in realising it, the people are not.</p>
+
+<p>The well-informed press of England and of Germany is
+unanimous in calling upon the British and German Governments
+to act in combination for the suppression of the
+monopolistic <i>régime</i> in West Africa, and its fountain-head
+the Congo State. The German Colonial Society, with its
+32,000 members, has held two great meetings for this purpose,
+and has passed resolutions of the most emphatic kind,
+and at the same time is using its considerable influence to
+ensure that in the two Cameroons concessions engineered
+at the same time as the French Congo concessions and by
+the same means, trade shall be unrestricted and the native
+free to dispose of his products, to whomsoever he will.<a id="FNanchor_248" href="#Footnote_248" class="fnanchor">[248]</a> In
+that respect, Germany is trying her best to undo an initial
+error, committed under false advice, and the full consequences
+of which are now understood. In England, we are
+witnessing a happy alliance of genuine philanthropy, of
+scientific knowledge, and of commerce united in a common
+aim, testifying to the fact that there never has been a question<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_309"></a>[309]</span>
+of African politics where morality and practicability are
+so closely entwined,<a id="FNanchor_249" href="#Footnote_249" class="fnanchor">[249]</a> and if the British Press as a whole still
+lags behind, it is only fair to remember that England has but
+just emerged from a great war which has absorbed for three
+years the energies of the country. Indeed, when all the
+circumstances are considered, we should perhaps be thankful
+for the amount of attention which the Press has given to
+the subject, while maintaining the view that, in the specific
+matter of the treatment of our merchants in French Congo,
+it has displayed singular lack of foresight. In the United
+States signs are not wanting that the special responsibility
+incurred by America, which first recognised the International
+<i>status</i> of the International African Association—subsequently
+the Congo State—is beginning, now that
+the policy of the State is better known, to weigh with
+thoughtful Americans, who for many reasons ought not
+to disinterest themselves from West African affairs; and
+President Roosevelt has been appealed to, to co-operate
+with other of the signatory Powers of the Berlin Act
+to bring about a new Conference. It is to be hoped
+that the appeal will be heard. America’s position is such
+that she can act in this matter without a suspicion of
+selfish motive, and the importance of her moral support at
+this juncture cannot be over-estimated. In France, it may
+safely be asserted that the <i>élite</i> of the French official element
+in West Africa is entirely opposed to the monopolistic conception,<a id="FNanchor_250" href="#Footnote_250" class="fnanchor">[250]</a>
+that the most powerful French merchant firms are<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_310"></a>[310]</span>
+profoundly and anxiously antagonistic, and that with few
+exceptions the best-informed French writers on West
+African affairs and French local explorers (Mr. Chevalier, for
+instance) are dead against it. How, then, can we account for
+what has occurred? Very easily, I think. A grave mistake
+has been committed. It is recognised, not always publicly,
+on nearly all sides in France. But the French Government
+hesitates to admit it, and the incident of the British merchants
+intensifies the difficulty. Every French Government
+dreads the parrot-cry of being too friendly to the English,
+and no one knows better than Lord Lansdowne how that
+permanent feature in French politics hampers French statesmen.
+The influence behind the concessionnaires is still
+strong. They have still the majority of the French Colonial
+Press on their side—for reasons which need not be too
+closely inquired into; and King Leopold’s personal
+influence in Government circles (which he takes every
+opportunity of strengthening, witness, for instance, the despatch
+of a special envoy of welcome to President Loubet on
+his return from Russia), is still conspicuous, as every diplomatist
+in Europe knows. The truth is that the French
+Government is marking time. The next few months will be
+crucial ones in the history of the concession experiment.
+The concessionnaires will make a supreme effort to justify
+their existence, and to force the Government to raise a large
+standing army in the Congo to coerce the natives into collecting
+rubber. If they fail, the Government may begin to
+gently remind them that they have fulfilled none of the terms
+of the <i>cahiers de charge</i>, and if England and Germany can
+succeed in coming to a definite understanding between
+themselves and the United States, France may be only too
+glad to fall back upon a joint Conference as the best way
+out of the <i>impasse</i> into which her so-called friends, the
+Belgians, have plunged her.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_311"></a>[311]</span></p>
+
+<p>It is possible that this forecast errs on the side of optimism,
+and, in any case, it is but too obvious that the monopolists
+are very strong and have great wealth and influence at their
+back. Meanwhile all those to whom the continuation and
+growth of the Belgian conception in Africa appears as a
+virulent disease spreading wherever it can obtain a foothold,
+and to be fought without pause or rest, can best be fulfilling
+what they conceive to be their duty, by throwing more and
+more light upon the proceedings of the Congo State.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_312"></a>[312]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXX">CHAPTER XXX<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE HISTORY OF THE CONGO STATE</span></h3>
+
+<p>“At the present time the body called the International Association—however
+startling it may appear to you—is invulnerable and unassailable. All
+the armies in the world could not reach it. It is impalpable, intangible as
+air. I call it Benevolence, Charity, Philanthropy—the Spirit of Peace, good-will
+to all men—Progress. It is here amongst you to-night ... It eludes
+your armies, it mocks your best efforts; at a whisper it has disappeared and
+you cannot recall it.... The founders of the International Association have
+been called dreamers.... Men understand, or think they do, why a George
+Peabody should invest hundreds of thousands in model lodgings, or a Josiah
+Mason in an Institute.... They can understand also why an entire nation
+spent £20,000,000 to free the slaves in the West Indies.... Though they
+understand the satisfaction of a sentiment when applied to England, they are
+slow to understand that it may be a sentiment that induced King Leopold II.
+to father the International Association. He is a dreamer like his <i>confrères</i> in
+the work, because the sentiment is applied to the neglected millions of the
+Dark Continent. They cannot appreciate rightly, <i>because there are no dividends
+attaching to it</i>, this restless, ardent, vivifying, and expansive sentiment
+which seeks to extend civilising influences among the dark races, and to
+brighten up with the glow of civilisation the dark places of sad-browed
+Africa.”—Sir <span class="smcap">H. M. Stanley</span> at the London Chamber of Commerce,
+September 19, 1884.</p>
+
+<p>“Tous les pouvoirs émanent du Souverain qui les exerce par lui-même ou
+par ses délégués. Il consulte s’il le juge bon le Conseil Supérieur siégeant à
+Bruxelles. Il prend en personne les mesures les plus importantes.... Le
+Souverain manifeste sa volonté sous la forme de décrets contresignés par le
+Secrétaire d’Etat....”—<span class="smcap">M. A. J. Wauters</span>, “L’Etat Indépendant du
+Congo,” chap. xxxii., “Pouvoir législatif,” p. 433.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Legends die hard. The legend which attributes to King
+Leopold of Belgium and the Congo State a philanthropic
+motive in African affairs is still alive among us, although
+not quite to the extent that it used to be. It would have
+died long ago but for two causes, the misstatements indulged
+in by two or three well-known Englishmen and the apparent
+failure of the British Press, as a whole, to comprehend the
+<i>fons et origo mali</i> which is raising up such terrible future
+complications for Europe in Central Africa. Upon occasion<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_313"></a>[313]</span>
+one is tempted to think—and the supposition is strengthened
+by such articles as that which the <i>Times</i> recently devoted to
+the Congo annexation debate in the Belgian Chamber—that
+the curious omission to come to close quarters with the
+subject proceeds not so much from inability to see things
+as they really are, as from an unwillingness to criticise the
+Sovereign of the Congo State himself. Personalities are
+held to be bad form, especially where Royalty is concerned.
+If that be, indeed, the real explanation of the whitewashing
+of the Congo State which finds favour in many quarters,
+there is nothing to prevent the process from going on indefinitely.
+I maintain that it is utterly impossible to arrive at
+the truth, if the king’s personal responsibility in the maladministration
+of the Congo State is to be perpetually
+shelved. Why should it be? The administrative <i>régime</i> of
+the State, as M. Cattier has truly said, is an “absolute
+despotism.” No one who is acquainted with that <i>régime</i>
+believes for a moment that a Van Eetvelde, a Droogmans, a
+Liebrechts or a Cuvelier exist for any purpose than that of
+carrying out the king’s instructions and superintending the
+routine work which those instructions entail. King Leopold
+is sole master, and must bear the responsibility for the
+<i>sequelæ</i> of measures which he himself has initiated and,
+through his agents, caused to be applied. The king has
+openly and repeatedly claimed for himself this position
+before the world. He has posed, and continues to pose, as
+the regenerator of the African. He has put it on record, in
+a letter to his agents, that “his only programme is the work
+of moral and material regeneration.” He has written of the
+“results achieved” by the Congo State as being due “to the
+concentration of all my efforts in one field of action.” He
+has, throughout, loudly insisted upon the purity and unselfishness
+of his intentions. Adverse comment has been
+dismissed by him with a loftiness of tone, a simulated consciousness
+of high purpose, a dignified picturesqueness of
+expression from which it is impossible to withhold a meed
+of admiration, as in the case of a play repugnant to one’s
+sentiments but yet so excellently rendered that objection to<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_314"></a>[314]</span>
+the theme cannot blind one to the art of the performers.
+“My aim throughout life has been to find the truth and
+make the truth known to others. I have often been misunderstood
+and misrepresented, but we must not be discouraged;
+let us ever go forward in the path of duty,
+striving to let the light shine forth.” It cannot be a subject
+of complaint on the part of his Majesty or his Majesty’s
+friends if, under these circumstances, we take the Sovereign
+of the Congo State at his word; if we recognise that in the
+management of the affairs of the Congo State he has adopted
+to the uttermost the proud assertion of Louis XIV.: “<i>L’Etat:
+c’est moi</i>”; if, making due note that his declared policy has
+been the regeneration of the African Negro—a policy in the
+execution of which he shuns not publicity but only desires
+light and truth—we judge his acts and the consequences of
+those acts from the standpoint he himself has laid down.</p>
+
+<p>It is essential for our purpose to give an historical retrospect
+of the events which preceded the General Act of
+Berlin in 1885.</p>
+
+<p>On September 12, 1876, King Leopold held a conference
+in Brussels to consider the best means which could be
+devised in order to open up Central Africa to European
+civilisation. The “barbarism” of Africa had already begun
+to perturb his Majesty, who was careful to place on record
+the absolute disinterestedness of his intentions. Addressing
+the assembled scientists and explorers,<a id="FNanchor_251" href="#Footnote_251" class="fnanchor">[251]</a> King Leopold spoke
+thus: “Is it necessary for me to say that in inviting you to
+Brussels I have not been guided by egotism? No, gentlemen,
+if Belgium is small, Belgium is happy and content
+with her lot, ... but I should be pleased to think that this
+civilising movement had been inaugurated from Brussels.”
+The outcome of this conference was an “International
+Association for the exploration and civilisation of Central
+Africa.” Its professed objects were exploration, together
+with the establishment of sundry centres where explorers
+of all nationalities might refit. Committees for the collection<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_315"></a>[315]</span>
+of funds were to be established in all the countries represented,<a id="FNanchor_252" href="#Footnote_252" class="fnanchor">[252]</a>
+and an Executive Committee appointed in Brussels
+to manage the funds. King Leopold, who from the commencement
+was pursuing his own ends—as he clearly showed
+later—saw to it that the Belgian Committee should be in the
+forefront of the subscribers, and to such good purpose that
+ere long the Association came to be looked upon as a Belgian
+Organisation.</p>
+
+<p>The association first of all directed its efforts towards the
+East Coast of Africa; but when Stanley arrived home in
+January 1878, after having discovered the course of the
+Congo, the necessity of a change of policy became obvious.
+The king speedily secured Stanley’s services, a “Committee
+of Studies” for the Upper Congo was formed, and Colonel
+Strauch was despatched to the Congo as a representative of
+both the association and the committee of studies. Meanwhile
+King Leopold’s ambitions were slowly maturing,
+and the theory of an African State in which he would be
+the representative head was already shaping itself in his
+Majesty’s mind. In a letter which he wrote to Stanley,
+Colonel Strauch suggested the formation “of an independent
+confederacy of free negroes, the king, to whom the
+conception and the creation of such a confederacy would
+be due, to be president thereof.” “Our enterprise,” continued
+Colonel Strauch, “does not tend to the creation of a
+Belgian Colony, but to the establishment of a powerful
+<i>negro kingdom</i>.” This idea appears to have been sedulously
+fostered by Colonel Strauch among the European traders
+established in the Lower Congo, with results which afterwards
+became apparent. Whether it was put forward as a
+blind or not it is difficult to say. Anyhow, Stanley knocked
+it on the head. About this time France and Portugal began
+to evince uneasiness at the somewhat exclusive complexion
+which the association and the committee were beginning to
+assume, and there ensued a long intrigue in which the
+principal actors were Stanley and De Brazza. De Brazza
+forestalled Stanley on the right bank of the Congo, and<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_316"></a>[316]</span>
+Stanley checkmated De Brazza on the left bank above
+Stanley Pool. Portugal, whose explorers discovered the
+Congo’s mouth in 1484,<a id="FNanchor_253" href="#Footnote_253" class="fnanchor">[253]</a> whose treaties with the natives
+undoubtedly possessed greater validity than those concluded
+by the association’s agents, and who still retained commercial
+interests in the region, now became thoroughly alarmed,
+and endeavoured, with the assistance of Great Britain, to
+make good her claims. On February 26, 1884, a Convention
+was signed between Great Britain and Portugal, the practical
+effect of which would have been to put a stop to the expansion
+of the Association in the interior. The Convention
+was attacked at home and abroad; abroad, from various
+motives, including the fear that Great Britain’s political
+influence on the Congo would become paramount; at home,
+because, by the terms of the Convention, the right of Portugal
+to impose a moderate import tariff was recognised, and it
+was feared that this recognition might lead later on to the
+application of differential tariffs to which Portugal was
+wedded, and because the British Chambers of Commerce
+and the British Press were deluded as to the real nature of
+the International Association, which represented itself as
+devoted to free-trade principles. The Convention was
+opposed by European merchants in the Congo for the same
+reasons, backed by the belief that the aims of the Association
+tended towards the maintenance and strengthening
+of native rule, which the community of mercantile West
+African interests well knows to be the best guarantee of the
+development of legitimate trade.</p>
+
+<p>The Convention was by mutual consent abandoned. Its
+abandonment was preceded by a remarkable event, viz.
+the recognition by the United States of the Association<a id="FNanchor_254" href="#Footnote_254" class="fnanchor">[254]</a> as a
+friendly State. The king, aided by Stanley, who was still at
+that time, I believe, an American subject, had played his
+cards cleverly with General Henry S. Sandford (subsequently<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_317"></a>[317]</span>
+one of the two American representatives at the
+Berlin Conference), and the declaration sent by the former
+to the United States Government, in which he stated that
+“the International Association of the Congo hereby declares
+that by treaties with the legitimate sovereigns in the basins
+of the Congo and of the Niadi-Kwilu, and in adjacent territories
+upon the Atlantic, there has been ceded to it territory
+for the use and benefit of Free States established and being
+established,” appears to have exercised a considerable influence.
+The “Free States” appealed to American sentiment.<a id="FNanchor_255" href="#Footnote_255" class="fnanchor">[255]</a>
+Needless to say, the one thing that has not been
+created in any shape or form in the Congo is freedom either
+for native States, or native institutions, or European trade,<a id="FNanchor_256" href="#Footnote_256" class="fnanchor">[256]</a>
+and how General Sandford could have been deceived to the
+extent of penning the above despatch, in view of the
+emphatic manner in which Stanley had rejected Colonel
+Strauch’s suggestion in 1878 (which presumably General
+Sandford had in his mind, although six years had passed
+since it was made), it is hard to understand. The American
+recognition of the new status of the association was followed
+by Bismarck’s suggestion of a conference of the Powers, in
+order to set at rest the rivalries which had arisen in the
+Congo Basin. The conference first met in November 1884,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_318"></a>[318]</span>
+and subsequently in February 1885. Largely influenced by
+the decision of the United States, the Powers authorised
+their representatives to follow the lead of the American
+Government, and on August 1, 1885, King Leopold had the
+inexpressible satisfaction of notifying the Powers that the
+association would be henceforth known as the Congo Free
+State, and himself as the Sovereign of that State. In this
+manner was the evolution of King Leopold from a pure
+philanthropist to the ruler of a million square miles of
+territory in Central Africa accomplished. The king, argue
+his admirers, had come to see that patriotism was a duty
+greater even than philanthropy. The practical had outweighed
+the ideal. Very well; but as we study the next
+stage in this royal metamorphosis, let those who follow us
+remember the memorable words spoken in 1876 before the
+assembled scientists and explorers in Brussels: “Is it
+necessary for me to say that, in inviting you to Brussels, I
+have not been guided by egotism? No, gentlemen; if
+Belgium is small, Belgium is happy and content with her
+lot.”</p>
+
+<p>The Berlin Conference laid it down that no import dues
+should be established in the mouth of the Congo for twenty
+years. But in 1890 King Leopold, alleging the heavy
+expenses to which he had been put by the campaign against
+the Arabs in the Upper Congo, applied for permission to
+levy import duties. It was the first disillusionment; and
+the British Chambers of Commerce began to wonder
+whether their opposition to the Anglo-Portuguese Convention
+had not been mistaken. The king’s request was
+granted (the Powers merely reserving to themselves the right
+to revert to the original arrangement in fifteen years), but
+not without the bitter opposition of the Dutch, who had
+very important commercial interests in the Congo, backed
+by the British Chambers of Commerce and all the traders
+in the Congo, irrespective of nationality. A representative
+gathering was held in London on November 4, 1900, presided
+over by Sir Albert Rollit, to protest against the
+imposition of import duties and to denounce the hypocrisy<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_319"></a>[319]</span>
+which attributed to philanthropic motives the desire on the
+part of the Congo State so to impose them. The speakers
+at the meeting drew attention to the strange anomaly
+revealed by the sight of a monarch who, having spent
+certain sums with alleged (and loudly advertised) philanthropic
+motives, now came forward to claim repayment of
+those sums, just like an ordinary business man, but a
+business man who, having acquired a vast estate under false
+pretences, demanded from the victims the wherewithal to
+pay for its management! They quoted with telling effect
+Stanley’s speech at Manchester on October 21, 1884, given
+on behalf of the association and against the Anglo-Portuguese
+Convention, in which he declared that “the £500,000
+which it (the association) has given away to the Congo, it
+gave freely; the thousands of pounds which it may give
+annually it gives without any hope of return, further <i>than a
+sentimental satisfaction</i>.” They were able to show that—even
+then—King Leopold, notwithstanding his formal
+assurances to the commercial world that the Congo State
+would never directly or indirectly itself trade within its
+dominions, was buying, or rather stealing, ivory from the
+natives in the Upper Congo and retaining the proceeds of
+the sale on the European market. They proved that,
+profiting by the silence of the Berlin Treaty on the subject
+of export duties, the Congo State had already imposed taxes
+amounting to 17½ per cent. on ivory, 13 per cent. on rubber
+and 5 per cent. on palm-kernels, palm-oil, and ground-nuts,
+the total taxation amounting to no less than 33 per cent. of
+the value of the whole of the trade. Finally, they had no
+difficulty in demonstrating that, with all his professed wish
+to stamp out the slave-raiding carried on by the half-caste
+Arabs in the Upper Congo,<a id="FNanchor_257" href="#Footnote_257" class="fnanchor">[257]</a> his Majesty was himself tacitly
+encouraging the slave trade by receiving tribute from conquered
+chiefs in the shape of slaves, who were promptly<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_320"></a>[320]</span>
+enrolled as soldiers in the State army.<a id="FNanchor_258" href="#Footnote_258" class="fnanchor">[258]</a> The sincerity of
+King Leopold’s solicitude for the natives of Africa was in
+other respects appearing in its true colours, <i>vide</i> the letter
+of Colonel Williams, a British officer in King Leopold’s
+employ, who, in disgust at the outrages which were taking
+place on the Congo, denounced them to the king. This
+letter, from which I give the following extracts, was read at
+the conference by Mr. Philipps, representing the Manchester
+Chamber of Commerce. It ran thus:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“Your Majesty’s Government has been and is now guilty of waging
+unjust and cruel wars against natives, with the hope of securing slaves
+and women to minister to the behests of the officers of your Government.
+In such slave-hunting raids one village is armed by the State
+against the other, and the force thus secured is incorporated with the
+regular troops. I have no adequate terms with which to depict to your
+Majesty the brutal acts of your soldiers upon such raids as these. The
+soldiers who open the combat are usually the bloodthirsty cannibalistic
+Bangalas, who give no quarter to the aged grandmother or the nursing
+child at the breast of its mother. There are instances in which they
+have brought the heads of their victims to their white officers on the
+expeditionary steamers and afterwards eaten the bodies of the slain
+children.”<a id="FNanchor_259" href="#Footnote_259" class="fnanchor">[259]</a></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The history of King Leopold’s action in Central Africa
+between 1876 and 1890 may therefore be summed up as
+follows. First stage: Inauguration of a “movement” for
+the “exploration and civilisation of Africa” from motives
+(so stated) of pure philanthropy, devoid of any shade of
+personal egotism or ambition on the part of Belgium. The
+expenditure of a certain sum of money for this (alleged)
+intent. The acquisition of a certificate of high moral
+purpose. Second stage: The “movement” takes the form
+of a State, possibly an “independent confederacy of free<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_321"></a>[321]</span>
+negroes,” with the king as president. This idea is abandoned,
+and for it is substituted the theory of an “Independent
+State” administered directly by the king and his representatives.
+The theory takes root, and by the Act of Berlin
+is converted into a <i>fait accompli</i>. According to this Act, the
+king becomes sovereign of the “Congo Independent State,”
+and undertakes that the State shall grant no monopoly or
+privilege in matters of trade, shall watch over the welfare of
+the natives and shall not impose any import duties. Formal
+assurances are also given to the commercial world that the
+State will not trade on its own account, directly or indirectly.
+Third stage: The State promptly starts trading for ivory in
+the Upper Congo, and wages war against the natives by
+means of a cannibal army, raised from slaves captured in
+war and paid by the vanquished as tribute. Its agents
+begin to be accused of shocking treatment of natives.
+Fourth stage: The king asks for permission to impose
+import duties, pleading the expenses which he is incurring
+in putting down slave-raiding, and the Brussels Conference
+grants the request.</p>
+
+<p>It may, I think, be fairly argued that the “sentimental
+satisfaction” which in 1884, according to Sir H. M. Stanley,
+was all that the king required as a reward for his out-of-pocket
+expenses, had assumed a singularly practical shape
+in 1890. From a philanthropist to an ivory-trader is a long
+step.</p>
+
+<p>No sooner had the Sovereign of the Congo State obtained
+the acquiescence of the Powers in the imposition of import
+duties, which, it is almost unnecessary to say, enormously
+strengthened the international position of the State, than the
+plans which his Majesty had conceived for the development
+of what was rapidly becoming tantamount to a Belgian
+possession, manifested themselves. What were those plans
+and what were their <i>leit motif</i>? So far as the plans are
+concerned, I will come to them later. But their <i>leit motif</i>
+may be briefly stated now. To those who have studied the
+personality of King Leopold, acceptance of the philanthropic
+claim put forward by that monarch is simply impossible at<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_322"></a>[322]</span>
+any stage of his African undertaking. In any case, the
+philanthropic claim weakened with every year that passed
+after 1876. The revelations at the London meeting of
+November 4, 1890, definitely exploded it. Whoever attributed
+philanthropy to the Sovereign of the Congo State after that
+meeting was foolishly credulous, although he might still be
+honest. Whoever, being acquainted with the edicts of 1891
+and 1892, from the time those edicts were thoroughly known
+in Europe, that is to say, towards the middle of 1892, has
+endorsed the philanthropic claim must have been guilty of
+gross deceit. I would go even farther than this, and say that
+such persons have been guilty of conniving and inducing
+the public to connive at a crime which has been steadily
+growing ever since, in the extent and heinousness of its
+criminality; a crime for which Europe will yet pay
+dearly.</p>
+
+<p>King Leopold found himself in 1885 possessed of an
+enormous territory, in the acquirement of which he had
+expended a certain sum as an investment. Not being a
+philanthropist; but, on the contrary, a very shrewd man of
+business, his next thought was how to get his capital back—with
+interest. By throwing open the Congo to legitimate
+commerce; by encouraging and facilitating the trade of all
+nations as he solemnly undertook to do; by pursuing a
+common-sense policy towards the natives, the Sovereign of
+the Congo State might have recovered the original capital
+he had sunk on the Congo, and even have realised a fair
+percentage upon it. At the same time he would have laid
+the foundations of a peaceful and commercially prosperous
+colony <i>for Belgium</i>, a colony with vast resources, a magnificent
+river system and unlimited future possibilities. That would
+have been true patriotism, and the ends attained might have
+justified the not very honourable means employed. King
+Leopold preferred to adopt another course, which has led
+him from illegality to violence, and from violence to barbarism.
+The king’s intention all through was to recoup
+himself for his expenditure at the earliest possible moment.
+So much for the <i>leit motif</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_323"></a>[323]</span></p>
+
+<p>The measures adopted by his Majesty to bring about this
+desired result were as follows: Five months after the
+termination of the Berlin Conference, King Leopold issued
+a decree (July 1885), whereby the State asserted rights of
+proprietorship over all vacant lands throughout the Congo
+territory. It was intended that the term “vacant lands”
+should apply in the broadest sense to lands not actually
+occupied by the natives at the time the decree was issued.
+By successive decrees, promulgated in 1886, 1887 and 1888,
+the king reduced the rights of the natives in their land to
+the narrowest limits, with the result that the whole of the odd
+1,000,000 square miles assigned to the Congo State, except
+such infinitesimal proportions thereof as were covered by
+native villages or native farms, became <i>terres domaniales</i>.
+On October 17, 1889, the king also issued a decree ordering
+merchants to limit their commercial operations in rubber to
+bartering with the natives. This decree was interesting
+merely as a forewarning of what came later, because at that
+time the rubber trade was very small. In July 1890, the
+same year as the Brussels Conference, the Congo State
+went a step farther. A decree issued in that month confirmed
+all that was advanced in November of the same
+year by the speakers at the London Conference, held to
+protest against the imposition of import dues by the State.
+By its terms King Leopold asserted that the State was
+entitled to trade on its own account in ivory—the first open
+violation of his pledges. Moreover, the decree imposed
+sundry extra taxes upon all ivory bought by merchants from
+the natives; which, since the State had become itself a
+trading concern, constituted an equally direct violation of
+the Berlin Act, by establishing differential treatment in
+matters of trade. Such were the plans King Leopold made,
+preparatory to obtaining from the Powers the power to
+impose import duties.<a id="FNanchor_260" href="#Footnote_260" class="fnanchor">[260]</a> Everything was ready for the great<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_324"></a>[324]</span>
+<i>coup</i>, which should also inaugurate the fifth stage of his
+Majesty’s African policy.</p>
+
+<p>The Brussels Conference met. The Powers with inconceivable
+fatuity allowed themselves to be completely hoodwinked,
+and within a year the greatest injury perpetrated
+upon the unfortunate natives of Africa since the Portuguese
+in the fifteenth century conceived the idea of expatriating
+them for labour purposes had been committed, and committed,
+too, by a monarch who had not ceased for fifteen
+years to pose as their self-appointed regenerator! On
+September 21, 1891, King Leopold drafted in secret a decree
+which he caused to be forwarded to the Commissioners of
+the State in the Ubanghi-Welle and Aruwimi-Welle districts,
+and to the chiefs of the military expeditions operating in the
+Upper Ubanghi district. This decree never having been
+published in the official Bulletin of the State, its exact terms
+can only be a matter of conjecture; but we know that it
+instructed the officials to whom it was addressed “to take
+urgent and necessary measures to preserve the fruits of the
+Domain to the State, especially ivory and rubber.” By
+“fruits of the Domain,” King Leopold meant the products
+of the soil throughout the “vacant lands” which he had
+attributed to himself, as already explained, by the decree of
+1885. The king’s instructions were immediately followed,
+and three circulars, dated respectively Bangala, December 15,
+1891, Basankusu, May 8, 1892, and Yakoma, February 14,
+1892, were issued by the officials in question. Circular
+No. 1 forbade the natives to hunt elephants unless they
+brought the tusks to the State’s officers. Circular No. 2
+forbade the natives to collect rubber unless they brought it to
+the State’s officers. Circular No. 3 forbade the natives to
+collect either ivory or rubber unless they brought the articles<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_325"></a>[325]</span>
+to the State’s officers, and added that “merchants purchasing
+such articles from the natives, whose right to collect them
+the State only recognised provided that they were brought to
+it, would be looked upon as receivers of stolen goods and
+denounced to the judicial authorities.”</p>
+
+<p>Thus did the Sovereign of the Congo State avail himself
+of the additional prestige conferred upon him by the
+Brussels Conference. He did not obtain his own way
+entirely, because the years which had elapsed since the
+Berlin Conference had witnessed the creation of a powerful
+group of Belgian trading companies, presided over by
+one Colonel Thys, who afterwards brought the construction
+of the railway which unites the Lower to the Upper Congo to
+a successful termination, and who is now probably the
+largest land-owner in Africa. These companies were doing
+a large trade in rubber and ivory with the natives. They
+were well organised, and the man at their head was both
+capable and fearless. The companies invoked the Act of
+Berlin, protested against its gross infringement by the State,
+dwelt largely upon the sacredness of free trade and native
+rights, pleaded for Belgium and the world at large; and,
+finding these considerations insufficient, violently attacked
+the king himself with the avowed intention of forcing him
+to abdicate his “sovereignty” on the Congo. It is useless
+to detail the process of an agitation which, if it did nothing
+else, showed up in lurid colours how much the patriotism of
+the King of the Belgians was subordinated to the egotism of
+the Sovereign of the Congo State. The upshot of it was
+that the king squared the colonel, and the commercial
+companies of the Rue Bréderode group, as they are familiarly
+designated, were induced to keep silence by the grant
+of a trading monopoly over a very large area where they
+would be free to carry on their business unmolested. His
+resolute adversary being thus disposed of, the king forthwith
+issued a decree, dated October 1892, by which he
+defined the limits of his <i>terres domaniales</i>, and crowned
+the policy he had ever steadily pursued by creating for<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_326"></a>[326]</span>
+himself in Central Africa a vast preserve, a <i>Domaine
+Privé</i>, from which he might draw unlimited resources
+with a view to his own personal enrichment. The extent
+of this preserve cannot cover less than 800,000 square
+miles.<a id="FNanchor_261" href="#Footnote_261" class="fnanchor">[261]</a> The summit of King Leopold’s ambition had been
+attained.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_327"></a>[327]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXI">CHAPTER XXXI<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE <i>DOMAINE PRIVÉ</i></span></h3>
+
+<p>“Our only programme, I am anxious to repeat, is the work of moral and
+material regeneration.”—Extract from a published letter of his Majesty King
+<span class="smcap">Leopold II.</span>, King of the Belgians, Sovereign of the Congo Free State.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It is to be regretted that writers who, from time to time,
+call attention to the terrible maladministration prevailing in
+the Congo State do not, as a rule, strive to bring its <i>causa
+causans</i> clearly before the public. The main issue becomes
+too often imbedded in a mass of surplus detail, and the
+bewildered individual searching for light gropes about in
+despair with an eternal query on his lips—“Why?” Why
+these atrocities which have been attested by dozens of
+honourable men<a id="FNanchor_262" href="#Footnote_262" class="fnanchor">[262]</a>—atrocities which the Congo State
+Administration has long ceased to deny, and now merely
+attempts to minimise; atrocities of which every mail from the
+Congo brings additional proof?<a id="FNanchor_263" href="#Footnote_263" class="fnanchor">[263]</a> Why this callous ferocity
+which appears at first sight to have in it naught but incoherence
+and downright stupidity, which seems so monstrous
+as to be almost incredible, and yet is vouched for, not only
+by travellers and missionaries who have witnessed its effects,
+not only by those who are in a position to guarantee the
+authenticity of information received from persons unwilling<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_328"></a>[328]</span>
+to allow their names to appear through fear of jeopardising
+their means of livelihood, but by the actual perpetrators,
+who, not without reason—although this excuse cannot
+shield them from execration—throw the responsibility
+upon the system whose servants they have been? Where
+is the underlying motive of it all? The answer to the query
+is, the <i>Domaine Privé</i>. When you have learnt what the
+<i>Domaine Privé</i> is, what it means, what it involves, what it
+necessitates, what it renders inevitable, the story is told and
+everything is explained.</p>
+
+<p>In the first place, let these main facts be borne well in
+mind. The vast territories of the <i>Domaine Privé</i> have for
+eleven years been absolutely closed to legitimate private
+enterprise. Trade, which in Central Africa means the
+exchange of European merchandise for raw products, does
+not exist therein. The native living within these territories
+has been deprived by Royal Decree of his rights as a land-owner.
+Property held for centuries by well-defined native
+laws, vested in particular families and tribes, has been
+appropriated without consulting the interested parties, let
+alone compensating them. With the deprivation of his
+land the native has been dispossessed of the fruits thereof;
+the rubber growing so luxuriously in his forests he may (by
+decree) only gather for the State—we will see presently how
+the “may” becomes “must”; the ivory stacked about his
+villages is no longer his, but another’s; the elephants which
+roam about his country and damage his plantations he can
+incur the physical peril of destroying, but may not reap the
+reward to which he is thereby entitled, for the tusks of the
+slain beast do not, according to Royal Decree, belong to
+him. Since he cannot dispose of his produce, which is his
+wealth and also his currency; since he has lost his rights in
+his own land; since he cannot even hunt the wild beast
+which provides him with the wherewithal to make horns for
+war and the chase, armlets and anklets for his wives, ornaments
+for his habitation, he is no longer a free agent, but
+has become <i>de facto</i> a serf. In theory, then, the decrees
+of September 1891 and October 1892 made of the native<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_329"></a>[329]</span>
+throughout the <i>Domaine Privé</i> a serf. In theory a serf he
+remained for a little while. But as the grip of Africa’s
+regenerator tightened upon the <i>Domaine Privé</i>, as the drilled
+and officered army, armed with repeating-rifles, gradually
+grew and grew until it was larger than the native forces kept
+up by any of the great Powers of Europe on African soil,<a id="FNanchor_264" href="#Footnote_264" class="fnanchor">[264]</a>
+as the radius of the rubber taxes was extended, as portions
+of the country began to be farmed out to so-called “companies,”
+whose agents were also officials of the king; the
+native of the <i>Domaine Privé</i> became a serf not in theory
+only but in fact, ground down, exploited, forced to collect
+rubber at the bayonet’s point, compelled to pay onerous
+tribute to men whose salaries depend upon the produce
+returns from their respective stations—the punishment for
+disobedience, slothfulness, or inability to comply with
+demands ever growing in extortion, being anything from
+mutilation to death, accompanied by the destruction of
+villages and crops.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Domaine Privé</i> is “worked” in two ways. The
+country is vaguely divided into districts, and the business
+of the <i>Commissaires</i> of districts, and their agents and sub-agents,
+is to collect <i>impôts de nature</i>, the taxes in kind, which
+the king levies. There is no limit to this taxation. The
+<i>Commissaires</i> are told to “devote all their energies to the
+harvesting of rubber,” but at the same time to proceed “<i>as
+far as possible</i> by persuasion rather than force.” The
+purport of the instructions maybe briefly summed up thus:
+“Obtain all the rubber and ivory you can; your future
+advancement depends upon your energy.”<a id="FNanchor_265" href="#Footnote_265" class="fnanchor">[265]</a> Of course, this<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_330"></a>[330]</span>
+<i>régime</i> in a country like Africa, where the native is not
+obliged to “work” in order to live, would be so much
+beating of the air, if force were not used to give it practical
+effect. King Leopold understood that well enough, and, to
+use the expression of a French Colonial writer of repute—M.
+Pierre Mille—“the basis of the king’s economic policy
+has been the formation of an army sufficiently strong
+to force the natives to pay the rubber and ivory tax.”
+A large army, chiefly recruited from the Bangalas and
+Batetlas—both cannibal tribes—was raised, and when not
+engaged in rebelling against its officers, it has proved only
+too well its value.</p>
+
+<p>Side by side with the enforcement of the <i>impôts de nature</i>,
+King Leopold bethought him of another scheme whereby
+to increase his revenue, and, at the same time, to throw dust
+in the eyes of European public opinion, by professing to
+sanction private enterprise in the <i>Domaine Privé</i>. His
+Majesty took to farming out portions of his domain to
+certain financiers with whom it suited him to keep on good
+terms. “Companies” were formed, in which the State
+retained a half interest. These companies are supposed to
+obtain the rubber and ivory they ship home in such large
+quantities by barter; but as more often than not the king’s
+officials and the companies’ agents are the same persons, and
+as the companies have the assistance of the <i>Force Publique</i>
+(or permission to raise their own forces) to facilitate their<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_331"></a>[331]</span>
+commercial operations,<a id="FNanchor_266" href="#Footnote_266" class="fnanchor">[266]</a> we may judge of the amount of
+legitimate barter trade which is carried on. There are six
+of these companies<a id="FNanchor_267" href="#Footnote_267" class="fnanchor">[267]</a> in existence. The first group of five
+consists of the <i>Société Anversoise du Commerce au Congo, the
+Abir, the Compagnie du Lomami, the Comptoir Commercial Congolais,
+and the Société Générale Africaine</i>. The State holds
+half the shares of the <i>Abir</i> and half the shares of the <i>Société
+Anversoise</i>. It has no shares in the <i>Comptoir Congolais</i>, but
+receives 50 per cent. of the profits. Its arrangement with
+the <i>Compagnie du Lomami</i> is, I believe, on the same lines as
+that with the <i>Comptoir Commercial Congolais</i>; and with the
+<i>Société Générale Africaine</i> on the same lines as the <i>Abir</i>
+and <i>Anversoise</i>. The <i>Société</i>, or rather <i>Comité Spécial du
+Katanga</i>, is also a <i>Domaine Privé</i> company, but under a
+somewhat different form. One-third of the profits of the
+latter institution go to the Thys group of companies and
+two-thirds to the State. The principal officials of the
+<i>Comité Spécial du Katanga</i>—the sixth <i>Domaine Privé</i> company—are
+Messrs. Droogmans (president and Secrétaire-Général),
+Arnold, De Keyser, and Lombard. All these men
+are highly-placed officials of the State. Droogmans is the
+Minister of Finance, Arnold is director of the Domaine,
+director of Agriculture, and of “Central book-keeping”;
+De Keyser is a director of the Finance Department, and
+Lombard is a director of the Department of the Interior.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Société Anversoise du Commerce au Congo</i> being a
+typical representative, we may examine its condition. It
+was formed in August 1892 under Belgian law, but reconstructed
+in January 1898 under Congo law—quite a unique
+jurisprudence, of which it may be said <i>summum jus summa
+injuria</i>—with a capital of 1,700,000 francs divided into 3400
+shares of 500 francs each. King Leopold has conferred
+upon this company some 12,000 square miles situated in<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_332"></a>[332]</span>
+the Mongalla district. Within that large area, of course, no
+one has the right to enter; in that particular, the Mongalla
+district resembles every other portion of the Congo <i>Free</i>
+State above Leopoldville, in the sense of being a monopoly
+within a monopoly. The administrative seat of the <i>Anversoise</i>
+is 104 Rempart des Béguines, Antwerp; its principal
+headquarters in Africa are at Mobeka. Its president is M. A.
+de Browne de Tiège, nominated under the constitution of
+the company by the king himself. M. de Browne de Tiège is
+the king’s principal financial adviser in Congo affairs, and
+has several times lent moneys to the State. He has a seat
+in the House. The administrators are Baron Goffinet,<a id="FNanchor_268" href="#Footnote_268" class="fnanchor">[268]</a> Ed.
+Bunge, and C. de Browne de Tiège; the “Commissaire” is
+Count Emile le Grelle. The original shareholders are: the
+Congo State, 1700 shares; A. de Browne de Tiège, 1100 shares;
+Bunge &amp; Co., 100 shares; E. P. Grisar, 130 shares; Deyman
+&amp; Druart, 100 shares—which accounts for 3130 out of the
+3400. No one with even a superficial knowledge of Belgian
+society need be told of the relations between the king and
+Baron Goffinet, Count le Grelle and E. P. Grisar. The net
+profits for the four years 1897-1900 have been: 1897,
+120,697 francs; 1898, 3,968,832 francs; 1899, 3,083,976;
+1900, 84,333, or say a profit in four years of 7,275,838 francs.
+The “State’s” holdings being 50 per cent., its share in the
+profits would be proportionate. At this point it may be
+well to remark that the inspired utterances which from
+time to time appear in the British Press, dated from
+Brussels, to the effect that the Sovereign of the Congo State
+does not hold a single share in these companies, constitute,
+of course, a polite fiction. In all matters affecting the
+<i>Domaine Privé</i> the State is the King. The <i>Domaine Privé</i>,
+let it be reaffirmed once again, is the king’s property and
+his alone. The shares of the <i>Société Anversoise</i> have stood as<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_333"></a>[333]</span>
+high as 13,730 francs (March 1900), which for a 500-franc
+share is sufficiently alluring. At that figure, which can be
+easily verified by the sceptical, his Majesty’s 1700 shares
+were worth over 23,000,000 francs, or say £933,000. During
+the last two years, outbreaks in the Mongalla district have
+been so numerous that the profits of the company have
+fallen somewhat.</p>
+
+<p>The performances of this particular offshoot of King
+Leopold’s <i>Domaine Privé</i> have been worthy of the regenerating
+nature of the Congo State rule. In 1900, one or two
+of its agents confessed to killing, by order, 150 natives,
+cutting off 60 hands, crucifying women and children, and
+impaling the sexual remains of slaughtered males on the
+stockade of the villages whose inhabitants were slow in
+gathering rubber! “<i>Les scandales de la Mongalla</i>” led to
+stormy debates in the Belgian Chamber on July 16 and 17 of
+last year. It may not be out of place to recall their nature.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“July 17.—<span class="smcap">M. Vandervelde</span>: We are not anti-colonial in principle....
+But we are adversaries of a capitalist colonial policy which entails
+exploitation, theft, and assassination.... You dare not, in the name
+of Christian morality, defend the exploitation of the <i>Domaine Privé</i>....
+Rubber and ivory represent 93 per cent. of the exports.... The
+<i>Domaine Privé</i> produces much more than the budgetary returns. How
+are these extraordinary results obtained?... The Congo State has
+introduced forced labour, tribute, paid in kind, and a twelve years’
+military service.... We protest against this disguised form
+of slavery. (Applause.) The greatest names in England and
+Germany have condemned this system. The premiums given to Congolese
+agents have been repudiated by the honest ones amongst them.
+(<span class="smcap">M. de Browne de Tiège</span> interrupts.) M. de Browne de Tiège, who is
+interested in Congo affairs, must be admirably posted in the Mongalla
+lawsuit, which revealed acts of cruelty in his very own district.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">M. de Browne de Tiège</span>: It is false.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">M. Maroille</span>: No doubt; like the stories of the severed hands.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">M. Lorand</span>: It is so true that, as a result of what I have stated
+here, the particular officer whom I challenged to deny the facts has
+written giving me information, in which he admits that these ‘war
+trophies’ were brought in. That is Congo civilisation! On all sides
+war, massacres, crimes continue there. How can you possibly defend
+these things?</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">M. Furnemont</span>: On the coat-of-arms of the city of Antwerp figure<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_334"></a>[334]</span>
+cut hands. M. de Browne, who inhabits Antwerp, no doubt considers
+the emblem very appropriate....</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">M. de Smet de Naeyer</span> (Belgian Premier): The exploitation of the
+<i>Domaine Privé</i> is conformable with jurisprudence.... People criticise
+tribute paid in kind (<i>prestations de nature</i>). Do they not exist to a certain
+extent in Belgium? Why suspect the Congo State of cruelty?</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">M. Lorand</span>: We are entitled to do so. Remember the 1300 severed
+hands.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">M. de Smet de Naeyer</span>: Faults have certainly been committed,
+but the State is applying itself to their disappearance. The disinterestedness
+of the creators of the Congo State will find its reward in the
+gratitude of the country....</p>
+
+<p>“July 18.—<span class="smcap">M. Lorand</span>: Your colonial policy is analogous to the
+crimes mentioned in Article 125 of the Penal Code; it is a policy of
+devastation, pillage, and assassination. [The speaker (I quote from
+the Parliamentary report of the Belgian papers of that date) then read
+some correspondence published in the Antwerp newspaper <i>La Métropole</i>,
+in which a series of executions, murders, and expeditions against the
+Bundjas are mentioned.] ‘Are we,’ he continues, ‘to have another
+edition of the severed hands incident?’</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">M. de Browne de Tiège</span>: That is not the question.</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">M. Lorand</span>: Indeed. But it happens precisely to be the question.
+(<span class="smcap">M. de Browne de Tiège</span> interrupts.)</p>
+
+<p>“<span class="smcap">M. Vandervelde</span>: Your interest, M. de Browne, is so direct a one
+in this matter that you might refrain from any participation in this
+debate.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The cutting-off of hands item is a constantly recurring
+charge. I have in my possession at the present moment a
+photograph from the Upper Congo of three natives, a
+woman and two boys; the woman and one of the boys have
+their right hands severed at the wrist, the other boy has
+both hands severed. The correspondent who sent it me—and
+whom I know to be an honourable man—saw the
+victims himself, and was satisfied that soldiers of the State
+were the culprits. I fully believe him, but the photograph,
+of course, does not prove it.<a id="FNanchor_269" href="#Footnote_269" class="fnanchor">[269]</a></p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp56" id="illus36" style="max-width: 32.8125em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/illus36.jpg" alt="">
+  <figcaption class="caption"><p>THE VICTIM OF A RUBBER RAID</p>
+
+<p>A LIVING ILLUSTRATION OF THE “MAIN COUPÉES” DEBATES IN THE BELGIAN
+CHAMBER. THE BOY HERE PHOTOGRAPHED IS NOW CARED FOR
+BY A BRITISH MISSIONARY IN THE UPPER CONGO</p></figcaption>
+</figure>
+
+<p>In November last, an American ex-agent of the <i>Société
+Anversoise</i>, Mr. Canisuis, who served for some time under the
+amiable ex-Major Lothaire, who, as already stated, was appointed
+Director in Africa of this company <i>after</i> the murder<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_335"></a>[335]</span>
+of Stokes, in a Press interview said: “Last year I was on a
+rubber expedition with Major Lothaire, and during the six
+weeks it lasted 900 natives were killed and scores of villages
+were burnt.”</p>
+
+<p>According to this gentleman, the natives receive the equivalent
+of one penny per pound of rubber, paid in merchandise
+valued at 100 per cent. above cost price. We knew that
+before. As things go in the Congo State, that particular
+rate of pay is even generous. But you cannot get rubber
+in Africa at even the munificent sum of one penny per
+pound, and sell it in Europe from 3s. to 4s. per pound, without
+those gently persuasive methods which find favour in
+quarters where the “regenerating” instinct is properly
+developed!</p>
+
+<p>I trust I shall not be unduly troubling my readers if I
+pass another of King Leopold’s <i>Domaine Privé</i> companies
+under review. It is not my fault that the whitewash has
+been laid on so thickly, and the process of scraping is bound
+to take some little time—and, from the author’s point of
+view, no little trouble. What company could be better
+singled out than the <i>Abir</i>, the most powerfully equipped of
+all—the “Queen” of Congo companies as it has been called?
+Originally the Anglo-Belgian India Rubber Company,
+founded in August 1892, and in which Colonel North was
+at one time largely interested, it was, like the <i>Anversoise</i>, reconstructed
+under “Congo law” in 1898 with a capital of
+1,000,000 francs, divided into 2000 shares without designation
+of value, “giving right of 1/2000 of the <i>avoir social</i>.”
+King Leopold has conferred upon this company the monopoly
+of exploitation in the Lopori and Maringa districts of
+the <i>Domaine Privé</i>. The administrative seat of the <i>Abir</i> is
+48 Rempart Klipdorp, Antwerp; its headquarters in Africa
+are at Bassankusu. The President is M. A. van den Nest;
+administrators, A. Mols and Count H. van de Burgh; <i>Commissaires</i>,
+Jules Stappers and F. Reiss; Director, Ch. de
+Wael; Director in Africa, Ch. Sterckmans. I am under
+the impression that the British interests in the company
+ceased when it ceased to be a company in the ordinary<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_336"></a>[336]</span>
+acceptation of the term, viz. in 1898, as aforesaid. At any
+rate, I can find none but Belgian shareholders in the documents
+I have been able to obtain. First and foremost
+comes the Congo State with its 50 per cent., viz. 1000
+shares, the inevitable M. A. de Browne de Tiège being
+<i>mandataire</i> for the State; then M. A. de Browne de Tiège
+has 60 shares in his own name, and M. C. de Browne de
+Tiège 50, while our old friend the <i>Société Anversoise</i> has 150
+shares represented by M. de Browne de Tiège, President,
+and M. Bunge, Administrator; Bunge &amp; Co. (whom we
+have seen hold 100 shares in the <i>Anversoise</i>) have 50 shares;
+other shareholders are Alexis Mols, Charles de Wael, F. Reiss,
+&amp;c.<a id="FNanchor_270" href="#Footnote_270" class="fnanchor">[270]</a> I have used the word <i>clique</i> to describe the handful
+of persons who are running the Congo State (and as much
+more of Africa as they can lay hands on) with the king as
+Managing Director. It is an appropriate term, as the particulars
+given for these two “Companies” show. I may add
+that M. A. van den Nest, President of the <i>Abir</i>, is the original
+holder of 120 shares in the <i>Comptoir Commercial Congolais</i>, of
+which company M. Alexis Mols is President, while Messrs.
+Charles de Wael and F. Reiss are also holders, the one to
+the extent of 100, the other to the extent of 60 shares.<a id="FNanchor_271" href="#Footnote_271" class="fnanchor">[271]</a>
+Baron Goffinet’s name crops up again in the <i>Lomami</i>,<a id="FNanchor_272" href="#Footnote_272" class="fnanchor">[272]</a> and
+so it goes on.<a id="FNanchor_273" href="#Footnote_273" class="fnanchor">[273]</a> These men are the king’s bodyguard. I
+know nothing of them personally. They may in private life
+be the most blameless of men, but the extraordinary thing is
+that Europe should be content to allow 1,000,000 square
+miles of African territory to be run by this <i>clique</i> with its<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_337"></a>[337]</span>
+royal head, entirely for their own ends, and to fill their
+own pockets! Why, in the name of common sense and
+common decency, should hundreds, if not thousands, of
+natives of Africa be slain annually on account of this <i>clique</i>?
+It would be grotesque, were it not so horrible; so monstrous
+as to seem more like a nightmare than a reality.</p>
+
+<p>But to return to the <i>Abir</i>. Its net profits in 1897 were
+1,247,455 francs; in 1898, 2,482,697 francs; in 1899,
+2,692,063 francs. The figures for 1900 I am unable to give,
+I regret to say. In 1901 the net working profits (<i>bénéfices
+nets d’exploitation</i>) were 2,455,182 francs, and the “profit
+and loss account” was closed with 2,614,370 to the good.
+A dividend<a id="FNanchor_274" href="#Footnote_274" class="fnanchor">[274]</a> of 900 francs was declared on each share, and
+“the State” being the possessor of 1000 shares, it follows
+that its august Sovereign raked in the nice little sum of
+900,000 francs, or say £36,000, for one year’s working of this
+eminently satisfactory “subsidiary” of the <i>Domaine Privé</i>.
+In four years the <i>Abir’s</i> net profits amounted, therefore, to
+8,877,397 francs, nearly nine times as much as its total capital!
+In June 1899 the shares stood at 17,900 francs per share, and
+the total value on the Antwerp Stock Exchange of this concern,
+whose capital is one million, was 35,800,000 francs!
+But since that date the shares have been up to over 25,000
+francs per share! In June of this year they had fallen to a
+little over 11,000 francs per share. For a considerable time
+past they have been quoted <i>in tenths</i>; that is to say, one-tenth
+shares are bought and sold, and give rise to a great deal of
+speculation on the Bourse. Imagine the fortune which a
+holder of 1000 <i>full</i> shares has had the opportunity of making
+during the last few years! Those 1000 shares, at 25,000
+francs per share, were worth a million sterling! What it is
+to be a royal rubber merchant in the Congo!</p>
+
+<p>It will have been noticed that the shares of the <i>Abir</i> have
+dropped. The fact is that there have been “indiscretions,”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_338"></a>[338]</span>
+and several Belgian newspapers published in October of
+last year some unpleasant details with regard to the circumstances
+under which these enormous stocks of rubber find
+their way to Europe. Amongst other revelations published—all
+of which purported to come from “a most honourable
+and esteemed agent” of the <i>Abir</i>—were the following:
+(1) In September 1897, the whole of the Upper Bolombo
+country was devastated (“<i>mis à feu et à sang</i>”) by the Dikila
+factory to compel the natives, with whom contact had not
+before been established, to make rubber. (2) “On Aug. 24,
+1900, I met at Boyela two young women, one of whom
+was <i>enceinte</i>, with their right hands cut off. They told me
+they belonged to the village of Bossombo, and that the
+soldiers of the white man of Boyela had cut off their hands,
+because their master did not produce enough rubber!”
+These statements appear to have had the effect of depreciating
+the market value of the shares. But, really, the
+“bulls” might have been prepared for them. Possibly,
+they had not read the evidence given a year before by
+M. de Lamothe, ex-Governor of French Congo, before the
+Commission of Colonial Concessions held in Paris. M. de
+Lamothe, who had just returned from five months’ sojourn
+in the Upper Congo, remarked in the course of his deposition
+that:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“The Belgians have recently had insurrections in their territory. It
+is but right to add, however, that they sometimes make use of proceedings
+towards the natives that Frenchmen would never use.... The <i>Abir</i>,
+for instance, possesses a considerable territory and has even police rights
+(<i>sic</i>) over the natives. From that point of view the rights which its
+charter confers upon it are exaggerated. <i>Its agents have applied this so
+well that they have succeeded in inducing 30,000 natives to leave their territory
+and take refuge on the French bank of the Congo.</i>”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Is it necessary to plunge yet deeper into this garbage of
+human villany and greed? The entire system is based
+upon terrorism. No man in his senses can really believe
+otherwise. A volume might be filled with misdeeds which
+since the days of Cortès and Pizarro have never been
+equalled, much less surpassed. The habitual <i>modus operandi</i><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_339"></a>[339]</span>
+in the Mongalla territory was tersely put by one of the agents
+of the <i>Anversoise</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“When natives bring rubber to a factory they are received by the
+agent surrounded by soldiers. The baskets are weighed. If they do
+not contain the 5 kilos. required the native receives 100 blows with a
+<i>chicotte</i>.<a id="FNanchor_275" href="#Footnote_275" class="fnanchor">[275]</a> Those whose baskets attain the correct weight receive a piece
+of cloth, or some other object. If a certain village contains, say, 100
+male inhabitants (a census is always taken of the village before operations
+begin) and only fifty come to the factory with rubber, they are
+retained as hostages, and a force is despatched to shoot (<i>sic</i>) the fifty
+recalcitrant natives and burn their village.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>There are some districts which do not produce rubber:
+such a district, for instance, as the Bangala country proper,
+where hardly any rubber grows. Let it not be imagined
+that the people of that district are the gainers thereby. They
+are not subject, it is true, to either the rubber tribute or the
+rubber-collecting operations of the <i>Domaine Privé</i> companies.
+But their lot is little better for all that. The Bangala country
+is one of the great recruiting centres of the State for its
+army.<a id="FNanchor_276" href="#Footnote_276" class="fnanchor">[276]</a> The Bangalas are cannibals, and good fighters. It
+is also a victualling centre for the State posts. A great deal
+of information has been reaching me from this district of
+late. It may be usefully epitomised. First, as to the recruiting.
+The method adopted is this: A general order is sent
+from Boma to the Commissaires of Districts to the effect
+that so many recruits must be sent down. Each Commissaire
+then sets to work to obtain recruits. There is no
+system in the demands. Towns are dropped on according
+to the whim of the Commissaire. A particular village is
+summoned to supply a certain number of young men. The
+summons is rarely communicated by a white officer: almost
+invariably by native soldiers. The summons once made, it
+has to be obeyed, or the usual punishment is meted out.
+Nevertheless there has, upon occasion, been active opposition
+to this forced recruiting. There is always passive
+opposition. Both men and women object and complain<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_340"></a>[340]</span>
+very bitterly, but they have to submit. Mothers, wives, and
+relatives have been seen crying and protesting against their
+children, husbands, and relatives being sent away as recruits,
+for very few ever return; which is not astonishing, seeing that
+they serve twelve years. Secondly, as to the victualling-tax.
+Every month, and sometimes every fortnight, goats, fowls,
+palm-oil, eggs, and cassava bread have to be supplied to the
+State troops. The burden is increasingly heavy, because
+since it was first assessed the population has very much
+decreased. When accused of extortion the State replies that
+it pays for its produce. It does pay, at about one-twentieth
+of the market value. The natives have not infrequently to
+purchase produce themselves, in order to meet the demands
+of the State, which they are compelled to dispose of to the
+State soldiers at a much lower price than they have paid
+themselves:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“Every two or three miles a sentry, with a subordinate or two, and
+two or three servants from the locality, are stationed. It is part of the
+sentry’s duty to see that the tax is taken up regularly, and if he does
+not do so he is severely reprimanded by his chief. Now a keen-witted
+soldier will see to it that he is not reprimanded, and an unprincipled
+soldier will do anything to the people to wring the tax out of them,
+rather than run the risk of being a marked man in the Commissaire’s
+book.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The oppression and misery which ensue can be imagined.
+The result of this double pressure for men and foodstuffs has
+been, naturally, to bring about a great decrease in the population.
+A correspondent who knows the Bangala country well,
+tells me that between 1890 and 1895 there was no perceptible
+decrease in the population. The taxes were first levied in
+the latter year, and in five years (1895-1900) there has been
+a reduction of one-half of the population. This appalling
+ratio of reduction is partly to be accounted for by the fact
+that sleeping sickness is endemic in the country, and that the
+withdrawal of the strongest and most virile elements of the
+population to serve in the army is naturally followed by a
+decline in the birth-rate. Those that are left have “the
+heart wrung out of them” by the food-tax. The people
+along the river are fast dying out, and the State “is forcing<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_341"></a>[341]</span>
+the backwood folks to start towns on the river the better to
+exploit them.” In one relatively small area my correspondent
+says, “Since 1890, one town half a mile long has
+disappeared; another, a quarter of a mile long, has also gone;
+and up a creek where there were 1500 people, there are
+scarcely 400 now.”</p>
+
+<p>So long as Europe tolerates the <i>Domaine Privé</i>, so long
+will these things be—just as long as the regenerator of
+Africa and his friends can make money out of their philanthropic
+undertaking and can count upon dishonest, interested,
+or infatuated friends in Europe to throw dust in
+the eyes of the public.</p>
+
+<p>There is one other feature of this unsavoury business
+which must be gone into before we can close the chapter
+on the <i>native</i> aspect of Congo State rule. The Congo State
+invariably attempts to wriggle out of the responsibility for
+these horrors, by attributing their perpetration to the
+“excesses” of individual agents; and M. Jules Houdret, the
+Consul-General of the Congo State for England, had the
+effrontery the other day to point to the punishment of some
+of the <i>Anversoise’s</i> people as affording a justification for the
+State’s claim to be what it professes, viz. solicitous of the
+welfare of the natives! It is a barefaced attempt to bamboozle
+public opinion, as impudent as the proposal made
+by the representatives of the Congo State at the Mansion
+House meeting last May to “inquire” into specific acts of
+cruelty brought forward. We know what these “punishments”
+mean. Occasionally, with a grand flourish of
+trumpets, the State announces that an agent has been
+punished. The announcement generally follows each fresh
+crop of revelations. One or two sub-agents are, for the time
+being, made scapegoats, and everything goes on as before.
+How could it be otherwise when the <span class="allsmcap">SYSTEM ITSELF</span> is what
+it has been shown to be? The time has gone by when the
+public can be deceived by these sophistries, by these perpetual
+and frivolous excuses and denials.</p>
+
+<p>The edicts of the Congo State administration, coupled
+with certain material facts as to which there can be no<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_342"></a>[342]</span>
+dispute, show the main factors, if one may say so, of the
+system of African tropical development, which it has instituted,
+to be these:</p>
+
+<p>(1) Alienation of native ownership in land.</p>
+
+<p>(2) Monopoly over the products of the soil.</p>
+
+<p>(3) Natives forbidden to collect those products for any
+one but the State, or the subsidiary trusts (<i>Domaine Privé</i>
+companies, if that appellation be preferred) created by the
+State, and in whose profits the State shares, generally to the
+extent of 50 per cent.</p>
+
+<p>(4) Natives compelled to bring in rubber and ivory, and
+also recruits for the native army (and for labour in the cocoa
+and coffee plantations), to the State as tribute, and to supply
+the subsidiary trusts with rubber and ivory.</p>
+
+<p>(5) The existence of a regular army of fifteen thousand<a id="FNanchor_277" href="#Footnote_277" class="fnanchor">[277]</a>
+men armed with Albini rifles, and an unnamed number of
+irregulars to enforce the rubber and ivory tribute and to
+“facilitate the operations” of the subsidiary trusts.</p>
+
+<p>(6) White officials in receipt of instructions to devote all
+their energies to the exploitation of rubber and ivory; in
+plain words, to get as much rubber and ivory out of their
+respective districts as they possibly can.</p>
+
+<p>(7) The financial existence of the State dependent upon
+the rubber and ivory tribute, and upon the profits it derives
+from its share in the subsidiary trusts.</p>
+
+<p>When on the one side you have the factors already
+enumerated, and on the other a primitive and—in the face
+of coercion backed by rifles of precision—helpless population,
+common sense asserts that gross oppression, violence,
+and every form of tyranny and outrage must be the infallible
+outcome of such a system; and it is that <i>system</i> which
+the Powers are morally bound to put a stop to, seeing that
+it is they who are morally responsible for its existence.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_343"></a>[343]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="CHAPTER_XXXII">CHAPTER XXXII<br>
+<span class="smaller">THE “TRADE” OF THE CONGO STATE</span></h3>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It is a little surprising to find that M. Cattier, the Belgian
+Imperialist, whose masterly indictment of King Leopold’s
+administration does him infinite honour, should attempt to
+defend, not the outcome of the system of the <i>Domaine Privé</i>
+in the shape of compulsory military service for twelve years,
+forced labour in Government plantations, &amp;c., all of which
+he condemns, but the legality of the system itself. He states
+his case as follows. Article V. of the Berlin Act, which
+forbade monopoly and privilege in the Congo Basin in
+matters of trade, was meant to apply internationally, and
+the Congo State was thereby bound not to grant commercial
+advantages to the subjects of any one nation which it
+denied to the subjects of another nation. M. Cattier says:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p>“The Government of the Congo State could not, therefore, adopt any
+legislative measure, nor establish any <i>régime</i> conceding international
+monopolies or privileges.... All facilities granted to its subjects in
+trade matters should be legally extended to the subjects of other nations....
+But this does not prevent the Congo State from establishing the
+commercial <i>régime</i> which it thinks advisable, and no objection can be
+raised against its legislative action, when the measures adopted apply,
+under the same conditions and in the same manner, to the subjects of
+other nationalities, including the Congo nationality.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>It follows, therefore, according to M. Cattier, that in attributing
+to himself all vacant lands in the Congo Basin, from
+which action arose the <i>Domaine Privé</i>, and in farming out
+portions of the <i>Domaine Privé</i> to his financial friends, upon
+whom he has conferred an absolute monopoly of exploitation
+in the regions affected, the Sovereign of the Congo
+State has not violated the Act of Berlin; although M. Cattier<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_344"></a>[344]</span>
+admits that by so doing he has committed “a violation of
+the rights of the natives.”</p>
+
+<p>This curious theory of M. Cattier’s has been dismissed by
+Dr. Anton (<i>Professeur agrégé à l’Université d’Iéna</i>) as a legal
+quibble, in which opinion I entirely concur. M. Cattier’s
+views are mutually destructive. Admitting, for the sake of
+argument merely, that the interpretation he gives to Art. V.
+of the Berlin Act is, from the strictly legal aspect of the
+matter, accurate; once M. Cattier attempts to put his case
+in language that laymen, unversed in legal subtleties, can
+understand, it breaks down hopelessly. For what does
+M. Cattier tell us in the passage above? “No objection
+can be raised against its (the State’s) legislative action when
+the measures adopted apply under the same conditions and
+in the same manner to the subjects of all nationalities, including
+the Congo nationality.” But the measures adopted
+do not apply equally to all nationalities! Three-fourths of
+the Congo State is the State’s—that is, the king’s—private
+property, and is closed to the trade of all nationalities,
+except the Belgian and “Congo nationality;” not in theory
+but in fact. Can an Englishman, or a German, or a Chinaman
+if you like, import European merchandise in the
+territory, for example, acquired by the <i>Société Anversoise</i>, and
+barter that merchandise against the raw products of the
+soil, on a basis of a legitimate commercial transaction? Of
+course they may not. Was not an Austrian arrested—on
+Lake Moëro, and on, it appears, a British steamer—only
+a few months ago for trading with the natives in the Katanga
+region, although he actually had a permit to trade from the
+Katanga Company, given to him prior to the arrangement
+arrived at by the Congo State and the Katanga Company to
+work those territories on joint account? And arrested, too,
+in such a way that his removal from this world was a matter
+of moral certainty—handed over to the merciful treatment
+of King Leopold’s cannibal soldiery, to be transported
+2000 miles away; he a white man and unarmed!<a id="FNanchor_278" href="#Footnote_278" class="fnanchor">[278]</a> What<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_345"></a>[345]</span>
+pitiful sophistries are these which attempt the squaring of
+the Congo circle! The Congo State, which undertook not
+to trade directly or indirectly in its dominions, has become
+not only the largest “exploiter” within it, but in the major
+portion thereof the exclusive “exploiter.” The king has
+translated Article V. of the Berlin Act, which reads that “no
+Power which exercises or shall exercise sovereign rights in
+the above-mentioned regions, shall be allowed to grant
+therein a monopoly or favour of any kind in matters of
+trade,” by conferring upon himself an absolute monopoly,
+which has made of him the biggest ivory and rubber
+merchant in the world. In this capacity he can export his
+produce under special conditions, free of dues, which come
+out of one of his Majesty’s pockets to go in at the other.
+All this is diametrically opposed to the provisions of the
+Berlin Act.</p>
+
+<p>My object is principally to prove that King Leopold’s
+intervention in the Dark Continent has from first to last
+been due to selfish motives, and has resulted in the most
+appalling consequences; whether we confine ourselves to
+the past and present merely, or whether we look into the
+future. I must crave forgiveness for having dwelt so largely
+upon matters of trade. It was, however, necessary, because
+the king’s native policy is the inevitable sequel of his commercial
+policy. I must, indeed, revert again to this aspect
+of the question in order to refute once and for all the
+untruths so sedulously fostered, that the Congo State is in a
+nourishing condition and that independent trade is flourishing
+within it; and in refuting it to show—which is more important—that,
+were it not for the ivory and rubber which the
+natives of King Leopold’s preserve are forced to produce at
+the cost of constant warfare, massacres, and atrocities
+innumerable, the export returns, and consequently the whole
+trade of the Congo State, would be practically <i>nil</i>, or so small
+as to be unworthy of attention. This can best be done by<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_346"></a>[346]</span>
+giving facts and figures which all the ingenious theorising
+in the world cannot overcome.</p>
+
+<p>The following table shows the relative proportion of the
+rubber and ivory exports from the Congo to the total
+exports:</p>
+
+<h4 id="table1"><span class="smcap">Table I</span></h4>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th>Year.</th>
+    <th>Rubber.<br>Francs.</th>
+    <th>Ivory.<br>Francs.</th>
+    <th>Total of both<br>Exports.<br>Francs.</th>
+    <th>Total of all<br>Exports.<br>Francs.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">15,850,987</td>
+    <td class="tdr">4,319,260</td>
+    <td class="tdr">20,170,247</td>
+    <td class="tdr">22,163,481</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">28,100,917</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5,834,620</td>
+    <td class="tdr">33,935,537</td>
+    <td class="tdr">36,067,959</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">39,874,005</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5,253,300</td>
+    <td class="tdr">45,627,305</td>
+    <td class="tdr">47,377,401</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1901</td>
+    <td class="tdr">43,965,950</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3,964,600</td>
+    <td class="tdr">47,930,550</td>
+    <td class="tdr">50,488,394</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>If the rubber and ivory exports are deducted from the
+total exports, it will be seen that—apart from these two
+products—the exports only amounted in 1898 to 1,993,234
+francs, in 1889 to 2,132,422 francs, in 1900 to 1,750,096
+francs, and in 1901 to 2,557,844 francs, about 97 per cent.
+of which was represented in each year by kernels and palm-oil
+shipped almost exclusively from the Lower Congo<a id="FNanchor_279" href="#Footnote_279" class="fnanchor">[279]</a> to
+Rotterdam, by the Dutch House <i>Die Nieuwe Afrikaansche
+Handels Vennootschap</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The next table provides statistics of the rubber and ivory
+shipped home by the Congo State, as shipper, being the
+proceeds of the taxes—<i>impôts de nature</i>—levied upon the
+natives of the <i>Domaine Privé</i>. As will be observed, the
+Congo State is at pains to conceal the real proceeds. Ever
+since 1893, when the actual returns exceeded the estimates<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_347"></a>[347]</span>
+by one-half, the State has never published the former. The
+correct figures may, however, approximately be arrived at
+by comparing the estimates with the rubber and ivory disposed
+of by the State, as vendor, on the Antwerp market.
+The enormous difference during these last few years between
+the estimates <i>and the produce actually sold by the State</i>, possesses
+a significance which will not be lost upon my readers.
+Into whose pocket does the surplus go? But need we ask
+the question?</p>
+
+<h4 id="table2"><span class="smcap">Table II</span><br>
+<span class="smcap">Value of Produce (Ivory and Rubber) derived from the “Domaine
+Privé” in the shape of Taxes (Impôts de Nature).</span></h4>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th>Year.</th>
+    <th>Published&nbsp;returns.<br>Francs.</th>
+    <th colspan="2">Actual returns.<br>Francs.</th>
+    <th>Produce (ivory and rubber) from the <i>Domaine Privé</i>,
+    sold on the Antwerp market by the State’s brokers.<br>Francs.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1893</td>
+    <td class="tdr">237,057</td>
+    <td class="tdr"></td>
+    <td class="tdr">347,396</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">Unobtainable.</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1894</td>
+    <td class="tdr">300,000</td>
+    <td class="tdr">}</td>
+    <td rowspan="7" class="tdc valign">Withheld from public knowledge.</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad"><i>Ibid.</i></span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1895</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,250,000</td>
+    <td class="tdr">}</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">5,500,000</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1896</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,200,000</td>
+    <td class="tdr">}</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">6,000,000</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3,500,000</td>
+    <td class="tdr">}</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">8,500,000</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">6,700,000</td>
+    <td class="tdr">}</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">9,000,000</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10,000,000</td>
+    <td class="tdr">}</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">19,130,000</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10,500,000</td>
+    <td class="tdr">}</td>
+    <td class="tdr">14,991,300<a id="FNanchor_280" href="#Footnote_280" class="fnanchor">[280]</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>It will thus be seen that, out of a total rubber and ivory
+export from the Congo State in 1898 amounting to 20,170,247
+francs (see <a href="#table1">Table I.</a>), the <i>Domaine Privé</i> taxes produced
+9,000,000 francs, or close upon one-half; and that out of a
+total rubber and ivory export in 1899, amounting to
+33,935,537 francs, the <i>Domaine Privé</i> taxes produced
+19,130,000 francs, or not far short of two-thirds. The
+illustration is in itself sufficient to destroy the theory of
+commercial prosperity so assiduously propagated by King<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_348"></a>[348]</span>
+Leopold and his friends, in order to deceive public opinion.
+Such “prosperity” entails the death of many human beings.
+What could, indeed, be more eloquent of the true condition
+of affairs! The total exports from the Congo State in 1899
+are found (see <a href="#table1">Table I.</a>) to amount to 36,067,959 francs, of
+which 33,935,537 francs are represented by rubber and
+ivory, in which the Congo State’s share as tax-gatherer is no
+less than 19,130,000 francs. The Congo State asserts that
+it does not trade. It merely imposes taxes which every
+“civilised” Power (Heaven save the mark!) has the right to
+do; yet it incorporates in its so-called trade figures the yield
+of its taxes! What becomes, then, of this flourishing trade
+we hear so much about? On the evidence produced, it
+sinks for 1889 to 16,937,959 francs (36,067,959 minus
+19,130,000) instead of 36,067,959 francs, which the world is
+invited to believe. In reality it does not amount to anything
+like 16,937,959 francs, for the simple reason that there
+is no “trade” at all in the Congo State north of Leopoldville;
+and that, if we extract from the remaining figures the
+exports from the Lower Congo, where genuine trade, sadly
+hampered by taxation, alone exists, the balance is represented
+by the shipments of the <i>Domaine Privé</i> subsidiary monopolies
+in which the Congo State benefits to the extent of 50 per
+cent.; and by the shipments of the Thys Trust, which is a
+monopoly within a monopoly, although conducted, it is but
+right to add, on different lines. Such is the “trade” of the
+Congo State, the most gigantic fraud which ever came into
+being to work misery upon mankind.</p>
+
+<p>It would be unjust not to recognise that all this sordid
+history has aroused loathing and distress in the hearts of
+many honourable Belgians—not confined to the Party which
+opposes Colonial policy for Belgium—mainly, as I believe,
+on the ground that King Leopold, in the course of his
+illegalities and intrigues, will end by compromising the
+neutrality of his country. It would be as equally unjust
+not to express admiration for the indomitable energy displayed
+by Colonel Thys in constructing the railway to
+Leopoldville, as to include in the condemnation of King<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_349"></a>[349]</span>
+Leopold’s <span class="allsmcap">POLICY</span> in Africa all the Belgians who have been
+employed at one time or another in the State service. Sir
+Harry Johnston has recently lent the weight of his name in
+favour of the Congo State, in respect to the “very small
+portion” of the State which he has visited. Sir Harry
+Johnston might have added that the rubber laws are not in
+full operation in the “very small portion” of the country he
+visited, and that the Belgian officers with whom he came in
+contact have not been employed in that degrading business,
+their duties in that particular region being confined to
+strengthening the obscure political aims which King Leopold
+is pursuing in the Nile Valley. For a description of the
+state of affairs prevailing south of the “very small portion”
+of the Congo State alluded to, Mr. Grogan’s volume,
+and Mr. Robert Codrington’s recently published “Travel
+and Trade Routes in Northern Rhodesia and adjacent
+Parts of East Central Africa,”<a id="FNanchor_281" href="#Footnote_281" class="fnanchor">[281]</a> together with the revelations
+attending the treatment meted out to the late Mr. Rabinek
+by the officials of the State, may be consulted with advantage.
+It would be an insult to Sir Harry Johnston—who has himself
+condemned the system of territorial concessions—to
+suggest that he desires in any way to bolster up the Congo
+State; but it is certainly a thousand pities that he has committed
+himself, even partially, to statements which, however
+accurate in themselves, cannot fail to exercise an unfortunate
+influence, without making himself acquainted with the
+general system under which the Congo State is run. When
+the nature of that system is understood, it becomes an
+outrage upon common sense and common decency to write
+one word in extenuation of the system, or of the man who
+has originated it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_350"></a>[350]</span></p>
+
+<p>M. Cattier, to whose work I have several times alluded,
+represents the type of Belgian who, convinced of the
+necessity of a colonial programme for Belgium, has sufficient
+perspicacity to realise, and sufficient courage to assert, that
+the policy of King Leopold in the Congo State carries
+within it the germs of death. How true this is, the reader
+must judge for himself; but it is at least significant that
+among a section of French Colonial writers who think they
+see in the recent abandonment of M. Beernaert’s Annexation
+Bill, at the king’s dictation, the final postponement by
+Belgium and the consequent assertion—at some future date—of
+France’s right of pre-emption, are beginning to ask
+themselves whether the king’s ultimate aim is not to continue
+for some years longer his “ruinous exploitation” of the
+Congo State; and then, when uprisings have reached such a
+scale that the king’s cannibal army, however large it may
+by that time have become, is powerless to cope with them;
+and when whole tracts of the richest and most easily
+accessible rubber districts have been irretrievably impaired,
+to offer the squeezed lemon, for a consideration, to his
+Gallic neighbours. If the pernicious <i>régime</i> which King
+Leopold has inaugurated in Africa were confined to the
+Congo State, it would still be sufficient, one might have
+thought, to stir the conscience of Europe, if not for the
+sake of her own dignity outraged in the violation of solemn
+obligations, if not for the sake of humanity, then for the
+sake of the future relations of black man and white man in
+Central Africa. But, as we have seen, the <i>régime</i> is
+spreading, and with every year that passes it threatens more
+acutely all legitimate European enterprise in Africa.<a id="FNanchor_282" href="#Footnote_282" class="fnanchor">[282]</a></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_351"></a>[351]</span></p>
+
+<p>This accursed <i>Domaine Privé</i>, and all the evils it has
+brought with it, cannot last for ever. Like all such “negations
+of God” it will perish. But what will remain behind
+for Europe, when the Congo State has passed away, to deal
+with? A vast region, peopled by fierce Bantu races, with
+an undying hatred of the white implanted in their breasts;
+a great army of cannibal levies, drilled in the science of
+forest warfare, perfected in the usage of modern weapons
+of destruction<a id="FNanchor_283" href="#Footnote_283" class="fnanchor">[283]</a>—savages whose one lesson learned from
+contact with European “civilisation” has been improvement
+in the art of killing their neighbours; disciplined in
+the science of slaughter; eager to seize upon the first
+opportunity which presents itself of turning their weapons
+against their temporary masters; rendered more desperate,
+more dangerous, more debased than before the advent of
+King Leopold’s rubber collectors, who, by way of regeneration,
+have grafted upon the native’s failings, born of
+ignorance, the worst vices of the Africanised civilisation of
+modern Europe—cupidity, hypocrisy, cruelty, and lust.</p>
+
+<p>In their own most obvious interests, for the sake of
+humanity and right, in the name of enlightened statesmanship<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_352"></a>[352]</span>
+and political common sense, the Powers cannot allow
+the disease introduced into West and Central Africa by
+King Leopold of Belgium to be farther extended. Nor do
+their responsibilities end there. The source of the disease
+must be dealt with. The canker must be rooted out and
+cast upon the dunghill. The Congo State must be called
+to account for its crimes against civilisation; for its outrages
+upon humanity; for the unparalleled and irreparable
+mischief it has committed.</p>
+
+<p>And what a warning lies here for the Western nations!
+The Congo State is the living embodiment of the evil
+counsels, so lavishly, so thoughtlessly given in connection
+with native policy in West Africa. In the Congo State
+we see what these counsels lead to when put into practice.
+All this talk about the puerility of preserving land tenure,
+the futility of maintaining native institutions, the efficacy of
+punitive expeditions, the necessity of teaching the native
+“the dignity of labour,” the cry for territorial concessions,
+the advocacy of monopoly, and all legislative acts framed in
+accordance with these views, or with some of them, tend to
+produce in greater or less degree a state of affairs in
+Western Africa similar to that which prevails on the Congo.
+In the case of the Powers, the motives may be of the very
+best, the intentions honest and sincere; but if once the thin
+end of the wedge be driven home; if once legislation be
+passed or acts sanctioned which are founded upon a repudiation
+of the inherent right of the native to his land and
+the fruits thereof; if once it be officially admitted that it is
+legitimate to force the native to give under compulsion that
+which is purchasable on fair terms, we are committed to a
+policy of reaction of which no man can prophesy the consequences
+or the end. To those conceptions Tropical Africa
+opposes her vastness, her climate, and the prolific nature
+of her peoples. They can be tried; apparent success may
+attend them for a time; lasting success they will never
+secure. Tropical Africa <i>cannot permanently be held down
+by force</i>, and in attempting to do so by placing modern<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_353"></a>[353]</span>
+engines of destruction in the hands of Africans, Europe
+will be but digging the grave of her ambitions on African
+soil.</p>
+
+<p>But Europe can achieve a great work in Tropical Africa
+for good, and benefit her own peoples in doing so. To
+divorce the two is impossible. Evil wrought in Tropical
+Africa will have its aftermath in Europe. The European
+has need of the Negro, and the Negro of the European.
+In occupying the country of the Negro, Europe has assumed
+a great responsibility. It is well, perhaps, European statesmen
+should occasionally be reminded, that for Europe to
+forget the moral responsibility in pursuing the material
+ends is to invite a certain Nemesis. These pages cannot
+be more fittingly closed than by recalling the words of a
+wise and good woman, who understood the nature and
+immensity of the problem:</p>
+
+<p>“Not only do the negroes not die off in the face of white
+civilisation in Africa, but they have increased in America,
+whereto they were taken by the slave trade. This fact urges
+on us the belief that these negroes are a great world race—a
+race not passing off the stage of affairs, but one that has
+an immense amount of history before it. The moulding of
+that history is in the hands of the European, whose superior
+activity and superior power in arts and crafts give the
+mastery; but all that this mastery gives is the power to
+make the future of the negro and the European prosperous,
+or to make it one of disaster to both alike. Whatever we
+do in Africa to-day, a thousand years hence there will be
+Africans to thrive or suffer for it.”<a id="FNanchor_284" href="#Footnote_284" class="fnanchor">[284]</a></p>
+
+<p class="right">E. D. M.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_354"></a>[354]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_355"></a>[355]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="APPENDIX">APPENDIX</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="SIERRA_LEONE">SIERRA LEONE</h3>
+
+<h4>EXPENDITURE, LOANS, EXPORT TRADE, RAILWAY</h4>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th>Expenditure<br>1897-1902.</th>
+    <th><span class="pad">Export Trade</span><br>1897-1902.<a id="FNanchor_285" href="#Footnote_285" class="fnanchor">[285]</a></th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">£112,000</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">£361,747</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">121,000</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">267,156</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">145,000</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">307,929</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">156,000</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">317,980</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1901</td>
+    <td class="tdr">173,457<a id="FNanchor_286" href="#Footnote_286" class="fnanchor">[286]</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">265,433</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1902</td>
+    <td class="tdr">177,882<a id="FNanchor_287" href="#Footnote_287" class="fnanchor">[287]</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr"></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<h4>RAILWAY</h4>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th>Railway Expenditure<br>1899-1902.<br>(Included in<br>total expenditure.)</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">£10,493</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">23,320</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1901</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">19,642</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1902</td>
+    <td class="tdr">23,606<a id="FNanchor_288" href="#Footnote_288" class="fnanchor">[288]</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<h4>LOANS FOR RAILWAY</h4>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Amounts advanced to end 1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£307,539</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Loan authorised</td>
+    <td class="tdr">631,000</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>First section, 32 miles, formally opened May 1st, 1899.</p>
+
+<p>Second section, 23¼ miles, “taken over by the open line,” end 1900.</p>
+
+<p>Third section, 80½ miles, in course of construction.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_356"></a>[356]</span></p>
+
+<p>According to the statement forwarded by the Local Traders’ Association
+of Freetown to Sir A. King-Harman in 1901, the third section of the
+railway (to Bo) will entail an annual charge on the Colony of £11,000,
+plus a further sum of £6000 for “increased cost of administering and
+operating.”</p>
+
+<h4>FOR MILITARY PURPOSES</h4>
+
+<p>Annual charge of £6000 for eight years from 1899 on account of the
+sums advanced by the Imperial Treasury for the Hut-tax war.</p>
+
+<h4>THE PROTECTORATE</h4>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th rowspan="2"></th>
+    <th colspan="3">Expenditure 1898-1902.</th>
+    <th rowspan="2">Revenue<br>1898-1901.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <th>Civil.</th>
+    <th>Military.</th>
+    <th>Total.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">£10,455</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">£20,634</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">£31,089</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£7,754</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">14,124</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">25,672</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">39,796</td>
+    <td class="tdr">21,943</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">17,000</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">23,499<a id="FNanchor_289" href="#Footnote_289" class="fnanchor">[289]</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr">40,499</td>
+    <td class="tdr">33,468</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1901</td>
+    <td class="tdr">25,767<a id="FNanchor_290" href="#Footnote_290" class="fnanchor">[290]</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr">23,707<a id="FNanchor_291" href="#Footnote_291" class="fnanchor">[291]</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr">49,474</td>
+    <td class="tdr">38,347</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1902<a id="FNanchor_292" href="#Footnote_292" class="fnanchor">[292]</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">24,807</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">24,911</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">49,718</td>
+    <td class="tdr"></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="GOLD_COAST">GOLD COAST</h3>
+
+<h4>EXPENDITURE, LOANS, EXPORT TRADE, RAILWAY</h4>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th colspan="2">Expenditure<br>1897-1900<br>(Inclusive.)<a id="FNanchor_293" href="#Footnote_293" class="fnanchor">[293]</a></th>
+    <th colspan="2">Liabilities incurred<br>1897-1902.<br>(Incomplete.)</th>
+    <th colspan="2">Export trade<br>1897-1900.<br>(Inclusive.)<a id="FNanchor_294" href="#Footnote_294" class="fnanchor">[294]</a></th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£406,370</td>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£ nil.</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">377,976</td>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">265,000</td>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£857,793</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">309,656</td>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">100,000</td>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">992,998</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">272,303</td>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">928,300</td>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,111,738</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr"></td>
+    <td>1902</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,035,000</td>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">885,446</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">Total</td>
+    <td class="tdr bt">£1,366,305</td>
+    <td class="tdr">Total</td>
+    <td class="tdr bt">£2,328,300</td>
+    <td class="tdr">Total</td>
+    <td class="tdr bt">£3,847,975</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_357"></a>[357]</span></p>
+
+<p>Expenditure, £1,366,305; Liabilities incurred (incomplete), £2,328,300
+Export trade, £3,847,975.</p>
+
+<p>The Gold Coast Report for 1901 has not yet been published.
+According to the statement made this year before the Legislative
+Council of the Colony by Sir Matthew Nathan, the Imperial Government
+advanced £400,000 on account of the last Ashanti expedition, but whether
+this sum includes the £202,300 advanced for the same purpose in 1900
+is not clear. Assuming that it does, the liabilities incurred by the
+Colony from 1897 to 1902 inclusive will amount: (1) Loans by Imperial
+Government, £1,491,000; (2) Gold Coast Government Loan, £1,035,000;
+Total, £2,328,300.</p>
+
+<p>The Ashanti Blue Book (1901) estimated the total cost of administrating
+Ashanti at about £60,000 per annum. According to Sir Matthew
+Nathan’s statement referred to above, the expenditure in 1902 may be set
+down at £107,148. Assuming these figures to be correct, the total
+expenditure in Ashanti from 1897 to 1902 (reckoning an expenditure of
+£60,000 in 1901) works out at the very large figure of £319,385, entirely
+exclusive of grants-in-aid (assuming the £202,300 in 1900 to be
+incorporated in the £400,000 advance), amounting to £695,000. Up to
+and including 1900, the revenue of Ashanti was £3406. In the Ashanti
+Blue Book already mentioned, the annual revenue for Ashanti is estimated
+at £14,600, less 10 per cent. to the Chiefs (<i>i.e.</i> less £1460). Assuming
+this amount to have been collected in 1901 and 1902, the total revenue
+for Ashanti from 1897 to 1902 inclusive amounted to £29,686, against an
+expenditure of £319,385, and grants-in-aid to the amount of £695,000.</p>
+
+<p>These figures should be borne in mind when examining the following
+tables, which do not go farther than 1900, that is to say, as far as the last
+issued Colonial Office Report.</p>
+
+<h4>EXPENDITURE, GRANTS-IN-AID, AND REVENUE OF THE NORTHERN TERRITORIES AND ASHANTI<br>
+1897-1900 inclusive</h4>
+
+<h5>TOTALS</h5>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th>Expenditure.</th>
+    <th>Grants-in-Aid.</th>
+    <th>Revenue.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Northern Territories</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">£213,338</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">£195,000</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£7,736</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Ashanti</td>
+    <td class="tdr">175,450<a id="FNanchor_295" href="#Footnote_295" class="fnanchor">[295]</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr">202,300</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3,406</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_358"></a>[358]</span></p>
+
+<h5>DETAILED</h5>
+
+<h6>NORTHERN TERRITORIES</h6>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th colspan="2">Expenditure.</th>
+    <th colspan="2">Grants-in-Aid.</th>
+    <th colspan="2">Revenue.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897-98</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">£121,022</span></td>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£45,000</td>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdc">Nil.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">54,875</span></td>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">100,000</td>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">37,441<a id="FNanchor_296" href="#Footnote_296" class="fnanchor">[296]</a></td>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">50,000</td>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr"></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr"></td>
+    <td>1900<a id="FNanchor_297" href="#Footnote_297" class="fnanchor">[297]</a></td>
+    <td class="tdr">£7,736</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<h6>ASHANTI</h6>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th colspan="2">Expenditure.<br>Ordinary.</th>
+    <th colspan="2">Expenditure.<br>Extraordinary.</th>
+    <th colspan="2">Revenue.</th>
+    <th colspan="2">Grants-in-Aid.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£13,723</td>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£151,614<a id="FNanchor_298" href="#Footnote_298" class="fnanchor">[298]</a></td>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdc">Nil.</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">4,304</td>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">603</span></td>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2,608</td>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">20</span></td>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="tdr"></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2,578</td>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">Not given.</span></td>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£3,406</td>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£202,300</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<h4>RAILWAY</h4>
+
+<p>Position December 31st, 1901: Completed, say, 45 miles;<a id="FNanchor_299" href="#Footnote_299" class="fnanchor">[299]</a> sum
+expended, £389,869.<a id="FNanchor_300" href="#Footnote_300" class="fnanchor">[300]</a></p>
+
+<p>Loans from the Imperial Treasury: 1898, £220,000 (Railway
+Ordinance);<a id="FNanchor_301" href="#Footnote_301" class="fnanchor">[301]</a> 1900, £676,000 (“certain public works, railway construction,”
+etc.)<a id="FNanchor_302" href="#Footnote_302" class="fnanchor">[302]</a></p>
+
+<p>Future: Officially expected to reach Obuassi end 1902.</p>
+
+<p>Gold Coast Loan: 1902, £1,035,000, “to defray cost of constructing
+a railway 169¼ miles from Sekondi to Kumasi.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_359"></a>[359]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="LAGOS">LAGOS</h3>
+
+<h4>EXPENDITURE, LOANS, EXPORT TRADE, RAILWAY</h4>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Expenditure</span>, 1891-1902-03</th>
+    <th><span class="smcap">Liabilities Incurred</span></th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1891</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">£66,388</span></td>
+    <td rowspan="12">
+<p>“The amount of the debt of the Colony on 31st March 1901 was
+£972,902. This debt has been incurred solely for the building
+of the railway from Lagos to Ibadan, the tramway from Lagos
+to Iddo, the Abbeokuta branch of the railway, and the bridges from
+Lagos Island to the mainland.</p>
+<p>“The Legislature has sanctioned the borrowing of £1,053,700 for these purposes.”<a id="FNanchor_304" href="#Footnote_304" class="fnanchor">[304]</a></p>
+<p>It is recognised that the above amount will not be sufficient to defray the entire cost.</p>
+    </td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1892</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">86,513</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1893</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">101,251</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1894</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">124,829</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1895</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">144,483</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1896</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">168,444</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">182,668</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">203,802</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">223,289</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900-1901</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">187,124</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1901-1902</td>
+    <td class="tdr">231,597<a id="FNanchor_303" href="#Footnote_303" class="fnanchor">[303]</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1902-1903</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">240,718</span></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<h4>EXPORT TRADE</h4>
+
+<p class="center">(These figures include the export of specie.)</p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1891</td>
+    <td class="tdc">—</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1892</td>
+    <td class="tdc">—</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1893</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">£836,295</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1894</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">821,682</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1895</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">985,595</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1896</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">975,263</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">810,975</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">882,329</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr"><span class="pad">915,934</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900-1901</td>
+    <td class="tdr">831,257<a id="FNanchor_305" href="#Footnote_305" class="fnanchor">[305]</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>Owing to the intelligent way in which the Report for 1900-1901 is
+prepared, it is possible to separate the specie from the total exports for
+the years 1896-1900, 1901, as given in that Report. The total exports,
+less specie, for the above-mentioned period were as follows:</p>
+
+<h4>EXPORT, LESS SPECIE</h4>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1896</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£906,393</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr">740,179</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">821,112</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">834,358</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900-1901</td>
+    <td class="tdr">705,237</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_360"></a>[360]</span></p>
+
+<p>There are special reasons to account for the heavy fall in 1900-1901.
+Nevertheless, a glance at the expenditure and export columns cannot
+fail to accentuate the fact that the growth in expenditure is incommensurate
+with the increase in the purchasing power of the Colony. The
+financial future of Lagos now depends entirely on the railway. When
+the entire sum authorised has been expended, which will be this year, I
+believe, and other expenses are added thereto, it is estimated that the
+railway will have cost about £9000 to £10,000 per mile. In this connection
+the Dahomey figures should be consulted.</p>
+
+<p>The notes in the expenditure column include, of course, moneys
+expended on public works. The growth in expenditure and the relation
+it bears to the producing capacity of the country would, perhaps, appear
+even more clearly if the expenditure totals were given, minus the expenditure
+on public works. It has not been possible to satisfactorily separate
+them in every case; but, as a simple illustration, 1893 and 1900 may be
+compared.</p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th>Ordinary expenditure.</th>
+    <th>Export trade.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1893</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£75,207</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£836,295</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">131,742</td>
+    <td class="tdr">831,257</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p>It will thus be seen that whereas, within the period given—eight years—ordinary
+expenditure has nearly doubled, the producing power of the
+country is found, at the close of the eighth year, to be stationary. It
+may be argued, and justly, that the area of the Protectorate has been
+extended since 1893. But the point is, <i>the way these dependencies are
+managed</i>. Is not the management carried out upon altogether too
+elaborate and expensive a scale? Does this increase in ordinary
+expenditure correspond with an increase in the production, that is to say,
+in the prosperity of the colony and the people of the colony? If it does
+not, no special knowledge of political economy is required to predict
+that, if the system be not modified in the future, the steadily increasing
+expenditure will, before very long, act as a positive deterrent upon the
+producing power of the country. In fact, there is sufficient evidence to
+justify the fear that in some instances this stage has already been reached.</p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="COMPARATIVE_TABLES">COMPARATIVE TABLES OF IMPORT DUTIES IN VOGUE IN LAGOS AND DAHOMEY</h3>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th><span class="smcap">Dahomey.</span></th>
+    <th colspan="2"><span class="smcap">Lagos.</span></th>
+    <th>In favour of</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Tobacco (manufactured)</td>
+    <td>2⅙d. per lb.</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>8d. per lb.</td>
+    <td>Dahomey.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> (unmanufactured)</td>
+    <td>2⅙d. <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>4d. <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Gunpowder</td>
+    <td>2⅙d. <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>6d. <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Trade guns</td>
+    <td>1s. 7⅕d. each</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>2s. 6d. each</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Kerosene</td>
+    <td>0⅜d. per gallon</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="nw">2d. per gallon</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_361"></a>[361]</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Salt rock</td>
+    <td class="nw">11s. 4½d. per ton</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>20s. per ton</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span> sea</td>
+    <td>4s. 10½d. <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>20s. <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Lead</td>
+    <td>⅑d. per lb.</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>1d. per lb.</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Coal</td>
+    <td>Free of duty</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td class="nw">Pays duty 10%</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Fresh fruit and seeds</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td>Pay <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Tools of all kinds (<i>i.e.</i> mechanical, agricultural, etc.)</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td><a id="FNanchor_306" href="#Footnote_306" class="fnanchor">[306]</a></td>
+    <td>Pay   ”    </td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Furniture</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td><a id="FNanchor_307" href="#Footnote_307" class="fnanchor">[307]</a></td>
+    <td>Pays <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<h4>SILKS, VELVETS, COTTONS AND PRINTS</h4>
+
+<p>In Dahomey these articles pay duty on their weight; in Lagos the
+tax is an <i>ad valorem</i> one. How these different duties work out in practice
+can only be ascertained by giving specific instances. The following
+examples are taken from actual shipments:</p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th colspan="3"><span class="smcap">Dahomey.</span><br>50 c. per kilo.</th>
+    <th colspan="3"><span class="smcap">Lagos.</span><br>10 per cent.<br><i>ad valorem.</i></th>
+    <th>In favour of</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th>£</th>
+    <th>s.</th>
+    <th>d.</th>
+    <th>£</th>
+    <th>s.</th>
+    <th>d.</th>
+    <th></th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="nw">Silk shipment of £50 value—38 kilos weight</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+    <td class="tdr">15</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+    <td>Dahomey.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Velvet shipment of £90 value—384½ kilos</td>
+    <td class="tdr">7</td>
+    <td class="tdr">13</td>
+    <td class="tdr">9</td>
+    <td class="tdr">7</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+    <td>Lagos.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Cottons shipment of £52 value—659 kilos</td>
+    <td class="tdr">13</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3</td>
+    <td class="tdr">7</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5</td>
+    <td class="tdr">4</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Prints shipment of £100 value—979 kilos</td>
+    <td class="tdr">19</td>
+    <td class="tdr">12</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+    <td class="tdr">0</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<h4>SPIRITS</h4>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th><span class="smcap">Dahomey.</span></th>
+    <th><span class="smcap">Lagos.</span></th>
+    <th>In favour of</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Brandy, rum, &amp;c., 18/20 under proof, equals 46° Tralles, at 1f. 20c. per hectolitre per degree plus 5c. for bottles</td>
+    <td class="nw valign">2s. 1d. per gallon</td>
+    <td class="nw valign">3s. per gallon</td>
+    <td class="valign">Dahomey.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Gin 0° to 20° Tralles</td>
+    <td>1s. 9½d. <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Gin 20° to 50° <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td>2s. 8⅖d. <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Gin 57° proof (Sykes)</td>
+    <td>3s. 1d. <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td>Lagos.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Alcohol:</td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td></td>
+    <td></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>68 over-proof—96° Tralles</td>
+    <td>4s. 2¼d.</td>
+    <td>5s. 0¼d.</td>
+    <td>Dahomey.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>60 <span class="ditto2">”</span> —91° <span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td>4s.</td>
+    <td>4s. 9⅗d.</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_362"></a>[362]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="THE_DAHOMEY_RAILWAY">THE DAHOMEY RAILWAY</h3>
+
+<h4>LENGTH—ESTIMATED COST—FINANCE—PRESENT POSITION—GENERAL REMARKS</h4>
+
+<h5><span class="smcap">Kotonu-tcharu (Tchaourou)</span></h5>
+
+<p>Length, 605 kilometres, or 377 miles, in two sections. First section,
+Kotonu-Acheribe (Atcheribe). Second section, Acheribe-Tcharu.</p>
+
+<p>Length of first section, 186 kilometres, or say 115 miles. Estimated
+cost of first section, 63,000 francs per kilometre. Estimated total cost of
+first section, 11,718,000 francs.</p>
+
+<p>In English figures<a id="FNanchor_308" href="#Footnote_308" class="fnanchor">[308]</a>—Total estimated cost of first section, 115 miles
+long, £468,740, or say £4076 per mile.</p>
+
+<p>It is intended to subsequently carry on this line from Tcharu to
+Karimama on the Niger.</p>
+
+<h4>RESULTS AS FAR AS AT PRESENT KNOWN</h4>
+
+<p>Actual work commenced May 1, 1900. In March 1902, 82 kilometres,
+or say 51 miles, of embankment, earthworks and “ouvrages d’art”
+complete, were handed over to the Concessionnaire, who is called upon to
+provide and lay down sleepers and rails, provide rolling-stock, &amp;c. Fifty
+more kilometres, or say 32 miles, similarly complete, were ready at the
+date mentioned to be handed over to the Concessionnaire. The Colony,
+which has itself undertaken the work, has thus prepared in less than two
+years 132 kilometres, or say 82 miles of line. The chief difficulties met
+with have been in crossing the swamps between Kotonu and Godomey,
+the marshy streams of Whydah and the Pahu lagoon, where the earthworks
+are 26 feet high. To fill up a depression of 16 feet in the centre of
+the lagoon 40,000 cubic metres of sand and earth were required. A
+distance of 12 kilometres between Wagbo (Ouagbo) and Taffo required
+75,000 cubic metres of embankment. In the crossing of the Lama
+2500 workmen were continuously employed for five months in placing
+80,000 cubic metres of gravel. All the labour was found in the Colony.
+The number of natives continuously employed has varied from 3500 to
+5000, <i>entirely recruited through the Chiefs</i>. There has been no trouble with
+the workmen, and no police force has been employed on the works.
+The export trade of the Colony has not suffered during the process, notwithstanding
+the withdrawal of so large a quantity of labour from the
+farms; but, indeed, has increased,<a id="FNanchor_309" href="#Footnote_309" class="fnanchor">[309]</a> a tribute to the wisdom of leaving the
+<i>recruiting entirely in the hands of the Chiefs</i>.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_363"></a>[363]</span></p>
+
+<h4>FINANCE</h4>
+
+<p>The Colony undertakes the cutting embankment, earthworks, &amp;c.,
+everything but the laying of the rails, sleepers, the providing of the same,
+rolling-stock, stations and so forth.</p>
+
+<p>It has undertaken to advance for five years <i>out of its own local resources</i>
+a sum of one million francs, say £40,000 annually. For 1901 the Colony
+undertook to provide £60,000, instead of £40,000.</p>
+
+<h4>GENERAL REMARKS</h4>
+
+<p>The French accurately claim that their railway will carry them much
+farther inland for a given distance covered than the Lagos railway with
+the big curve eastward which it takes from Abbeokuta; whereas they are
+pushing their line almost due north, and at their present rate of progress,
+in comparison with the time taken over the British line, their iron horse
+will have penetrated very much farther into the interior than Ilorin, long
+before the British line creeps up to that place. Upon this premise they
+base a number of conclusions, the first and foremost of which is that the
+French line will thus be able to capture the inland traffic which finds its
+way into the Lagos hinterland from the Niger, along the Nikki road (the
+French have a “post” at Nikki, which is a great centre for the caravan
+traffic), and to drain the western portion of Sokoto, to the detriment
+naturally of Lagos and Northern Nigeria. Well, in Northern Nigeria
+we do not seem to care much about trade, the military and political policy
+being more showy, albeit a nice little bill will have to be met presently,
+for the showy policy cannot be indulged in in West Africa without having
+to pay the piper some day. But in the case of Lagos it is a different
+affair, and the French argument is worth looking into. There can be no
+doubt that if the Concessionnaire of the Dahomey line lays his rails and
+provides his rolling-stock at the same ratio of speed as the Colony has
+performed its share of the work, the contention that the French rail-head
+will in a couple of years be carried deeper into the interior is correct.
+That the Concessionnaire will do so is, of course, an assumption. He has
+been engaged in quarrelling with his contractors for a considerable time,
+but now it appears he is seriously setting to work; at least, that is the
+information I get from Lagos. It is equally true that the French line,
+when it has reached its terminus at the 377th mile, will plunge into a
+network of trade roads, branching eastwards to Lagos and westwards to
+Togo, and will have an excellent chance of diverting the flow of the
+internal commerce from both those Colonies. To that extent Lagos will
+probably be a loser, because the African is very conservative and will
+cling to his old trade routes rather than abandon them for new ones, and
+naturally the French railway will benefit him. But the French, perhaps,
+forget that the Lagos line, as far as Ibadan, at any rate—as far, that is<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_364"></a>[364]</span>
+to say, as it goes at present—does not rely upon inland traffic for its
+existence. It will be fed locally by the increased production which will
+accrue along its line of march by the conversion of thousands of carriers
+of produce, into cultivators and reapers of produce. Between Ibadan and
+Ilorin, it cannot hope to do much anyhow. Beyond Ilorin again,
+increased local production will feed it, Nupe being a rich and well-populated
+country. If the British line remains stationary at Ibadan for
+many years, however, the danger from its French competitor, supposing
+the latter to follow a progressive construction, would certainly become
+more acute. Here, again, the question of finance comes in, and the
+French Colony is decidedly better off. What greater contrast could,
+indeed, be imagined?—Lagos in debt to the tune of over a million,
+burdened for all time with an annual drain of £50,000, while Dahomey is
+not in debt to the extent of one penny, and cheerfully advances £60,000
+in one year to the works of construction out of its surplus funds! As for
+the <i>cost</i> of construction, if the French estimates hold good, or anywhere
+near it, the French line will be built at about half the cost of its British
+competitor.</p>
+
+<hr class="tb">
+
+<p>Since the above remarks were written news has been received that 65
+kilometres of the railway were opened to traffic in September, and that
+rail-head is expected to reach Abomey in January next.</p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="FRENCH_GUINEA_RAILWAY">FRENCH GUINEA RAILWAY</h3>
+
+<h4>LENGTH. ESTIMATED COST. FINANCE. PRESENT POSITION</h4>
+
+<h5><span class="smcap">Konakry-Kurussa</span> <i>viâ</i> <span class="smcap">Timbo</span></h5>
+
+<p>Length, 550 kilometres, or 342 miles.</p>
+
+<p>Highest estimated cost of line, 80,000 francs per kilometre.</p>
+
+<p>Highest estimated total cost, 44,000,000 francs.</p>
+
+<p>First section, Konakry-Kandia, 150 kilometres, or say 92 miles.</p>
+
+<p>In English figures: Total estimated cost of line, 342 miles long,
+£1,700,000; or say, roughly, about £5140 per mile.</p>
+
+<h4>RESULTS UP TO DATE, ACCORDING TO THE REPORT OF
+THE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF FRENCH WEST AFRICA IN
+JUNE LAST</h4>
+
+<p>The earthworks have reached Kandia at the 149th kilometre (say 92nd
+mile).</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_365"></a>[365]</span></p>
+
+<p>With the exception of two places, between the 27th and 44th kilometre,
+and between the 90th and 107th kilometre, the earthworks and
+embankment, &amp;c. are finished and in good condition. One steel bridge
+thirty-three yards long is already fixed up, and two others are in process
+of being so. The 34 kilometres which remain are being proceeded with
+rapidly. Seventeen hundred workmen are continuously engaged thereon.
+Rails and sleepers are being regularly landed at Konakry. The first locomotive
+has arrived. By October the rolling-stock complete for the first
+150 kilometres, say 92 miles, will have arrived in the Colony.</p>
+
+<h4>FINANCE</h4>
+
+<p>For the first section the Colony borrowed from the “Caisse des
+Retraites,” on its own guarantee, eight million francs (£320,000), at 4 10%
+in August 1899; and four million francs (£160,000) at 4% from the
+“Caisse des Dépôts et Consignations” in March 1901. The first loan is
+to be paid back in forty annual payments, and the second in twenty-five
+annual payments, the two annuities together amounting to 430,000 francs,
+or say £17,200.</p>
+
+<p>These loans will be further supplemented by drafts upon the Colony’s
+local funds.</p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="WEST_AFRICAN_MAHOGANY_TRADE">WEST AFRICAN MAHOGANY TRADE</h3>
+
+<h4>IMPORTS OF WEST AFRICAN MAHOGANY INTO EUROPEAN PORTS IN THE YEARS 1898-1901</h4>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">40,167</td>
+    <td>tons</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">48,902</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">55,959</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>1901</td>
+    <td class="tdr">44,582</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<h4>DESTINATION OF IMPORTS IN 1901</h4>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Liverpool</td>
+    <td class="tdr">29,312</td>
+    <td>tons</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>London</td>
+    <td class="tdr">6,998</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Glasgow</td>
+    <td class="tdr">278</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Germany</td>
+    <td class="tdr">4,735</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>France</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3,259</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_366"></a>[366]</span></p>
+
+<h4>IMPORTS, IN SUPERFICIAL FEET, OF WEST AFRICAN
+MAHOGANY INTO LIVERPOOL FOR THE PAST 13 YEARS</h4>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Sup. ft.</td>
+    <td>1889</td>
+    <td class="tdr">68,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td>1890</td>
+    <td class="tdr">259,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td>1891</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,600,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td>1892</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3,000,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td>1893</td>
+    <td class="tdr">4,984,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td>1894</td>
+    <td class="tdr">4,700,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td>1895</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3,400,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td>1896</td>
+    <td class="tdr">5,098,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td>1897</td>
+    <td class="tdr">8,134,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td>1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10,519,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td>1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">13,508,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td>1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">14,034,000</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="ditto">”</span></td>
+    <td>1901</td>
+    <td class="tdr">11,652,000</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<h4>IMPORT, CONSUMPTION AND STOCK OF WEST AFRICAN MAHOGANY INTO LIVERPOOL
+1898-1901</h4>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th colspan="2">1898.</th>
+    <th colspan="2">1899.</th>
+    <th colspan="2">1900.</th>
+    <th colspan="2">1901.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Import</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">10,519,000</td>
+    <td>ft.</td>
+    <td class="tdr">13,508,000</td>
+    <td>ft.</td>
+    <td class="tdr">14,034,000</td>
+    <td>ft.</td>
+    <td class="tdr">11,652,000</td>
+    <td>ft.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Consumption</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">10,571,000</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdr">13,496,000</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdr">13,764,000</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdr">11,978,000</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Stock</span></td>
+    <td class="tdr">633,000</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdr">645,000</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdr">915,000</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+    <td class="tdr">589,000</td>
+    <td class="tdc">”</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<h4>IMPORTS OF WEST AFRICAN MAHOGANY INTO LIVERPOOL FOR THE FIRST SIX MONTHS
+OF 1901 AND 1902 RESPECTIVELY</h4>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th colspan="12"><span class="smcap">Logs</span></th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th colspan="2">January.</th>
+    <th colspan="2">February.</th>
+    <th colspan="2">March.</th>
+    <th colspan="2">April.</th>
+    <th colspan="2">May.</th>
+    <th colspan="2">June.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th>1901.</th>
+    <th>1902.</th>
+    <th>1901.</th>
+    <th>1902.</th>
+    <th>1901.</th>
+    <th>1902.</th>
+    <th>1901.</th>
+    <th>1902.</th>
+    <th>1901.</th>
+    <th>1902.</th>
+    <th>1901.</th>
+    <th>1902.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Lagos</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1558</td>
+    <td class="tdr">799</td>
+    <td class="tdr">767</td>
+    <td class="tdr">184</td>
+    <td class="tdr">386</td>
+    <td class="tdr">120</td>
+    <td class="tdr">311</td>
+    <td class="tdr">42</td>
+    <td class="tdr">210</td>
+    <td class="tdr">43</td>
+    <td class="tdr">72</td>
+    <td class="tdr">114</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Benin</td>
+    <td class="tdr">202</td>
+    <td class="tdr">599</td>
+    <td class="tdr">62</td>
+    <td class="tdr">376</td>
+    <td class="tdr">69</td>
+    <td class="tdr">—</td>
+    <td class="tdr">121</td>
+    <td class="tdr">181</td>
+    <td class="tdr">56</td>
+    <td class="tdr">66</td>
+    <td class="tdr">77</td>
+    <td class="tdr">—</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Sapeli</td>
+    <td class="tdr">65</td>
+    <td class="tdr">49</td>
+    <td class="tdr">44</td>
+    <td class="tdr">44</td>
+    <td class="tdr">58</td>
+    <td class="tdr">—</td>
+    <td class="tdr">87</td>
+    <td class="tdr">89</td>
+    <td class="tdr">36</td>
+    <td class="tdr">42</td>
+    <td class="tdr">77</td>
+    <td class="tdr">—</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="nw">Other West African Ports</td>
+    <td class="tdr">2373</td>
+    <td class="tdr">626</td>
+    <td class="tdr">505</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1130</td>
+    <td class="tdr">264</td>
+    <td class="tdr">198</td>
+    <td class="tdr">604</td>
+    <td class="tdr">617</td>
+    <td class="tdr">206</td>
+    <td class="tdr">502</td>
+    <td class="tdr">320</td>
+    <td class="tdr">114</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_367"></a>[367]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="THE_GOLD_COAST_MINING_INDUSTRY">THE GOLD COAST MINING INDUSTRY</h3>
+
+<p>Having but casually referred to the Gold Coast mining industry, it has
+been suggested to me that a few remarks might be contributed to the
+subject in an Appendix. I am somewhat reluctant to write anything on
+the point, because I know absolutely nothing about mining; and the
+opinions I have formed, such as they are, are the outcome (1) of conversations
+with a number of men who are more or less experts, and have
+formed their views of the prospects of the Gold Coast mining industry
+from personal investigation on the spot; (2) the perusal of a quantity of
+reports by Companies which are operating and prospecting ... and by
+Companies which are doing nothing at all but squander their shareholders’
+money; (3) historical research and study of the past performances of the
+Gold Coast as a gold producer. Beyond that I have no knowledge
+whatever; nothing but opinions, which perhaps the reader will kindly bear
+in mind when perusing the following notes.</p>
+
+<p>There is not the slightest doubt that gold exists in considerable
+quantities in West Africa. The earliest records we have of any trade at
+all being done on the West Coast of Africa is a trade in gold dust. The
+external trade of West Africa dates back to the period when the Negroes
+beheld the Carthaginian galleys bearing down upon their shores. The
+internal gold trade of West Africa is probably even more remote—but
+there we enter the domain of conjecture.</p>
+
+<p>There is not the slightest doubt that the Portuguese, Dutch, English,
+French, and so on, obtained enormous quantities of gold from the Gold
+Coast.</p>
+
+<p>For many years the gold <i>trade</i> in the Gold Coast has practically been
+a thing of the past. The gold <i>trade</i>, as a trade, is long since dead.</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning of last century the great gold store—which had been
+accumulating for ages—of the Coast peoples of the Gold Coast became
+exhausted. At that period the Ashantis, farther inland, still retained
+large quantities of gold ostentatiously displayed. James, Bowdich,
+Dupuis, Hutton, and Hutcheson bear witness to that. With the gradual
+undermining of the Ashanti Kingdom this store also disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>Coming to more recent times, we find that the geological formation
+known as “banket” was discovered in 1878 in the Takwa district by a
+French traveller called Bonnat. That seems to have been the basis of
+the future modern mining industry in the Gold Coast, replacing the
+extinct trade.</p>
+
+<p>Many years of disappointment and failure followed Bonnat’s discovery,
+due in a very large measure to the absence of transport facilities and to
+mortality. However, some of the mines which had come into existence
+subsequent to the discovery refused to be discouraged, and went on
+working, more or less half-heartedly, notably in the Wassau and Takwa
+districts.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_368"></a>[368]</span></p>
+
+<p>In January 1900 the scene changed, as though by a magician’s wand.
+The man who waved it was a Mr. Stanley Clay, an engineer reputed of
+considerable ability, in the employ of the Consolidated Goldfields of
+South Africa, which Corporation had been approached by the men who
+owned the Wassau and Takwa mines. This gentleman reported in
+effect that the banket formation of the district he had been despatched to
+examine was so like the banket formation of the Rand as to be hardly
+distinguishable from the latter. Although some years previous to that
+report the Ashanti Goldfields Corporation, Limited—the parent, so to
+speak, of the Ashanti mines—had come into existence, I believe I am
+correct in stating that the remarkable “boom” in Gold Coast mining
+undertakings practically dates from the favourable report above
+alluded to.</p>
+
+<p>Be that as it may, the last two years have witnessed the extraordinary
+movement with which every one is familiar. According to “Wallach’s
+West African Manual” for June 1901, 321 companies had at that time
+been created, with a total nominal share capital of £25,567,170. “The
+issued share capital will amount to approximately £15,750,000, if all is
+fully paid up.”<a id="FNanchor_310" href="#Footnote_310" class="fnanchor">[310]</a></p>
+
+<p>This is truly colossal. But all is not gold that glitters. The boom,
+prematurely, and to a large extent, dishonestly engineered, collapsed.
+Deep distrust has taken the place of sanguine anticipations, and public
+confidence, greatly shaken, is apt to rush to the opposite extreme. The
+Gold Coast mining industry has many enemies and many unwise friends.
+The “boom” was, of course, thoroughly unjustified. The public lost
+their heads completely. Company after company was formed, a large
+proportion of which hardly knew where their territory lay, let alone
+whether it contained any gold. But the public did not care twopence so
+long as it was a Gold Coast venture, and a great many rascals have done
+excellently well out of the British investor. Finally, this constant flotation
+of companies got to be in the nature of a scandal; and the Governor
+of the Gold Coast, in a courageous speech, which has remained famous,
+before the local Chamber of Commerce, and for which Sir Matthew Nathan
+deserves the greatest possible credit, denounced the abuses which the
+movement was giving rise to. Mr. Chamberlain promptly endorsed the
+Governor’s views, and caused a public statement to be made which fell
+like a bombshell on the market-riggers. Flotation of new companies
+after that was an almost impossible task, and the market received a
+staggering blow from which it has not yet recovered. There is pretty
+certain to be renewed activity at some not very distant day. Let us
+hope that the next time it will rest on something more tangible than
+fairy tales.</p>
+
+<p>That gold exists in the Gold Coast is demonstrated beyond a shadow
+of doubt. That it can be worked at a profit has yet to be satisfactorily
+proved, even in the case of the properties which are, or will be, in close
+proximity to the railway now in course of construction. For the purposes
+of illustration the Gold Coast may be divided into three portions. First,<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_369"></a>[369]</span>
+where gold exists in such quantities—other conditions being favourable—that
+it is reasonable to believe the mines, if economically and wisely
+administered, will become dividend-producing. Secondly, where gold
+exists, but not in sufficient quantities—the conditions of mining in West
+Africa being what they are—to enable the mines ever to become dividend-paying.
+Thirdly; where no gold exists at all.</p>
+
+<p>Now when it is borne in mind that options have been acquired by
+individuals pretty well all over the country, and companies have been
+formed to work those options, it will be easily understood that shares of
+a considerable number of existing companies are not worth the paper
+upon which they are inscribed. In my opinion, if Mr. Wallach’s “321”
+companies were divided by six, the residue would be an optimistic
+prophecy as to the number of Gold Coast mining companies existing ten
+years hence. This number would be amply sufficient to allow of the
+Gold Coast to become, what I believe it will become, a gold-producing
+region of very considerable value. Personally, I am as equally convinced
+that some of the mines will become good dividend-payers, as I am that
+the majority are rubbish. The two main difficulties which the mining
+industry in the Gold Coast have to face are climate and transport.</p>
+
+<p>The first is a very real difficulty, and the public would do well to treat
+with the utmost scepticism reports emanating from directors of Gold
+Coast companies, especially those whose properties are situate near the
+coast; who pooh-pooh the danger of the climate. If Major Ross’s indefatigable
+efforts are backed up by the authorities and the mining
+companies, we shall see a better state of things before many years are
+past. But that the climate will always be an adverse element to contend
+against is positively certain. Those who say the contrary are not
+dealing honestly with the public.</p>
+
+<p>Many people imagine that transport difficulties will vanish when this
+crawling single line to Kumasi has been completed. Let those who are
+inclined to that belief study one of the excellent maps of the Gold Coast
+mines now available, and see how many of the properties, out of the total
+of companies floated, approximate sufficiently to the line to feel its usefulness.
+Before transport difficulties can be said to be overcome, the Gold
+Coast must be a network of railways. That may come, but the time is
+not yet by a long, a very long way.</p>
+
+<p>The alleged labour difficulty I have dealt with elsewhere. It is largely
+fictitious, as the most reputable companies and the most experienced
+Europeans will bear witness. The boot, the stick; abuse; inadequate
+pay; dishonest dealing—so long as these incentives to labour exist on the
+Gold Coast, and they exist to-day, so long will certain people endeavour
+to make the British public believe that labour is improcurable in West
+Africa save by measures of coercion, or by Asiatic emigration, or by
+draining the other West African colonies of their able-bodied men.
+Decent wages; just treatment; tactful dealing; a high type of representative—the
+mining companies which supply these have not, and will
+not have, occasion to complain. The Administration might play a useful<span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_370"></a>[370]</span>
+part in imitating the French policy of obtaining labour for the Guinea
+Railway, viz. through the Chiefs, and through them alone, and refuse to
+allow authorised or unauthorised recruiting agents.</p>
+
+<p>From the point of view of the investing public, those who contemplate
+putting any money into the Gold Coast mines should carefully weigh the
+difficulties mentioned against the counterbalancing reasons for optimism
+in the facts (1) that some undoubted experts, and some men of undoubted
+integrity and ability who have a reputation to lose, have staked that
+reputation upon the existence of “paying” gold in the Gold Coast;
+(2) that a powerful corporation has undertaken a heavy liability in guaranteeing
+a certain sum for a number of years to the Gold Coast Railway;
+(3) that a very large sum of money has been sunk in the country for the
+purpose of mining enterprise; (4) that the past history of the Gold
+Coast is all in its favour. Finally, the investor should discriminate
+carefully between the companies and “groups” which are justifying,
+or honestly seeking to justify, their existence and those that are not.</p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="APPROXIMATE_AREA_AND_POPULATION">APPROXIMATE AREA AND POPULATION OF THE BRITISH WEST AFRICAN POSSESSIONS</h3>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Gambia.</span></td>
+    <td colspan="3">Population, 14,260.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td rowspan="2" class="nw"><span class="smcap">Sierra Leone.</span></td>
+    <td colspan="3">Colony, 4000 square miles; population, 136,000.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="3">Protectorate, 30,000 square miles; population, 750,000.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td rowspan="3"><span class="smcap">Gold Coast.</span></td>
+    <td colspan="3">Gold Coast Proper, 40,000 square miles; population, 1,500,000.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="3">Ashanti proper. Neither area nor population known.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td colspan="3">Northern territories, 38,000 square miles<a id="FNanchor_311" href="#Footnote_311" class="fnanchor">[311]</a>;
+    population, 317,964 (C.O. Report, July 1902).</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td rowspan="2"><span class="smcap">Lagos.</span></td>
+    <td>Colony, 3460 square miles</td>
+    <td>}</td>
+    <td rowspan="2" class="valign">Population,<a id="FNanchor_312" href="#Footnote_312" class="fnanchor">[312]</a> 1,500,000.</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Protectorate, 25,450 square miles</td>
+    <td>}</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smcap">Nigeria.</span></td>
+    <td colspan="3">500,000 square miles; population, 25 to 30 millions.<a id="FNanchor_313" href="#Footnote_313" class="fnanchor">[313]</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_371"></a>[371]</span></p>
+
+<h3 class="nobreak" id="THE_RABINEK_CASE">THE RABINEK CASE</h3>
+
+<p class="center">(<a href="#CHAPTER_XXXII">See Chapter xxxii.</a>)</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>On October 27th, Sir Charles Dilke, having asked the Under-Secretary
+for Foreign Affairs if he could say whether, in the Rabinek case, the
+prisoner was taken by the Congolese authorities from a British ship in
+British waters, and, if so, what course his Majesty’s Government proposed
+to adopt, Lord Cranborne, in a printed answer, said: “It is at present
+uncertain whether Mr. Rabinek was actually on board a British vessel
+when arrested, or whether the ship was at the time in British waters.
+Inquiries are, however, being made, and on receipt of definite information
+his Majesty’s Government will be in a position to consider what action
+should be taken in the matter.”</p>
+
+<p>Since the above question by Sir Charles Dilke, the doubt as to the
+actual place of Mr. Rabinek’s arrest has been removed. The Congo
+State authorities can no longer evade the point. Here is a copy of the
+<i>Procès-verbal d’arrestation</i>, showing conclusively that Mr. Rabinek was
+arrested <i>on board a British vessel</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquote">
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Procès-verbal d’arrestation.</span></p>
+
+<p>Le soussigné, Saroléa, Louis, Sous-Lieutenant de la Force Publique,
+commandant la colonne mobile du Tanganyka, stationnée à Mpueto,
+officier de police judiciaire, a procédé le 15 Mai 1901, à 3 heures de
+l’après-midi, à l’arrestation du sieur Rabinek en exécution du mandat
+d’arrêt délivré le 17 Décembre, 1900, à charge du dit Rabinek par le
+tribunal territorial d’Albertville. <i>Le prénommé se trouvait à bord du
+steamer anglais “Scotia,” ancré dans le port de Mpueto.</i> Le Sieur
+Rabinek a été remis à M. Chargois ff du représentant du Comité Spécial
+du Katanga à Mpueto.</p>
+
+<p class="right">Fait à Mpueto, le 15 Mai 1901.</p>
+
+<p class="right">(L.S.) Lieutenant Commandant la<br>
+Colonne mobile du Tanganyka.</p>
+
+<p class="right">(Sig.) <span class="smcap">Saroléa.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The British Government has now a copy of the above.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_372"></a>[372]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="FOOTNOTES">FOOTNOTES</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> <i>Journal of the African Society</i>, October 1901.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> Among the principal exceptions may be mentioned gum arabic
+from Senegal, pepper, spices, &amp;c., from the Guinea Coast.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> The totals here given do not, of course, include foreign and Colonial
+merchandise shipped to British West Africa from British ports.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_4" href="#FNanchor_4" class="label">[4]</a> The total volume of trade—British and foreign and coastwise—in
+each of the West African Colonies in the five years 1896-1900, including
+specie, has been as follows:</p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Gambia</td>
+    <td class="tdr">£1,797,916</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Sierra Leone</td>
+    <td class="tdr">4,646,503</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Gold Coast</td>
+    <td class="tdr">10,393,850</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Lagos</td>
+    <td class="tdr">8,853,461</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Niger Coast Protectorate (and for 1900, “Nigeria”)</td>
+    <td class="tdr">8,183,288</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">Gross total</td>
+    <td class="tdr bt">£42,728,479</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<p class="noindent">The trade of the former territories of the Niger Company, from 1896 to
+1899 inclusive, is not reckoned in this total, no public figures being
+available.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_5" href="#FNanchor_5" class="label">[5]</a> The totals given are, of course, exclusive of foreign and Colonial
+merchandise shipped to these foreign possessions from British ports.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_6" href="#FNanchor_6" class="label">[6]</a> Due to exceptional imports of coal and telegraph apparatus.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_7" href="#FNanchor_7" class="label">[7]</a> German imports, like British imports, are largely for re-exportation
+to other European and American ports.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_8" href="#FNanchor_8" class="label">[8]</a> The chief town in Borgu on which the Lugard and Decœur expeditions
+were directing their efforts.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_9" href="#FNanchor_9" class="label">[9]</a> <i>Journal of the African Society</i>, January 1902.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_10" href="#FNanchor_10" class="label">[10]</a> This document is published <i>in extenso</i> in the annual report of the
+Liverpool Chamber of Commerce for 1901.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_11" href="#FNanchor_11" class="label">[11]</a> The Foreign Office lost us the Cameroons, the French Congo littoral,
+Futa-Jallon, and heaven knows what besides. In doing so it showed
+itself the indifferent servant of an indifferent public.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_12" href="#FNanchor_12" class="label">[12]</a> See, more particularly, Appendices and the chapter on the
+Finances of Nigeria.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_13" href="#FNanchor_13" class="label">[13]</a> “By the end of April 1900,” says the report for Southern Nigeria
+for 1900, “twenty proclamations were passed.” I should be afraid to
+say how many have been passed since.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_14" href="#FNanchor_14" class="label">[14]</a> The activity of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine has been
+phenomenal, and the useful work performed by it is internationally
+recognised. To the splendid enterprise of Sir Alfred Jones, its initiator
+and President, is due the astonishingly strong financial position which
+the School has attained—entirely the outcome of private benevolence.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_15" href="#FNanchor_15" class="label">[15]</a> In the remarkable speech he made at the Lagos Literary Institute—the
+most able and statesmanlike oration ever delivered by a British
+official in West Africa—Sir William MacGregor said in reference to the
+extension of the Lagos Railway: “It would require probably not much
+greater expenditure than would a number of military campaigns, it would
+save many valuable lives to open up the country in that way, and it
+would leave a permanent valuable asset. In this the locomotive would
+be preferable to the Maxim.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_16" href="#FNanchor_16" class="label">[16]</a> That admirable German Institution, the <i>Kolonial Wirtschaftliches
+Komitee</i> (Agricultural Committee) might also be imitated with advantage
+by our Government. Attached to the German Colonial Society,
+the Agricultural Committee devotes its exclusive attention to a study
+of the economic resources of the German possessions, giving special
+notice to cocoa, rubber, gutta-percha, cotton, &amp;c. Experts have been
+despatched by the Committee to the South Seas to study gutta-percha,
+to the States for cotton, to Central and South America for cocoa, &amp;c.
+The Committee is really composed of a trained body of agricultural
+and botanical specialists working in the joint interests of the Government
+and the merchants.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_17" href="#FNanchor_17" class="label">[17]</a> M. Empain has lately been granted by King Leopold a huge concession
+in the Aruwimi region of the Congo State in connection with
+the promotion of a railway to the Great Lakes.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_18" href="#FNanchor_18" class="label">[18]</a> The London Chamber being mainly—although not exclusively—concerned
+with Gold Coast trade and mining developments.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_19" href="#FNanchor_19" class="label">[19]</a> It was entirely owing to the assistance of the African Association’s
+agents that the people of the Niger Delta were induced to accept
+British protection and consular jurisdiction. By the merchants’ good
+offices, Consuls Johnston and Hewett were enabled to ascend the
+rivers to places where they would not have dared to enter unaccompanied
+by representatives of the merchants.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_20" href="#FNanchor_20" class="label">[20]</a> Chairman of the African Section.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_21" href="#FNanchor_21" class="label">[21]</a> Report of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, 1900.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_22" href="#FNanchor_22" class="label">[22]</a> Messrs. Shelford’s estimate is £7000 per mile. But this cannot be
+reconciled with the amount expended. It leaves out of account the cost
+of bridges between Lagos Island and the mainland, which are part and
+parcel of the railway scheme. In March of this year the Colony had
+already expended its loan of £1,053,700, which works out at £8430 per
+mile. But although the railway has reached its present terminus it is
+not yet properly finished. Speaking in March, Sir W. MacGregor foreshadowed
+a further expenditure of £60,000, and added, “the probability
+is, however, that this will not be sufficient.” On the same occasion the
+Governor, reviewing the state of the Colony, said that one of the two
+“principal causes of anxiety” was “the difficulty experienced in getting
+the railway into working order.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_23" href="#FNanchor_23" class="label">[23]</a> French Guinea borrowed £480,000 at the rate of 4.10 per cent. and
+4 per cent. respectively.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_24" href="#FNanchor_24" class="label">[24]</a> 14<i>s.</i> 8<i>d.</i> per head of the whole population of the territory.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_25" href="#FNanchor_25" class="label">[25]</a> Another incident of the kind is referred to by Sir W. MacGregor in
+one of his speeches before the Legislative Council. Plans were sent
+home for a steam-hopper or tramway to remove refuse. The plans were
+rejected by the “consulting engineers.” The Governor sarcastically
+remarked: “It is doubtful that any remedy that would cost less than
+£100,000 will ever be approved by the engineers.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_26" href="#FNanchor_26" class="label">[26]</a> The same belief was entertained, curiously enough, by the inhabitants
+of the Niger Basin itself even in Clapperton’s day, as witness
+Sultan Bello’s map, drawn for Clapperton at the latter’s request,
+referred to farther on.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_27" href="#FNanchor_27" class="label">[27]</a> Lyon subsequently gained Timbuctoo from Murzuk, being the
+second European to visit the mysterious city. It has always remained
+an open question whether Horneman did not actually cross the Desert
+and reach the Chad. Denham, indeed, believed that he did so, but no
+trace of the unfortunate German has ever been discovered from the
+time he left Murzuk, nearly a quarter of a century before Denham
+arrived there himself.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_28" href="#FNanchor_28" class="label">[28]</a> Caffre—<i>i.e.</i> unbeliever.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_29" href="#FNanchor_29" class="label">[29]</a> For instance, the Bahr-el-Ghazal, Bahr-el-Asrek, Bahr-el-Abiad,
+&amp;c., all rivers.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_30" href="#FNanchor_30" class="label">[30]</a> Some authors consider the Hausas to be a branch of the Mandingo
+race. According to this theory, the Mandingoes are the parent stock,
+and the Hausas, Songhays, Bambarras, &amp;c., are all offshoots of the
+same great family. Although there would appear to be a certain basis
+of probability—especially as regards the Bambarras—in the plea of a
+common Mandingo origin, our historical and ethnological knowledge of
+the different races of West Africa, which is still in the embryonic stage,
+precludes anything in the nature of a positive assertion.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_31" href="#FNanchor_31" class="label">[31]</a> Subsequent to the final overthrow of the Berbers, under Kuseila,
+by the Arabs in 688 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_32" href="#FNanchor_32" class="label">[32]</a> “Historical Account of the Kingdom of Tek-roor.” By Sultan
+Mohammed Bello of Hoosa. Denham &amp; Clapperton. Vol. ii., Appendix
+xiii.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_33" href="#FNanchor_33" class="label">[33]</a> “Hausaland.” By the Rev. Charles Robinson. P. 179.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_34" href="#FNanchor_34" class="label">[34]</a> The <i>Hausa bokoy</i>, or seven States, as distinct from the <i>Banza bokoy</i>
+or Bastard States, representing the seven other provinces where the
+Hausa language had partly spread.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_35" href="#FNanchor_35" class="label">[35]</a> “A Mission to Central Africa.” By James Richardson. 1850-51.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_36" href="#FNanchor_36" class="label">[36]</a> “L’Annamite mère des langues.” Le Colonel Frey. 1892.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_37" href="#FNanchor_37" class="label">[37]</a> Lieutenant-Colonel Monteil’s estimate, 1891.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_38" href="#FNanchor_38" class="label">[38]</a> For hours you may wander about noting industrial scenes like these,
+showing to what a length their advance in civilisation has increased
+the wants of the people, and produced a necessary division of labour
+into weavers, dyers, blacksmiths, brass-workers, saddle-makers, tailors,
+builders, horse-boys, agricultural labourers, domestic servants, shoe-makers,
+shopkeepers, traders, and others.—Joseph Thompson, in <i>Good
+Words</i>, 1886.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_39" href="#FNanchor_39" class="label">[39]</a> Leo Africanus tells us that Gober “had a good trade and considerable
+industry, especially in leather-work” (beginning of sixteenth
+century).</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_40" href="#FNanchor_40" class="label">[40]</a> Since the above was written, Mr. Consul Jago’s report (No. 578) on
+the “Trade and economic state of the vilayet of Tripoli during the past
+forty years” has been published by the Foreign Office. It is a most
+interesting document. The Consul gives a table of the value of Tripoli’s
+trade with the Central Sudan States (Sokoto, Bornu, Wadai) for the
+period 1862-1901 as follows: 1862-71, £318,000; 1872-81, £1,846,300;
+1882-91, £1,283,000; 1892-1901, £1,141,700; annual average, £114,725.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_41" href="#FNanchor_41" class="label">[41]</a> Consul Jago appears to favour this view. I venture to suggest
+that the paragraphs (pp. 7 and 8) in which he refers to the point are
+open to criticism. Take, for instance, the cost of transport. Notwithstanding
+that, at first sight, the assertion may appear strange, I
+believe that, if any one cares to take the trouble to work out the cost of
+transport of a ton of European merchandise from London to Kuka (1)
+<i>viâ</i> Tripoli and by caravan across the desert, (2) <i>viâ</i> Burutu, the Niger
+and overland, the former route will be found the cheaper of the two.
+Things do not always appear to be what they are in Africa. If France
+can come to a working understanding with the Senussis, the caravan
+trade will revive.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_42" href="#FNanchor_42" class="label">[42]</a> According to Lieutenant-Colonel Pilcher, who commanded the
+West African Frontier Force in 1898, the Hausa is more quarrelsome
+than the Yoruba or Nupe, gets into trouble more often, and is not so
+quick at picking up drill or musketry (Colonial Office Report, No. 260,
+West African Frontier Force, June 1899). Other officers eulogise the
+Hausas, and among military men they are, I think, believed to be
+superior fighters to either the West Indian or Mendi Negro, while about
+equalling the Yoruba. The Negro seems to fight more fiercely and
+recklessly when he has Islam to fall back upon.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_43" href="#FNanchor_43" class="label">[43]</a> “Géographie Universelle,” livre xii. p. 587. 1887.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_44" href="#FNanchor_44" class="label">[44]</a> “The Colonisation of Africa,” p. 282. 1899.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_45" href="#FNanchor_45" class="label">[45]</a> “Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_46" href="#FNanchor_46" class="label">[46]</a> “The Language of Bornu.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_47" href="#FNanchor_47" class="label">[47]</a> “Magana Hausa.” By J. F. Schön, D.D., F.R.G.S.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_48" href="#FNanchor_48" class="label">[48]</a> “Hausaland; or, Fifteen Hundred Miles through the Central
+Sudan.” 1897.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_49" href="#FNanchor_49" class="label">[49]</a> “Specimens of Hausa Literature.” “A Hausa Grammar.” “A
+Hausa-English Dictionary.” “The Gospel of St. John in Hausa.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_50" href="#FNanchor_50" class="label">[50]</a> Full details are supplied in Canon Robinson’s book.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_51" href="#FNanchor_51" class="label">[51]</a> Apart from the question whether the Hausas can claim to have
+“attempted the production of a literature” any more than the Fulani
+or Kanuri, there remains the fact—which goes to confute Canon Robinson’s
+somewhat sweeping generalisation—that the language of the
+Tuareg—the Tamashek—has been reduced to literature in <i>Tamashek
+characters</i>, and that both sexes among the Tuareg are regularly instructed
+therein.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_52" href="#FNanchor_52" class="label">[52]</a> “Kanuri Proverbs and Kanuri-English Vocabulary.” By the Rev.
+S. N. Koelle. On page 9 of the introduction to his book, Koelle speaks
+of the system of orthography followed by him as that of Professor
+Lepsius, of Berlin, in the pamphlet entitled “Standard Alphabet for
+Reducing <i>Unwritten Languages</i> and Foreign Graphic Systems to a
+Uniform Orthography in European Letters.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_53" href="#FNanchor_53" class="label">[53]</a> Baikie gives nine Hausa dialects, viz.: “Katshena, the purest and
+best; (2) Kano; (3) Gober; (4) Daure; (5) Zamfara; (6) Zuzu;
+(7) Biranta Goboz; (8) Kabi; (9) Shira, or Shura.”—“Narrative of an
+Exploring Voyage up the Rivers Kwora and Binue.” By William
+Balfour Baikie. 1856.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_54" href="#FNanchor_54" class="label">[54]</a> It is found in French Guinea, north of Sierra Leone, but is not
+there the staple product, rubber taking its place.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_55" href="#FNanchor_55" class="label">[55]</a> Southern Nigeria, or rather the Niger Delta, is commonly known as
+“the rivers.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_56" href="#FNanchor_56" class="label">[56]</a> The figures for 1900 include the whole of Nigeria—that is, the
+former Niger Company’s territories in the Lower Niger, and the Niger
+Coast Protectorate, now incorporated into Southern Nigeria.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_57" href="#FNanchor_57" class="label">[57]</a> <i>Idem.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_58" href="#FNanchor_58" class="label">[58]</a> Germany has a protective tax on kernel or other foreign crushed
+oil, which enables her to keep the home market to herself, and she has
+made a profitable use of the cake for feeding cattle, whilst our farmers—largely,
+I understand, through the operation of the tenant-right conditions
+of tenure, or perhaps through mere prejudice—refuse to use it
+to any extent.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_59" href="#FNanchor_59" class="label">[59]</a> In Senegal and the Gambia the ground-nut industry, which is also
+essentially a native industry, takes its place, the number of palm-trees
+in those possessions being very scanty—not worth mentioning, in fact.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_60" href="#FNanchor_60" class="label">[60]</a> It is also used for lubricating mixtures for the axles of railway
+carriages.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_61" href="#FNanchor_61" class="label">[61]</a> Giving out trust is not invariably confined to the European. Native
+chiefs have been known to give trust to Europeans up to 1000 cases of
+palm-oil, in days, too, when palm-oil was worth £15 per puncheon. This
+would represent a credit of £15,000.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_62" href="#FNanchor_62" class="label">[62]</a> In point of fact, palm-oil from the Congo district is the richest in
+stearine.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_63" href="#FNanchor_63" class="label">[63]</a> The first West African kernels were imported in 1860 by Mr. A.
+Mackenzie Smith and the late Mr. Charles Lane, of Liverpool. The
+Old Calabar district led the way in Southern Nigeria. The trade was
+begun there in a small way in 1864. Benin was the next place in
+Southern Nigeria to follow suit, and by 1867 the trade was fairly large.
+By 1880 the trade had spread to the other rivers, New Calabar, Bonny,
+Brass, and Opobo.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_64" href="#FNanchor_64" class="label">[64]</a> The average crushing of the African Oil Mills is, I believe, about
+600 tons weekly.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_65" href="#FNanchor_65" class="label">[65]</a> The exception is the machine erected at the Brass River in 1877
+(by the Count de Cardi, I believe) and used to this day by the firm
+which has the principal trade of this district. It can produce, I believe,
+forty or fifty bags of clean kernels per day of ten hours. It would
+require 600 or 700 pairs of hands to give this result in the same
+time.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_66" href="#FNanchor_66" class="label">[66]</a> I am given to understand that efforts to use hand-crushing
+machines are being made by a merchant firm in French Guinea.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_67" href="#FNanchor_67" class="label">[67]</a> An interesting account of this most valuable experiment is given by
+M. Pierre Mille in the <i>Journal of the African Society</i> for October 1901.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_68" href="#FNanchor_68" class="label">[68]</a> Various types of hand-ploughs are now being experimented with in
+Senegal for the purpose of quickening production.—See <i>Journal d’Agriculture
+Tropicale</i>, September 1901.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_69" href="#FNanchor_69" class="label">[69]</a> Many people, on the other hand, will consider the somewhat
+elaborate judicial machinery set up in Northern Nigeria as distinctly
+premature. The administration of English law in West African Protectorates
+(see p. 16, Northern Nigeria Report), even when modified by
+native law and custom, is a feature of the Crown Colony system which
+has little to recommend it. Dr. Ballay’s plan in French Guinea was
+infinitely preferable. In all matters affecting the relations of natives
+with natives Ballay insisted that native law should be the basis. He
+declined to introduce all the technicalities of European law among a
+people whose own laws are founded upon just principles, and, given
+security in their application, work effectively and well.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_70" href="#FNanchor_70" class="label">[70]</a> August 1, 1891. It was first called Consular Jurisdiction.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_71" href="#FNanchor_71" class="label">[71]</a> Sir Ralph Moor has since declared that Southern Nigeria is in “a
+very sound financial position.” The test of sound finance must be
+different in West Africa from any other part of the world.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_72" href="#FNanchor_72" class="label">[72]</a> Colonial Office Report, No. 315.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_73" href="#FNanchor_73" class="label">[73]</a> In that year Southern Nigeria spent £30,196 on military expenses
+and £8236 only on the “Aborigines” department. Under “Political
+and Administrative” expenses, £20,327 was absorbed; under “Marine
+Department,” £32,531; £24,654 only was spared for public works, but
+“Prisons” necessitated £7200, against £1171 under “Botanical” and
+£1147 under “Sanitary”!</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_74" href="#FNanchor_74" class="label">[74]</a> In 1890 the value of exports from the Delta was estimated at over
+£1,300,000.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_75" href="#FNanchor_75" class="label">[75]</a> The Nupe campaign was undertaken after great provocation, and
+is understood to have been carried out with the approval, tacit or
+avowed, of the Emir of Sokoto, who had reason to complain of the
+Emir of Nupe’s conduct.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_76" href="#FNanchor_76" class="label">[76]</a> Similarly Nupe refused to have anything to do with Herr von
+Puttkamer in 1889 without consulting the Company, although the
+German (or his interpreter) passed himself off as the “Queen of
+England’s messenger.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_77" href="#FNanchor_77" class="label">[77]</a> Northern Nigeria.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_78" href="#FNanchor_78" class="label">[78]</a> “The Foundation of British East Africa.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_79" href="#FNanchor_79" class="label">[79]</a> Colonial Report, No. 346, page 11, par. 2.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_80" href="#FNanchor_80" class="label">[80]</a> Lord John Russell’s Instructions to Captain Henry Dundas Trotter,
+Commander William Allen, Commander Bird Allen, and William Cook,
+Esquire, Commissioners for making and concluding agreements with
+the Chief Rulers of the Western Coast of Africa for the suppression of
+the traffic in slaves and the establishment of a lawful commerce,
+1840.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_81" href="#FNanchor_81" class="label">[81]</a> The absence of any wish to “act otherwise” on the part of the
+native is invariably assumed in Europe, and but too often by Europeans
+in Africa. In this connection the following passage from
+Clapperton (when travelling in Nigeria) is worth noting: “It was with
+feelings of the highest satisfaction that I listened to some of the most
+respectable of the merchants, when they declared that; were any other
+system of trading adopted, they would gladly embrace it in preference
+to dealing in slaves.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_82" href="#FNanchor_82" class="label">[82]</a> Archibald Constable &amp; Co. 1898.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_83" href="#FNanchor_83" class="label">[83]</a> Not to be confounded with the King of Benin who massacred
+Consul-General Phillips.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_84" href="#FNanchor_84" class="label">[84]</a> Referring to domestic slavery in the Northern Territories of the
+Gold Coast, the late Lieut.-Colonel Northcott, C.B., whose death was a
+sad blow to the Empire and to West Africa particularly, in his report
+on those territories (Report on the Northern Territories of the Gold
+Coast—published by the Intelligence Division of the War Office in
+1899), says: “The every-day life of slaves differs in no respect from
+that of the free men. Ground is allotted to them, on which they are
+free to work for their own benefit, the rule generally being that they
+may take two days out of every five for work on their own account.
+With the accumulated results of this labour they are at liberty to purchase
+their freedom. The price demanded is not excessive, and ranges
+from £2 to £5, according to locality; but so lightly does the yoke of
+slavery bear that only a comparatively small proportion seek their
+emancipation by this means. Slaves may marry, and are encouraged
+to do so, the children becoming the property of the master. The apparent
+hardship of liability to sale is in reality not oppressive. The
+march to the new owner’s place of abode is free from any suggestion of
+cruelty or force; the slave partakes of his master’s food and shares
+his lodging, and he is certain of kind treatment on arriving at his
+destination.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_85" href="#FNanchor_85" class="label">[85]</a> This is pidgeon-English, the Hausa for ivory tusk (<i>i.e.</i> piece of
+ivory) being <i>hakorin</i>, or <i>hauwin giwa</i>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_86" href="#FNanchor_86" class="label">[86]</a> Named in honour of Park, who is supposed to be the first European
+to have noticed it.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_87" href="#FNanchor_87" class="label">[87]</a> And Lagos again since the opening of the railway.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_88" href="#FNanchor_88" class="label">[88]</a> Up to the present, however, shipments of this prepared latex have
+met with scant success.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_89" href="#FNanchor_89" class="label">[89]</a> In the “Report of the Sierra Leone Company” (London: James
+Phillips, printer, 1794) the following passage occurs, which most probably
+refers to the <i>Pendatesma butyracæ</i>. “Butter and tallow tree.
+This is common in low lands about Freetown; it abounds with a juice
+resembling gambodge in taint and durability, which exudes after the
+least laceration, and becomes more coagulated, viscous, and of a
+darker colour. The wood of this tree is firm, and seems adapted to
+various economical purposes. The fruit is nearly oval, about twice the
+size of a man’s fist; the rind is thick, pulpy, and of a pleasant acid; in
+the inside are found from five to nine seeds of the size of the walnut,
+containing an oleaginous matter, extracted by the natives and used
+with their rice and other food.” A gentleman of my acquaintance who
+knows this tree, tells me he has seen it growing in Sierra Leone, so that
+there seems no reason why experiments similar to those undertaken in
+French Guinea should not be made in our colony, which adjoins that
+French possession.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_90" href="#FNanchor_90" class="label">[90]</a> Known as “piassava” in the trade. Large quantities are imported
+from Liberia. It is used in brush-making.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_91" href="#FNanchor_91" class="label">[91]</a> Benni seeds crushed yield a fine edible oil.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_92" href="#FNanchor_92" class="label">[92]</a> On the right bank of the Binue: in the Mitchi or (Munshi) country.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_93" href="#FNanchor_93" class="label">[93]</a> Stone potash used to be a monopoly of the Igarras, who sold it to
+the down-river tribes, but the Niger Company has taken the monopoly
+from the Igarras of late years and disposes of it at Lagos, realising, it is
+said, considerable profit—from 2 to 300 per cent.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_94" href="#FNanchor_94" class="label">[94]</a> He will sometimes cut the vine down and chop it into pieces of
+about one foot in length the more readily to extract the sap.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_95" href="#FNanchor_95" class="label">[95]</a> Or even 20 per cent.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_96" href="#FNanchor_96" class="label">[96]</a> There are many other ways of preparing rubber: this is one of
+them.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_97" href="#FNanchor_97" class="label">[97]</a> “A Short Account of the Invasion of Hausa by the Phulas.” By
+Bashima, a Hausa-Fulani, in the “Magana Hausa” (J. F. Schön. 1815).</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_98" href="#FNanchor_98" class="label">[98]</a> About 1840.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_99" href="#FNanchor_99" class="label">[99]</a> And by no one so well as Joseph Thompson, “Mungo Park and the
+Niger.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_100" href="#FNanchor_100" class="label">[100]</a> “Othman established the severest punishment upon whoever
+committed the slightest violation of the law.”—“Travels of Sheik
+Mohammed of Tunis” (Bayle St. John. London: 1854).</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_101" href="#FNanchor_101" class="label">[101]</a> One of the numerous designations of the Fulani.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_102" href="#FNanchor_102" class="label">[102]</a> “Journal of a Second Expedition into the Interior of Africa,” &amp;c. 1829.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_103" href="#FNanchor_103" class="label">[103]</a> Under the old Hausa <i>régime</i> the inhabitants of the Northern Hausa
+States paid direct taxes to the Kings. According to the curious and
+interesting records of Assid-el-Haji-Abd-Salam Shabiny, a Tunisian
+merchant, the Sultan of Hausa imposed a tax of 2 per cent. on all
+products of the land. The people also paid a land tax, and certain
+duties were exacted on all goods sold in the market-place (“Relation
+d’un voyage à Timbuctoo vers l’année 1787”).</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_104" href="#FNanchor_104" class="label">[104]</a> A missionary has recently admitted that “To the Hausa what is in
+the Koran is of God, and what is not in the Koran is not worth knowing.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_105" href="#FNanchor_105" class="label">[105]</a> To-day, <i>Guinée française</i>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_106" href="#FNanchor_106" class="label">[106]</a> This is explained by the unwillingness of the Fulani to allow unions
+between their women-folk and their Negro neighbours.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_107" href="#FNanchor_107" class="label">[107]</a> Recently translated into French by M. O. Houdas (Paris: Ernest
+Leroux. 1900).</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_108" href="#FNanchor_108" class="label">[108]</a> Leo Africanus.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_109" href="#FNanchor_109" class="label">[109]</a> At one time Melle ruled over Songhay and Timbuctoo. In 1329
+the Mellians were driven from Timbuctoo by the pagan Mosis (the
+most powerful pagan kingdom which ever arose in West Africa). The
+people of Melle reconquered the place, but were finally expelled by the
+Tuareg in 1433. Melle was subsequently overcome by the Songhay
+and fell to pieces.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_110" href="#FNanchor_110" class="label">[110]</a> Published by the Hakluyt Society.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_111" href="#FNanchor_111" class="label">[111]</a> We are indebted to M. Dubois for the first complete copy.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_112" href="#FNanchor_112" class="label">[112]</a> The reigning family says the <i>Tarik</i> were white and their subjects
+Wakoris (Mandingoes). This strengthens the Fulani argument, the
+complexion of the pure-blood Fulani inclining to white by comparison
+with their neighbours. In his “Notice Géographique sur la Région du
+Sahel” (which includes Bakunu, the former Baghena), Commandant
+Lartigue says of the Fulani still inhabiting that district, “Quelques-uns
+sont presque blancs; leur cheveux sont à peine crépus, et ils ont les
+traits fins et réguliers des Européens de bonne race.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_113" href="#FNanchor_113" class="label">[113]</a> The language of the Fulani.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_114" href="#FNanchor_114" class="label">[114]</a> The Empire which, as we have observed, was raised upon the ruins
+of Ghanata by the Mandingoes, the subject race at the time of the
+latter’s foundation.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_115" href="#FNanchor_115" class="label">[115]</a> D’Eichtal’s assertion (“Les Foulahs.” Paris: 1842), that the Fulani
+“to this day” call the whole of Senegambia “Melli,” I do not find confirmed,
+but it is worth mentioning, nevertheless.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_116" href="#FNanchor_116" class="label">[116]</a> The first map in which Melle figures is a Spanish one (1375 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>).
+In the map of Mathias de Villadestes, the Venetian (1413 <span class="allsmcap">A.D.</span>), the
+word “Toucuzor” is written by the side of that of the King of Melli,
+“Mussa.” For “Toucuzor” read “Toukulor” (Tukulor), the cross race
+of Fulani-Joloff and Fulani-Mandingo.—“Considérations sur la Priorité
+des Découvertes Maritimes sur la Côte Occidentale d’Afrique.”—Binger.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_117" href="#FNanchor_117" class="label">[117]</a> Barth’s chronological table of the Songhay.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_118" href="#FNanchor_118" class="label">[118]</a> Marmol—born in Granada, 1580—translated by Nicholas Perot
+d’Ablancourt.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_119" href="#FNanchor_119" class="label">[119]</a> The <i>Tarik’s</i> statement that Salta Tayenda fled into “Futa” affords
+substantial indication of the presence of Fulani in that country at a
+previous date, which we know, of course, from other sources.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_120" href="#FNanchor_120" class="label">[120]</a> This tradition obviously refers to Fulani pressure—the root of the
+word (Pul, or Ful) signifying red, or reddish.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_121" href="#FNanchor_121" class="label">[121]</a> A correspondent of a Paris paper, <i>La Dépêche Coloniale</i>, writing
+from Kunde, on the Sangha River, on December 10, 1901, says: “Our
+clothes, which are ragged from bush travelling, do not convey a great
+idea of our influence, especially when compared to the Fulbes (Fulani)
+in their embroidered cloths and leather riding-boots. They are all on
+horseback and we are on foot. <i>There are thousands of them</i>, and all are
+armed.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_122" href="#FNanchor_122" class="label">[122]</a> Their presence in Omdurman—that is to say, in the heart of the
+Eastern Sudan in the Nile valley—has already been noted by Father
+Ohrwalder. On page 300 of “Ten Years’ Captivity in the Mahdi’s
+Camp” (Major Wingate, R.A. London: 1895), we read, “Several of
+the Fellata, who came from distant parts of Bornu, Wadai, &amp;c., were
+stopped at Omdurman on their way to Mecca”; and again, on page 305,
+“The inhabitants of Omdurman are a conglomeration of every race and
+nationality in the Sudan—Fellata, Takruris, natives of Bornu, &amp;c.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_123" href="#FNanchor_123" class="label">[123]</a> Dr. Barth’s estimate as to the date of the foundation of Ghanata
+is certainly not exaggerated, in view of the <i>Tarik’s</i> statement that
+twenty-two kings had reigned before the Hejira.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_124" href="#FNanchor_124" class="label">[124]</a> Ernest Flammarion, Paris. English edition: W. Heinemann.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_125" href="#FNanchor_125" class="label">[125]</a> Toledo was wrested from the Moors in 1085; Saragossa in 1118;
+Valencia, 1238; Seville, 1248; the Beni-Nasr held Granada until
+1492.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_126" href="#FNanchor_126" class="label">[126]</a> De Barros, Barth, <i>Tarik</i>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_127" href="#FNanchor_127" class="label">[127]</a> Makrizi, de Barros, Barth.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_128" href="#FNanchor_128" class="label">[128]</a> <i>L’Anthropologie</i> (Tome x., No. 6), of which Dr. Verneau is one of
+the editors.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_129" href="#FNanchor_129" class="label">[129]</a> In plain language, a prominence of the jaws—one of the characteristics
+of the Negro type.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_130" href="#FNanchor_130" class="label">[130]</a> Dr. Randle MacIver and Anthony Wilkin, in “Libyan Notes.”
+Macmillan &amp; Co. 1901.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_131" href="#FNanchor_131" class="label">[131]</a> Concubinage with negresses being the natural explanation.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_132" href="#FNanchor_132" class="label">[132]</a> Other authorities, basing their arguments, <i>inter alia</i>, upon the
+assumption that the wild people “covered with hair” encountered by
+the Carthaginian colonists were none other than the gorillas which
+Du Chaillu, more than two thousand years afterwards, brought to the
+knowledge of an incredulous world, and upon the unlikelihood of any
+of those animals being in Hanno’s day so far north, maintain that the
+expedition reached the Gaboon estuary, or even the mouth of the
+Congo. The point is never likely to be cleared up. The two sides are
+stated with great clearness by the late Miss Kingsley in “West African
+Studies.” (Macmillan &amp; Co.)</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_133" href="#FNanchor_133" class="label">[133]</a> Lest it be supposed that I am appropriating other people’s ideas
+without acknowledgment, I hasten to add that Major Rennel, in his
+notes on Park’s travels (“Travels in the Interior of Africa.” London:
+1799) hazards the same suggestion, and Barth and Frey follow suit.
+But I think that, in the light of our further knowledge of the peoples and
+history of Western Africa, the identification of the “Leucæthiopes”
+with the Fulani becomes a good deal more than a suggestion.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_134" href="#FNanchor_134" class="label">[134]</a> The cattle possessed by the Fulani—who are the herdsmen of
+West Africa—are the hump-backed Asiatic kind (<i>Bos indicus</i>). That
+was a great point with Faidherbe in favour of the Eastern theory. The
+Abyssinians’ cattle, it may be observed, belong to the same breed.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_135" href="#FNanchor_135" class="label">[135]</a> “Then Joseph came and told Pharaoh, and said: ‘My father
+and my brethren, and their flocks, and their herds, and all that they
+have, are come out of the land of Canaan, and, behold, they are in the
+land of Goshen.’”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_136" href="#FNanchor_136" class="label">[136]</a> Cattle-rearer.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_137" href="#FNanchor_137" class="label">[137]</a> “An Account of the Native Africans in the Neighbourhood of
+Sierra Leone.” By Thomas Winterbottom, D.D., Physician to the
+Colony of Sierra Leone. 1803.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_138" href="#FNanchor_138" class="label">[138]</a> The Joloffs (Senegal) declare that the Fulani converse habitually
+with their cattle.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_139" href="#FNanchor_139" class="label">[139]</a> Moore, writing of the Gambia Fulani in the eighteenth century,
+says, they manage cattle so well that the Mandingoes give them their
+own to look after.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_140" href="#FNanchor_140" class="label">[140]</a> Native cavalry soldier.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_141" href="#FNanchor_141" class="label">[141]</a> Related in the French African Committee’s journal.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_142" href="#FNanchor_142" class="label">[142]</a> De Guiraudon was, apparently, unaware of this passage, which
+has an important bearing upon his statements.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_143" href="#FNanchor_143" class="label">[143]</a> Not pear-shaped, as with the negress.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_144" href="#FNanchor_144" class="label">[144]</a> Barth, Baikie, Gray, Monteil, Mollien, De Giraudon, Callié, &amp;c., vie
+with one another in their enthusiasm over the beauty of the Fulani
+woman of pure blood, which is all the more pronounced in view of
+their ethnic surroundings. Barth speaks of young Fulani girls whose
+forms “recall the finest Grecian sculptury.” “The women are very
+beautiful, and possess strange powers of fascination in their large deep
+eyes,” says Monteil. “The women in particular,” remarks Gray, “might
+vie in point of figure with the finest forms in Europe, and their walk is
+particularly majestic.” “The Fulani women, many of whose countenances
+are resplendent with a veritable beauty” (Reclus).</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_145" href="#FNanchor_145" class="label">[145]</a> “West Africa.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_146" href="#FNanchor_146" class="label">[146]</a> <i>Ibid.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_147" href="#FNanchor_147" class="label">[147]</a> Witness, for example, the admirable work on land tenure on the
+Ivory Coast just published by Administrator Clozel; also that gentleman’s
+article in the <i>Journal of the African Society</i> for July.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_148" href="#FNanchor_148" class="label">[148]</a> I have not yet heard of any departure from the rule.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_149" href="#FNanchor_149" class="label">[149]</a> “Modern ideas and legislation,” says Dr. Alfred Zimmerman,
+“forbid violent proceedings. The natives should be taught to work by
+cultivating the sentiment in them that it is their interest to do so.
+<i>Experience proves that protection of property is the surest means to attain that
+end.</i>”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_150" href="#FNanchor_150" class="label">[150]</a> Paul Kollmann’s “The Victoria Nyanza” may be consulted in this
+connection with advantage. The illustrations of domestic ornaments,
+of flasks, bark-boxes, drums, &amp;c., constructed by the natives of Usukama
+and Ukerewe show real beauty of design.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_151" href="#FNanchor_151" class="label">[151]</a> Sir Marshall Clarke’s recent report is instructive. Speaking of the
+natives of Rhodesia, he says: “They work in the mines either from
+direct pressure brought to bear upon them by the administration, a
+pressure only short of force, or the necessity of earning enough to pay
+their taxes.... This,” continues Sir Marshall Clarke, “does not tend
+to make industry attractive”; and, he adds, “At present there is
+undoubtedly discontent among the natives.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_152" href="#FNanchor_152" class="label">[152]</a> “The evidence available seems to indicate that the labour difficulty
+on the Gold Coast may probably be overcome without the importation
+of labourers from other countries, and that success or failure in the
+matter is largely dependent on the person in charge of the undertaking.
+It is very desirable that the persons in charge should be gentlemen and
+men of education, as it is found that such are more likely to be able to
+deal satisfactorily with the natives, who generally require to be handled
+with much tact and judgment.”—Par. 9, “Labour Ordinance”: issued
+by Colonial Office.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_153" href="#FNanchor_153" class="label">[153]</a> “According to native ideas there is no land without owners. What
+is now a forest or unused land will, as years go on, come under cultivation
+by the subjects of the Stool, or members of the village community,
+or other members of the family” (“Fanti Customary Law,” J. M.
+Sarbah). What holds good in the Gold Coast is equally applicable to
+the rivers and to Lagos, indeed throughout West Africa, wherever
+Negro culture is met with.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_154" href="#FNanchor_154" class="label">[154]</a> In order, of course, to do away with the idea that there is any
+wish or desire on the part of the Government to alienate the land from
+the rightful owners thereof.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_155" href="#FNanchor_155" class="label">[155]</a> The amended Lagos Bill exempts from its operation native customary
+rights and defers to the authority of the Native Councils of the
+hinterland. Its working depends largely, therefore, upon the interpretation
+placed by the Colony’s Governor for the time being on the nature
+of the relationship between those Councils and the Administration.
+Sir W. MacGregor has passed a Bill (the Native Councils Bill) which,
+he thinks, will strengthen the position of the Councils. But it is safe to
+say that, in all matters affecting land legislation in West Africa, the
+procedure for safeguarding native rights, and in their main lines those
+rights themselves, should be laid down as clearly as possible in the
+Act itself.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_156" href="#FNanchor_156" class="label">[156]</a> For an intelligent native view on the subject the reader is referred
+to the speeches of Dr. O. Johnson, Member of the Legislative Council
+of Lagos, in moving the rejection of the Amended Forest Ordinance
+(May 1902). Dr. Johnson’s status in the Colony may be estimated from
+the fact that the extraordinarily able historical address on the native
+history of Lagos, delivered by him at the Lagos Institute last year, was
+published as a Government paper in the Colony.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_157" href="#FNanchor_157" class="label">[157]</a> Who, for some time past, has individually done much to stimulate
+cotton-growing for export in West Africa.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_158" href="#FNanchor_158" class="label">[158]</a> In the manifesto issued by the Association in October there figures
+a list of Vice-presidents, headed by Sir Alfred Jones, K.C.M.G., and
+including no less than twenty-two members of Parliament, among
+whom one notices such well-known names as Winston S. Churchill,
+R. Yerburgh, Alfred Emmott, Sir William Mather, Lord Stanley, the
+Hon. Arthur Stanley, the Hon. W. R. W. Peel, C. A. Cripps, K.C.
+J. H. Whitley, Sir J. Leigh, &amp;c.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_159" href="#FNanchor_159" class="label">[159]</a> Moloney.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_160" href="#FNanchor_160" class="label">[160]</a> Secretary of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_161" href="#FNanchor_161" class="label">[161]</a> The cotton-producing capacities of Northern Nigeria have already
+been commented upon.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_162" href="#FNanchor_162" class="label">[162]</a> The <i>Deutsche Togo-gesellschaft</i>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_163" href="#FNanchor_163" class="label">[163]</a> And as with cotton, so with rice—the Songhays were great rice-growers,
+and <i>Gao</i>, or Gago, their ancient capital, is said to mean rice in
+the Songhay language.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_164" href="#FNanchor_164" class="label">[164]</a> Sir Alfred Jones has voluntarily offered to carry cotton from West
+Africa freight free for two years, and I understand that Mr. Woermann,
+of the line of that name, has agreed to ship a considerable quantity of
+Togo cotton free of charge.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_165" href="#FNanchor_165" class="label">[165]</a> And where the enterprise has been carried out on the household labour
+plan, which has been compared to the peasant proprietary system.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_166" href="#FNanchor_166" class="label">[166]</a> Chemical manure has been supplied free by manufacturers of the
+article. An exhibit of cloths manufactured with Togo cotton has been
+held at Dusseldorf, &amp;c.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_167" href="#FNanchor_167" class="label">[167]</a> Sir H. Johnston’s and Mr. Grogan’s discoveries have recently
+emphasised this fact.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_168" href="#FNanchor_168" class="label">[168]</a> Now Southern Nigeria.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_169" href="#FNanchor_169" class="label">[169]</a> And, say the merchants engaged in the trade, to high freights.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_170" href="#FNanchor_170" class="label">[170]</a> The American demand is, I understand, increasing.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_171" href="#FNanchor_171" class="label">[171]</a> C. O. Report, No. 348.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_172" href="#FNanchor_172" class="label">[172]</a> For a technical explanation read the following: “The extremely
+high prices obtained here for figured logs have naturally excited
+shippers, especially native traders, and all are desirous to learn what
+constitutes figure.... This is a subject difficult to elucidate, but we
+may say that ‘roe’ may be described as the curved direction the grain
+of the wood takes by one ring overlapping the other; to be of any value,
+beyond ordinary plain wood, it must be of a very pronounced and bold
+character. This gives the required variation of light and shade.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_173" href="#FNanchor_173" class="label">[173]</a> The conversion of several hundred natives to Islam at Jebu-Ode,
+one of the large Yoruba centres in close proximity to Lagos, and where
+the Church has laboured for years, is a recent incident which points in
+the direction stated.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_174" href="#FNanchor_174" class="label">[174]</a> <i>Tarik.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_175" href="#FNanchor_175" class="label">[175]</a> Kanem at the time ruled over what was known later as Bornu.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_176" href="#FNanchor_176" class="label">[176]</a> Makrizi attributes the introduction of Islam into Kanem to Hadi
+el Othman, who was probably of Fulani origin, although Makrizi does
+not say so.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_177" href="#FNanchor_177" class="label">[177]</a> Timbuctoo was not founded until about seventy years after the
+conversion of Za Kasai.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_178" href="#FNanchor_178" class="label">[178]</a> The theory which gives an Eastern origin to Mohammedan proselytism
+in Kanem seems unworthy of consideration.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_179" href="#FNanchor_179" class="label">[179]</a> The manatee is the <i>ayu</i> of the Fulani, and its signification—viz.
+that of a mythical creature living in the water and dragging any one in
+who sees it—seems to argue the existence of an ancient superstition.
+In various parts of the Niger and Binue this strange animal is still
+regarded with a certain awe, which, however, does not prevent it from
+being slaughtered, both for its flesh and skin. The Soninke legend of
+the water serpent, which each year claimed the handsomest girl of the
+village as a victim, would seem to bear a distinct relation to this, the
+former <i>ayu</i> worship of the Songhays.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_180" href="#FNanchor_180" class="label">[180]</a> Binger suggests that the word Mande, or Mandingo, is derived from
+the same root as manatus, and signifies the people of a country where
+the manatus is worshipped.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_181" href="#FNanchor_181" class="label">[181]</a> “Mungo Park.” Joseph Thomson. The “World’s Greatest Explorers”
+series.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_182" href="#FNanchor_182" class="label">[182]</a> Palgrave’s “Arabia,” vol. i. p. 372.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_183" href="#FNanchor_183" class="label">[183]</a> “Niger and Yoruba Notes,” January 1900.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_184" href="#FNanchor_184" class="label">[184]</a> A native of the Western Sudan.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_185" href="#FNanchor_185" class="label">[185]</a> Blyden.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_186" href="#FNanchor_186" class="label">[186]</a> It has been pointed out to me that the Muslim teachers in this
+mosque do not teach reading, but only the Slate-pattern. That simply
+shows that Islam in West Africa is capable of being much improved,
+and should be moulded, if possible, on Western lines of thought; but it
+does not affect the main argument in the least.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_187" href="#FNanchor_187" class="label">[187]</a> Captain Morrison’s report, issued by the Government of the French
+Sudan.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_188" href="#FNanchor_188" class="label">[188]</a> For instance, read the following passages in “Pilkington of
+Uganda” (C. F. Harford Battersby). “This is the lost truth, the loss
+of which gave Satan the opportunity of introducing both Mohammedanism
+and Popery.... They (the Waganda) have learnt to
+contend with the three forms of darkness which they will meet in
+Africa: Heathenism, Mohammedanism, and Popery.” And again:
+“Does it not seem as if the French Mission is just God’s appointed
+instrument to complete the confusion of Rome in Uganda?”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_189" href="#FNanchor_189" class="label">[189]</a> Le Chatelier.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_190" href="#FNanchor_190" class="label">[190]</a> The nineteenth century.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_191" href="#FNanchor_191" class="label">[191]</a> The nineteenth century.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_192" href="#FNanchor_192" class="label">[192]</a> It is a remarkable fact, frequently borne witness to, that an unarmed
+Muslim Negro can travel without molestation through vast
+stretches of country in Africa, a privilege denied to his Christianised
+compatriot.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_193" href="#FNanchor_193" class="label">[193]</a> “Esclavage, Islamisme, et Christianisme.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_194" href="#FNanchor_194" class="label">[194]</a> Affecting in many parts the laws and customs of the people in
+respect to native land tenure.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_195" href="#FNanchor_195" class="label">[195]</a> “Le Sénégal: la France dans l’Afrique Occidentale.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_196" href="#FNanchor_196" class="label">[196]</a> Negro medical men—I mean qualified medical men—of whom there
+are a few in West Africa, emphatically corroborate this: and they bring
+a great many arguments, founded upon actual experience, in support of
+the contention.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_197" href="#FNanchor_197" class="label">[197]</a> An ecclesiastic well known in the African field, and for whose really
+wonderful labours I entertain the highest respect and admiration,
+informed me only the other day that, within his personal cognisance,
+over 150 couples had been married in Liberia by a certain minister, in
+a certain district, within a period of five years; and that the total
+number of births up to date was five, and the survivals two. My
+reverend friend found in that striking fact (for the truth of which he
+vouched, and he is a truthful man) a justification of his view that a
+large proportion of Liberians, that is to say, the descendants of the
+blacks from the States, led indolent and unhealthy lives. To my mind,
+it conveys an eloquent demonstration, that <i>on West African soil</i> monogamy
+for the Negro spells race extinction. Naturally my friend would
+not admit the conclusion, although in his heart of hearts I believe he is
+rather troubled on the subject. But he recognised—and admitted—in
+course of conversation that polygamy was a question which the Church,
+in her work among tropical peoples, had now to resolutely face and
+earnestly discuss. There is, I fear, no doubt that the monogamist—or
+professing monogamist—Liberians are, like the Waganda, dying out.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_198" href="#FNanchor_198" class="label">[198]</a> Politically, the same attitude is adopted by the British authorities;
+and in the case of the Sierra Leone Hut-tax war, and the
+Forest Ordinances in Lagos, it has been sought to divorce the educated—and
+mainly, professing Christian—element of the coast from community
+of thought, sympathy, and common racial feelings with the non-educated,
+and mainly pagan or Mohammedan, element of the interior.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_199" href="#FNanchor_199" class="label">[199]</a> “As soon as half a dozen missionaries leave Liverpool,” writes the
+same authority, Archbishop Dobson, “no end of a stir is made about
+the devoted party, and so forth. I do not mean to be sarcastic about
+the missionaries, but it does make one a trifle ashamed at times to meet
+a stalwart trader hereabouts on an occasion, who has been coming
+here off and on for twenty years, and his chief business is palm-oil, and
+his best view a mangrove swamp.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_200" href="#FNanchor_200" class="label">[200]</a> It is even admitted to be harmful by Sir Alfred Jones, whose
+steamers carry a large proportion of this liquor to West Africa, and
+by a large proportion of the merchants who deal in it. The merchants
+are sometimes violently attacked on account of this trade. Personally,
+I detest the West African liquor traffic. I look upon it in the same
+light as the opium traffic in the Far East—a blot upon the escutcheon of
+Christian Europe. But those who denounce the merchants might just
+as well, and more logically, denounce the Governments. <i>Per se</i> the
+liquor traffic is not a lucrative trade to the merchant, but to the local
+administrations on the coast it is the backbone of revenue. I was
+never able to share the late Miss Kingsley’s views on this subject, while
+fully agreeing with her as to the inanity of making the merchants the
+scapegoats of an evil the responsibility for which is, in a sense,
+universal. Despite anything that may be said to the contrary, I shall
+believe that a powerful factor in determining Miss Kingsley’s views was
+the knowledge that, but for the existence of the liquor traffic as a
+supplier of revenue, direct taxation would be substituted throughout
+British West Africa owing to the extravagance of the Crown Colony
+system; and I know that Miss Kingsley strongly objected to the introduction
+of European spirits into the interior regions by means of the
+railways. The liquor question would require a special chapter to
+adequately discuss.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_201" href="#FNanchor_201" class="label">[201]</a> He will, no doubt, be edified to learn that the Cape Government
+has found it necessary to pass a law imposing a severe term of imprisonment
+upon white <i>women</i> convicted of sexual intercourse with the
+natives—a circumstance not precisely calculated to increase his respect
+for our Christian civilisation.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_202" href="#FNanchor_202" class="label">[202]</a> Captain—now Commandant—Binger has for some little time past
+been in charge of the African Department of the French Colonial Office.
+His travels, books, and pamphlets are familiar to every student of
+Western Africa.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_203" href="#FNanchor_203" class="label">[203]</a> It would seem now that they have temporarily prevailed with the
+Government.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_204" href="#FNanchor_204" class="label">[204]</a> In the Sokoto Empire (Hausa States) more particularly.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_205" href="#FNanchor_205" class="label">[205]</a> They did it so well that, after the failure of their attack upon the
+French camp, they denuded the country of supplies and reduced the
+expedition to terrible straits for a time.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_206" href="#FNanchor_206" class="label">[206]</a> The fall predicted, and officially foreseen, in 1901 has come about,
+owing to the rubber crisis. The measures taken during the last fifteen
+months to stimulate fresh industries in the country, and the advance of
+the railway, will, no doubt, make themselves felt in the next two or
+three years.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_207" href="#FNanchor_207" class="label">[207]</a> For the Lagos exports and expenditure, see <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_208" href="#FNanchor_208" class="label">[208]</a> C.O. Report. 1900.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_209" href="#FNanchor_209" class="label">[209]</a> “Rapport d’ensemble.” Dahomey, 1900.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_210" href="#FNanchor_210" class="label">[210]</a> For 1902, on a total estimated expenditure of £121,560, Dahomey
+provides £32,000 for the railway and £11,911 for public works ordinary
+or, say, a total of £43,911 for railway and public works.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_211" href="#FNanchor_211" class="label">[211]</a> The following statistics of the export trade of Dahomey, compiled
+from figures recently obtained, are interesting:</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Quantities in Kilos.</span><br>
+(1015 kilos to the ton.)</p>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <th></th>
+    <th>Palm-kernels.</th>
+    <th>Palm-oil.</th>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">1898</td>
+    <td class="tdr">18,091,312</td>
+    <td class="tdr">6,059,539</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">1899</td>
+    <td class="tdr">21,850,982</td>
+    <td class="tdr">9,650,081</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">1900</td>
+    <td class="tdr">21,986,043</td>
+    <td class="tdr">8,920,359</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">1901</td>
+    <td class="tdr">24,211,614</td>
+    <td class="tdr">11,290,658</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr">First quarter 1902</td>
+    <td class="tdr">6,972,297</td>
+    <td class="tdr">3,488,766</td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td class="tdr"><i>Ibid.</i> 1901</td>
+    <td class="tdr">4,768,050</td>
+    <td class="tdr">1,993,520</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_212" href="#FNanchor_212" class="label">[212]</a> See <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_213" href="#FNanchor_213" class="label">[213]</a> It is worthy of note that the French Government authorises the
+Administration of the several West African colonies to make their own
+agreements for railway construction.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_214" href="#FNanchor_214" class="label">[214]</a> So far as the heavier duties charged on spirits in Lagos are concerned,
+the fact is distinctly to the credit of Lagos.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_215" href="#FNanchor_215" class="label">[215]</a> There is a very curious circumstance connected with the ground-nut
+trade. All the ground-nuts go to the Continent—both from Senegal
+and Gambia—the oil extracted, therefrom, or the bulk of it, is used in
+making margarine, which is subsequently consumed, to a very large
+extent, by the English people! Why have we not our own crushing-mills?
+Is it because we are short of milk? It cannot but strike one
+as peculiar and unfortunate that we should send our West African
+ground-nuts to France, and afterwards buy from the French the oil
+the nuts yield for our own consumption! Ground-nuts will grow anywhere
+in West Africa, and the labour involved in cultivating them is
+very small.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_216" href="#FNanchor_216" class="label">[216]</a> Belgian syndicates have been trying, and are still trying, to get hold
+of the French Ivory Coast goldfields. Hitherto they have been defeated
+by the vigilance of the French merchants; but there is no knowing what
+may happen in view of the extraordinary influence which King Leopold
+appears to wield over the French official world.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_217" href="#FNanchor_217" class="label">[217]</a> “Sur des traces probables de civilisation Egyptienne et d’hommes
+de race blanche à la Côte d’Ivoire.” Masson &amp; Cie., Paris. A pamphlet
+which ought to be read by all students of West Africa.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_218" href="#FNanchor_218" class="label">[218]</a> Specie is usually included in the trade figures—a very misleading
+practice.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_219" href="#FNanchor_219" class="label">[219]</a> Sir David Chalmers’ report, p. 169.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_220" href="#FNanchor_220" class="label">[220]</a> Like the Susus, for example, who are very numerous in French
+Guinea, but of whom a few only have settled in the British Protectorate
+adjoining.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_221" href="#FNanchor_221" class="label">[221]</a> Let it not be imagined that the contrast here made between French
+political action in Dahomey and British political action in Ashanti
+implies approval of direct taxation <i>per se</i>. It is ever a dangerous experiment
+in West Africa, especially with pagans, even if conquest has
+supervened. If the system under which the taxes are collected is not
+carefully watched, grave abuses are almost certain to follow. Quite
+recently rumours of oppression in the taxation of the natives in Upper
+Dahomey have appeared in the French Press. What truth there may
+be in them I do not know. But it is true, I believe, that the excellent
+staff whom Governor Ballot gathered round him has left the Colony
+since Ballot left it, and has been replaced by less experienced and less
+competent material.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_222" href="#FNanchor_222" class="label">[222]</a> Last Ashanti Blue Book, 1902.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_223" href="#FNanchor_223" class="label">[223]</a> See Note in <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_224" href="#FNanchor_224" class="label">[224]</a> See the evidence of Lieutenant-Colonel Gore, Colonial Secretary
+for Sierra Leone. Sir David Chalmers’ report.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_225" href="#FNanchor_225" class="label">[225]</a> Between July 1894 and February 1898 no fewer than sixty-two
+convictions—admittedly representing a small proportion of offences
+actually committed—were recorded against them for flogging, plundering,
+and generally maltreating the natives.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_226" href="#FNanchor_226" class="label">[226]</a> One of the pet arguments of the authorities consists in invoking the
+benefits which have accrued to the people of the Protectorate since
+the passing of the Protectorate Ordinance in the matter of putting
+down the slave trade. For these benefits the natives, says officialdom,
+ought to be delighted to pay a tax. Possibly they would have paid it
+in time, more or less willingly, had they been approached in a different
+spirit. But, so far as the slave trade is concerned, the argument is
+singularly weakened by the circumstance that Sir F. Cardew publicly
+declared in 1895 that the slave traffic had “practically disappeared
+within the Protectorate.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_227" href="#FNanchor_227" class="label">[227]</a> The French West African Company, <i>Cie française de l’Afrique Occidentale</i>,
+is the largest French firm of African merchants in West Africa.
+Founded in 1887 with a capital of 7,000,000 francs; total turn-over in
+1899, 22,000,000 francs; factories in Senegal, French and Portuguese
+Guinea, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Lagos, and Ivory Coast.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_228" href="#FNanchor_228" class="label">[228]</a> In 1900, 39,874,005 francs; in 1901, 43,965,950 francs.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_229" href="#FNanchor_229" class="label">[229]</a> The same game was tried with the Germans in Cameroons. To
+quote from an article in the <i>National Zeitung</i>, which, as I have reason
+to know, may be accepted as authorised: “If in the Congo State itself
+the Berlin Act could be disregarded in this way, and the natives obliged
+to bring in the produce against their will, why could it not also be done
+in other places? And as the Congo State was itself making the best
+use of its monopoly, and only gave concessions to others at high prices,
+the monopolists tried, and not without result, to obtain the same state
+of affairs both in France and in Germany. In Germany, the German
+Colonial Society at once protested against this state of affairs. In
+spite of this, however, several of the Belgian capitalists were able to
+obtain the help of influential German persons, who obtained from the
+Government the concession of South Cameroon. This company had
+obtained the assistance of Colonel Thys for its operations on the
+Brussels Stock Exchange, and immediately after the flotation of the
+company the shares were driven up to two or three times their value.
+Further concessions in the free-trade zone were not conceded, and,
+with the exception of the North-West Cameroon concession, in consequence
+of the energetic opposition in colonial circles, no further
+concessions were, or will be, made in the German territories. The
+German Government has entirely abandoned this policy of concessions.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_230" href="#FNanchor_230" class="label">[230]</a> It is, of course, no easy matter to get at the precise constitution of
+these companies, but the following example of one of the “groups” is
+typical of the majority of them. <i>Comptoir Colonial français.</i> Parent
+company: head offices, Paris; has founded at least six Concessionnaire
+Companies, of a total capital of 9,650,000 francs; Board of Administration
+numbers six directors, of whom three are Belgians; two-thirds of
+the shares held in Belgium; two of the Belgian directors are directors of
+the four <i>Domaine Privé</i> Companies in the Congo State, whose profits are
+shared by the State (read the King); the third also belongs to the Congo
+clique; among the Belgian shareholders are other directors of these
+same <i>Domaine Privé</i> Companies, all men enjoying the confidence of, and
+closely connected with, the Sovereign of the Congo State. One of the
+six Concessionnaire Companies of this “group” has specially distinguished
+itself in the persecution to which British merchants have been
+subjected—discussed in the next chapter.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_231" href="#FNanchor_231" class="label">[231]</a> Some light has been thrown upon its African chapters by Mr. R. E.
+Dennett, an Englishman in French Congo, and a recognised authority
+on the Fjort peoples, in “West Africa.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_232" href="#FNanchor_232" class="label">[232]</a> I should say now, ex-Deputy.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_233" href="#FNanchor_233" class="label">[233]</a> “Une idée domine l’ensemble du système, tous les produits du
+territoire, concédé quels qu’ils soient, sont la propriété de la Société
+Concessionnaire. Seuls les agents de cette Société ont le droit de les
+recueillir ou de les acheter des indigènes qui les ont récoltés; ces
+derniers ne pouvant disposer librement que des produits des reserves
+qui leur ont été spécialement attribuées et sur lesquelles je reviendrai,
+et devant en thèse générale, lorsqu’ils s’emparent d’un produit quelconque
+du sol en dehors de ces reserves, les remettre aux concessionnaires
+dont l’intérêt bien entendu, est de remunérer ensuite leur
+travail.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_234" href="#FNanchor_234" class="label">[234]</a> “Les indigènes ont droit aux superficies qui leur sont nécessaires
+pour les cultures vivrières correspondantes aux besoins de leur alimentation.
+On peut leur attribuer une certaine étendue de forêt
+nécessaire à leurs besoins de chauffage et de construction, mais ils n’ont
+pas droit a réclamer des forêts domaniales <i>dans le but de faire commerce
+de leurs produits naturels</i> et de constituer ainsi une concurrence ruineuse
+pour le concessionnaire” (Art. 18).</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_235" href="#FNanchor_235" class="label">[235]</a> The French Government has recently voted De Brazza an annual
+pension of 10,000 francs.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_236" href="#FNanchor_236" class="label">[236]</a> “Concessions Congolaises.” By Albert Cousin, Membre du Conseil
+Supérieur des Colonies. Paris: Augustin Chalamel.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_237" href="#FNanchor_237" class="label">[237]</a> An English trader, Mr. Walker, was the first to do so. He is
+admitted by French writers to have discovered the Ogowe.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_238" href="#FNanchor_238" class="label">[238]</a> Messrs. John Holt &amp; Co. and Messrs. Hatton &amp; Cookson, both of
+Liverpool, and both connected with the West African Trade for upwards
+of half a century. Mr. John Holt is probably the most enterprising
+pioneer of Britain’s trade in West Africa, possessing trading stations in
+most of the British and Foreign West African Colonies. He is the vice-chairman
+of the African Trade Section of the Liverpool Chamber of
+Commerce, and very few men living have so wide a grasp of West African
+questions or so profound a knowledge of West African problems.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_239" href="#FNanchor_239" class="label">[239]</a> Whose existence was unknown in England until towards the end of
+last year.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_240" href="#FNanchor_240" class="label">[240]</a> Seizure of British goods on public roads; breaking open of British
+factories; flogging of British native agents, &amp;c.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_241" href="#FNanchor_241" class="label">[241]</a> Notably that most excellent monthly, <i>Le Bulletin du Comité de
+l’Afrique française</i>, through the instrumentality of the two distinguished
+thinkers and writers who dictate its policy, Count Robert de Caix and
+M. Auguste Terrier.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_242" href="#FNanchor_242" class="label">[242]</a> Forty tons of ebony, bought in the usual way by a British firm on
+the Congo and shipped to Havre in a French ship, were seized at that
+port (1902) on a mandate of a Concessionnaire Company. This produce
+has, however, now been restored.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_243" href="#FNanchor_243" class="label">[243]</a> The Foreign Office was warned as far back as the beginning of 1898
+by the Manchester Chamber of Commerce of the danger of the possible
+inauguration of a system of territorial monopolies. Lord Salisbury
+said it would receive “our most earnest attention,” and admitted inferentially
+that in fiscal questions England had, as a free-trade country,
+“inferior” means of influencing other countries; “with the occasional
+exception,” added his lordship, “of territorial concessions, we have no
+means whatever of persuasion.” Nevertheless, in the purely fiscal question
+which formed the principal object of the Deputation of Chambers
+of Commerce to Lord Salisbury on this occasion, that of the differential
+tariff in the French possessions, Lord Salisbury was able to get his own
+way, simply by persuasion, by “influencing France’s ideas.” Yet in this
+matter of the French Congo Concessions, in which the purely fiscal
+question does not enter at all, and where we have an international
+treaty to work on, Lord Lansdowne has been unable to prevent the
+expulsion of British merchants from an internationally free-trade
+zone!</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_244" href="#FNanchor_244" class="label">[244]</a> The <i>Morning Post</i>, the <i>Manchester Guardian</i>, the <i>Liverpool Daily Post</i>,
+and <i>West Africa</i>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_245" href="#FNanchor_245" class="label">[245]</a> The German merchants, despairing of obtaining even the most
+elementary justice, have evacuated the territory. Our merchants have
+chosen the nobler part of making a stand for their rights, guaranteed
+under international law.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_246" href="#FNanchor_246" class="label">[246]</a> To which must now be added the somewhat similar Rabinek
+affair—an Austrian subject arrested and “removed” by the Congo
+State in the Katanga district under circumstances analogous, in some
+measure, to the case of Mr. Stokes.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_247" href="#FNanchor_247" class="label">[247]</a> The other day the then French Parliamentary representative of
+Senegal, in a speech to his constituents at St. Louis, warned them that
+the greatest danger threatening their hinterland, the French Sudan, was
+King Leopold of Belgium and his monopolist gang.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_248" href="#FNanchor_248" class="label">[248]</a> At the great “Colonial Congress” held in Berlin on October 11,
+Consul Vohsen moved a resolution, unanimously carried, calling upon
+the Powers to institute proceedings for the revision of the Berlin Act.
+Consul Vohsen said: “From the very first the Congo State, and
+recently France in the French Colony of French Congo, have acted
+against the principles laid down in the Congo Act.” ... Referring to
+the Congo State, he continued: “All so-called countries ‘not occupied
+by natives’ situated in the Free Trade zone were, as far back as July
+1885, declared the property of the State, and in the year 1892 heavy
+taxes were imposed upon the rubber trade, which was entirely prohibited
+in parts of the Free Trade zone. The consequence was that
+the freedom of trade and commerce guaranteed by the Congo Act was
+practically abolished. The first condition of freedom of trade for the
+nations is freedom to the natives, in such a way as to leave them free to
+dispose of the natural products of the soil and of the chase; which
+state of affairs existed before the passing of the Act in all French,
+English, and German colonies in West Africa, and exists to-day, with
+the exception of the territories of the Congo State and the French
+Congo, the very colonies where, strange to say, free trade is insisted
+upon by Articles I. and V. of the Act.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_249" href="#FNanchor_249" class="label">[249]</a> Among the supporters of the Mansion House meeting of May 15
+(held under the auspices of the Aborigines Protection Society) were
+Mr. John Morley, Sir J. Kennaway, Earl Spencer, the Marquis of Ripon,
+Lord Avebury, Mr. Lecky, M.P., Sir Edward Clarke, K.C., Sir W.
+Brampton Gurdon, M.P., K.C.M.G., Sir Charles Dilke, M.P., Sir Mark
+J. Stewart, M.P., Mr. James Bryce, M.P., Mr. W. S. Robson, M.P., and
+other politicians of both parties. Five Chambers of Commerce, the
+African Society, and the German Colonial Society were represented,
+and Dr. Alfred Zimmermann, <i>attaché</i> to the German Embassy in London,
+also attended.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_250" href="#FNanchor_250" class="label">[250]</a> Commandant Binger’s views are well known. M. Cousturier
+(Governor of French Guinea), in his report on French Guinea for 1901,
+does not conceal his adverse opinion of Belgian methods of collecting
+rubber in the Congo State.</p>
+
+<p>The author could produce documentary evidence showing that similar
+opinions are held by other well-known French officials in West Africa.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_251" href="#FNanchor_251" class="label">[251]</a> Belgium, Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy
+and Russia sent delegates to the conference.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_252" href="#FNanchor_252" class="label">[252]</a> This was done with the exception of England.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_253" href="#FNanchor_253" class="label">[253]</a> Diego Cam.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_254" href="#FNanchor_254" class="label">[254]</a> The original title had by this time been changed to that of “International
+Congo Association.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_255" href="#FNanchor_255" class="label">[255]</a> The point is brought out very clearly by Mr. Dennet, our only
+authority on the Fjort Kingdom of Congo, and the author of several
+books concerning the Fjort, in a series of interesting letters published
+last year in “West Africa.” Mr. Dennet, who has lived twenty-two
+years consecutively in the Lower Congo, positively declares that the
+treaties made by the Association, and referred to by General Sandford,
+had no validity whatever in native law.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_256" href="#FNanchor_256" class="label">[256]</a> In his report on the Congo State for 1898, Consul Pickersgill concludes
+a long enumeration of the taxes levied upon independent trade
+by the following humorous passage:</p>
+
+<p>“I may sum up this portion of my remarks by quoting the jocose
+observations of the English and American missionaries, who declared
+to me that there is nothing free in the Independent State, except
+fevers; while a Belgian Father with whom I had some conversation on
+the subject, remarked: ‘The Government taxes even the civilisation
+we bring.’”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_257" href="#FNanchor_257" class="label">[257]</a> Who held the monopoly of the ivory trade in the Upper Congo,
+which the Congo State, by exterminating them with the aid of its cannibal
+soldiery (see Hinde’s “Fall of the Congo Arabs”), became
+possessed of.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_258" href="#FNanchor_258" class="label">[258]</a> See Mr. Herbert Ward’s “Five Years with the Congo Cannibals,”
+p. 297.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_259" href="#FNanchor_259" class="label">[259]</a> The whole paragraph might have been written a few weeks, instead
+of eleven years, ago. The state of affairs pictured by Colonel
+Williams has worsened instead of bettered. The evil is more widespread
+and the means of perpetuating it more extensive and more
+powerful. Read in this connection the latest revelations by Mr. Canisius
+and Captain Burrows.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_260" href="#FNanchor_260" class="label">[260]</a> The importance of the 10 per cent. import duty was purposely
+exaggerated. The amount derived therefrom was trifling. The merchants
+objected to it on principle. As Sir Albert Rollit justly remarked,
+“The reason for our opposition is only that they (the import duties)
+would infringe the great principle of freedom of commerce, which was
+the very basis of the programme of the Berlin Conference.” It is quite
+clear, however, that the majority of the merchants also opposed the
+import duties from a vague distrust of the king’s ultimate intentions, a
+distrust which events proved to be only too well founded.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_261" href="#FNanchor_261" class="label">[261]</a> The map published by the African Society in the May (1902) issue
+of its Journal may be consulted with advantage in this respect.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_262" href="#FNanchor_262" class="label">[262]</a> Among whom might be mentioned Augouard, Hinde, Glave, Morrison,
+Hawkins, Sheppard, Andrew, Sjöblom, Alfred Parminter, De
+Mandat-Grancy, Rankin, Murphy, Lloyd, Grogan, and many others,
+without counting Belgian authorities—more numerous than all foreigners
+put together.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_263" href="#FNanchor_263" class="label">[263]</a> At the present moment heavy fighting is going on in the Welle district,
+due, as I have reason to know, to the usual rubber taxes. The
+facts as to this particular rising may, happily, have been made public
+before the publication of the present volume.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_264" href="#FNanchor_264" class="label">[264]</a> The regular army—<i>Force Publique</i>—of the Congo State is admitted
+officially (Bulletin, July 1900) to be 15,000, but we know that in addition
+to this regular force—15,000 cannibals armed with Albinis, sections of
+whom are continually revolting—the State habitually arms, whenever
+it deems necessary, thousands of irregulars, cannibals for choice (see
+the letter written in October 1899 to the king by the acting head of
+the American Presbyterian Mission in the Kassai district). There is
+also a large reserve corps, but the extent of it is not known.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_265" href="#FNanchor_265" class="label">[265]</a> It may be usefully noted here that the <i>impôts de nature</i> are applied
+by the Congo State in the so-called Free Trade Zone as well as in the
+<i>Domaine Privé</i>, and until the Kassai district was incorporated in the
+<i>Domaine Privé</i> many and bitter were the complaints by companies
+operating in the former zone of the unfair competition to which they
+were subjected by the levying of this tribute. Instances have been
+given by some of these irate traders where the State’s officials have
+threatened the natives with condign punishment if they did not hand
+over all their rubber to the said officials. An arrangement has recently
+been concluded between the State and the Kassai companies—the
+Kassai district was the only portion of the Upper Congo where independent
+trade had been allowed—whereby the Kassai companies have
+amalgamated into a syndicate <i>in which the State holds one half the interest</i>.
+To all intents and purposes, therefore, the Kassai has now been incorporated
+in the <i>Domaine Privé</i>, <span class="smcap">which henceforth embraces the
+whole of the Congo State north of Stanley Pool</span>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_266" href="#FNanchor_266" class="label">[266]</a> Both these facts have been repeatedly asserted. They were proved
+beyond manner of doubt last year by the disclosures attendant upon
+the Mongolla scandals, in which agents of the <i>Société Anversoise</i> were
+involved.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_267" href="#FNanchor_267" class="label">[267]</a> Seven, if we include the Kassai Trust recently formed.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_268" href="#FNanchor_268" class="label">[268]</a> Baron A. Goffinet is “Conseiller de Légation, Secrétaire des Commandements
+de leurs MM. le Roi et la Reine, Major de l’Etat, Major de
+la Garde Civique, Aide-de-camp, Ministre Résident.” Baron C. Goffinet
+is “Conseiller de Légation, Intendant de la Liste Civile du Roi, Ministre
+Résident, Major de la Garde Civique.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_269" href="#FNanchor_269" class="label">[269]</a> I have quite recently received from another correspondent in the
+Congo the photograph here reproduced.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_270" href="#FNanchor_270" class="label">[270]</a> “Abir (Société à responsabilité limitée) Statuts.” Anvers: Imprimerie
+Ratinckx Frères, Grand Place, 40-42.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_271" href="#FNanchor_271" class="label">[271]</a> “Comptoir Commercial Congolais (Société à responsabilité limitée)
+Statuts.” Anvers: Imprimerie Ratinckx.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_272" href="#FNanchor_272" class="label">[272]</a> “Compagnie du Lomami (Société Anonyme) Statuts.” Bruxelles:
+P. Weissenbruch, Imprimerie du Roi, 45 rue du Poincon.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_273" href="#FNanchor_273" class="label">[273]</a> In chapter xxviii. I referred to the constitution of the <i>Comptoir
+Colonial français</i>, which has managed to secure for its subsidiaries such
+a respectable slice of French Congo. Well, Alexis Mols is one of the
+Administrators, and so is A. Osterrieth, a shareholder in the <i>Abir</i>, and
+so is A. Lambrechts, also a shareholder in the <i>Abir</i>, &amp;c. &amp;c.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_274" href="#FNanchor_274" class="label">[274]</a> I am afraid Sir H. M. Stanley was somewhat premature when, in
+1884, he told the London Chamber of Commerce that people “could
+not appreciate rightly” King Leopold’s philanthropy, because there
+were “no dividends attaching to it.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_275" href="#FNanchor_275" class="label">[275]</a> Whip made out of hippo hide—the Congo <i>sjambok</i>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_276" href="#FNanchor_276" class="label">[276]</a> Or was until quite recently.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_277" href="#FNanchor_277" class="label">[277]</a> In Congo circles in Belgium it is suggested that to guard against
+“attacks which might become too threatening” (by “attacks” is meant
+exposures in the public Press, and on public platforms in England and
+Germany) the Congo State should largely increase its standing army.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_278" href="#FNanchor_278" class="label">[278]</a> The author, who may claim to have brought the Rabinek affair to
+light, is able to state that the British Government is causing specific
+inquiries to be made through its representatives in Central Africa in
+connection with the matter. See <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a>.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_279" href="#FNanchor_279" class="label">[279]</a> The trade of the Lower Congo has sensibly diminished since the
+Congo State came into existence. On August 10 of last year the merchants
+established in the Lower Congo (of whom there remain a few)
+petitioned the king to reduce taxation. After pointing out the heavy
+import and export duty on goods and produce (20<i>s.</i> per ton on palm-oil,
+for instance) and showing how small the existing export trade already
+was, owing to the taxes and emigration of native labour, due to “the
+means employed in raising native levies,” the petitioners went on to
+say: “We do not disguise from ourselves that business in the Lower
+Congo is practically <i>nil</i>.... Each of us,” continues the petition, “consistently
+hopes for an increase in trade; but these hopes appear to us
+more and more unreliable, and the Government of the Congo State,
+instead of coming to aid us, imposes increased and too onerous taxes.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_280" href="#FNanchor_280" class="label">[280]</a> The figures for 1900 are based upon the known sale on the Antwerp
+market by the State brokers in 1900 of 1828 tons of rubber and 153,445
+kilos. of ivory, worked out at an average of 6 francs per kilo. for rubber
+(1115 kilos, to the ton) and 18 francs per kilo, for ivory. I believe a
+proportion of the produce imported was held in stock on account of the
+poor state of the rubber market.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_281" href="#FNanchor_281" class="label">[281]</a> “There is no trade, properly so called,” says Mr. Codrington, “on
+the Congo coast of Tanganyika, but all rubber and ivory is regarded as
+the property of the State, and has to be surrendered by the natives in
+fixed quantities annually. The natives are, however, continually in
+rebellion, and the country is unsafe, except in the immediate vicinity of
+the military garrisons, and within the sphere of influence of the
+missionaries.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_282" href="#FNanchor_282" class="label">[282]</a> As was anticipated, the acquirement from Spain for purposes of
+exploitation of a portion of the Muni territory (which was recently
+handed over to Spain by France) by the Belgian “clique” has been
+followed by the usual results. A correspondent, whose name commands
+universal respect, and who is in a position to speak <i>de visu</i> on
+the subject, wrote to an English friend recently that “atrocities” were
+going merrily on; natives being shot down, and villages burnt in the
+course of “ivory collecting” by the Belgian concessionnaires; “outrages
+on the villagers are indiscriminate,” the writer adds. The same
+“clique” is threatening Fernando Po.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_283" href="#FNanchor_283" class="label">[283]</a> Apart from the large quantities of rifles, cap-guns, and ammunition
+imported into the Congo State for the arming and equipment of the
+soldiers, regular and irregular, it is morally certain, although not easy
+to prove, that the agents of the State and the agents of the <i>Domaine
+Privé</i> Companies encourage some of the biggest and most powerful
+chiefs of the Upper Congo to obtain ivory for them by presents of
+repeating-rifles and ammunition. In this connection a M. Léon. C.
+Berthier, writing from the French Upper Congo to the Paris organ <i>La
+Dépêche Coloniale</i> (issue July 16, 1902), says: “The M’Bomu (a branch
+of the Upper Ubanghi, which forms the frontier between the French
+and Congolese possessions, and which pursues its course to the
+Bahr-el-Ghazal), here very wide, forms the southern base of the square;
+this is the route where the ivory passes <i>sous notre barbe</i> to be sold to the
+Belgians on the other bank, <i>who pay for it in Albini rifles</i>, notwithstanding
+all the Acts of Berlin and Brussels, which forbid even the sale of
+percussion-cap guns!” The writer goes on to assert that he has
+documents to prove his statements.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_284" href="#FNanchor_284" class="label">[284]</a> Mary Kingsley, in the “Story of West Africa.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_285" href="#FNanchor_285" class="label">[285]</a> Excluding specie. The figures are taken from the Parliamentary Report,
+June 1902.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_286" href="#FNanchor_286" class="label">[286]</a> <i>Sierra Leone Royal Gazette</i>, April 18th, 1902.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_287" href="#FNanchor_287" class="label">[287]</a> Estimated. Appropriation Ordinance, 1902.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_288" href="#FNanchor_288" class="label">[288]</a> “Railways and Telegraphs,” Appropriation Ordinance, 1902.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_289" href="#FNanchor_289" class="label">[289]</a> Colonial Office Report, No. 324. On page 8 of the same Report the figures a
+given as £29,126 18s. 7d. I cannot explain the difference.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_290" href="#FNanchor_290" class="label">[290]</a> <i>Sierra Leone Royal Gazette</i>, April 18th, 1902.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_291" href="#FNanchor_291" class="label">[291]</a> <i>Idem.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_292" href="#FNanchor_292" class="label">[292]</a> Estimated.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_293" href="#FNanchor_293" class="label">[293]</a> The figures for 1900 do not include the expenses of the Ashanti expedition.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_294" href="#FNanchor_294" class="label">[294]</a> Including exports of specie.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_295" href="#FNanchor_295" class="label">[295]</a> Ordinary for 1897, 1898, 1899 and 1900; extraordinary for 1897, 1898 and 1899.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_296" href="#FNanchor_296" class="label">[296]</a> Sir Matthew Nathan’s report on the Northern Territories (No. 357—issued
+July 1902) says: “The expenditure in 1901 has not yet been completely estimated.”
+Farther on he estimates the expenditure for 1902 at £52,381 11s. 7d. The expenditure
+is, therefore, largely increasing. The above amount includes £23,038 11s. 7d.
+or military purposes.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_297" href="#FNanchor_297" class="label">[297]</a> According to Lieutenant-Colonel Morris (C.O. Report, No. 35) the revenue in
+1901 was £7415 4s. 3d. It was estimated at £8000; and the estimate for 1902 is
+also £8000.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_298" href="#FNanchor_298" class="label">[298]</a> Including £97,769 paid back to the Imperial Government for cost of expenditure
+on Ashanti expedition.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_299" href="#FNanchor_299" class="label">[299]</a> Official statement, dated March 1902:—1st section, 39¼ miles long, open to
+traffic; and section, of 9¾ miles, “approaching completion.”</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_300" href="#FNanchor_300" class="label">[300]</a> Colonial Office Report, No. 344:—Sum borrowed to end 1900, apparently
+£798,000 (£220,000, 1898; £578,000, 1899).</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_301" href="#FNanchor_301" class="label">[301]</a> <i>Idem.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_302" href="#FNanchor_302" class="label">[302]</a> Railway development, £578,000; harbour works at Accra, £98,000.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_303" href="#FNanchor_303" class="label">[303]</a> Estimated.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_304" href="#FNanchor_304" class="label">[304]</a> Colonial Office Report, No. 348.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_305" href="#FNanchor_305" class="label">[305]</a> <i>Idem.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_306" href="#FNanchor_306" class="label">[306]</a> If for re-sale.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_307" href="#FNanchor_307" class="label">[307]</a> <i>Idem.</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_308" href="#FNanchor_308" class="label">[308]</a> One mile—1609 metres.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_309" href="#FNanchor_309" class="label">[309]</a> In 1901 there was an increase of 4600 tons of palm oil and kernels exported
+compared with the previous year.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_310" href="#FNanchor_310" class="label">[310]</a> Wallach.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_311" href="#FNanchor_311" class="label">[311]</a> Late Lieutenant-Colonel Northcote’s estimate. It does not include the portion of
+the Anglo-German neutral territory, which is eventually to be incorporated within the
+British sphere, according to the Anglo-German Convention of November 1899.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_312" href="#FNanchor_312" class="label">[312]</a> The principal towns of the Protectorate are Ibadan (population 180,000),
+Abbeokuta (population 150,000), Oyo (population 50,000).</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="footnote">
+
+<p><a id="Footnote_313" href="#FNanchor_313" class="label">[313]</a> If we assume the population of Northern Nigeria to be 30 millions, this gives
+us a rough total, exclusive of Ashanti, of 33,218,324 inhabitants to 645,000 square
+miles of territory; or not far short of the population of France, in a territory as
+large as France and Germany, with a good half of Austria-Hungary thrown in.</p>
+
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_373"></a>[373]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="INDEX">INDEX</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<ul>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Abbeokuta, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Abderrahman ben Abdallah ben Imran ben Amir Es-Sa’di, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Abir</i>, <i>see</i> <a href="#Congo_State">Congo State</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Aborigines Protection Society, <a href="#Page_185">185</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Abutshi, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Abyssinia, <i>see</i> <a href="#Christianity">Christianity</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Adamawa, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">African Association, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">African Oil Mills Co., <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Agoult, Comte d’, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Agricultural Committee, <i>see</i> <a href="#German">German</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ahmed-Baba, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Air, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Akassa, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Allen, Commander, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Alvensleben, Count, <a href="#Page_176">176</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Amageddi, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Anglo-French Convention, <i>see</i> <a href="#Treaties">Treaties</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">-German Convention, <i>see</i> <a href="#Treaties">Treaties</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">-Portuguese Convention, <i>see</i> <a href="#Treaties">Treaties</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Angola, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ansorge, Dr., <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Anton, Dr., <a href="#Page_344">344</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Anversoise</i>, <i>see</i> <a href="#Congo_State">Congo State</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Apis, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ashanti, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_205">205</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_280">280</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Assay, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Assinie, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Atani, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Axim, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Baghena, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Baghirmi, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bakundi, Lake, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bakunu, <a href="#Page_130">130</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ballay, Dr., <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ballot, Governor, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bambarras, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bamboo-palm, <a href="#Page_116">116</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bambuk, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bangalas, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Banyo, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Baobab, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Barbot, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Barros, de, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Barth, Dr., <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Basset, Serge, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bathurst, <a href="#Page_162">162</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Earl, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Battel, Andrew, <a href="#Page_241">241</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bayol, Dr., <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Belgian policy in West Africa, <a href="#Page_176">176</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_311">311</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#Congo_State">Congo State</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Belgians in French Congo, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">on Muni River, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Belgium, King Leopold of, <i>see</i> <a href="#Congo_State">Congo State</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bello, Emir, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Benin, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_105">105</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Berlin, Act of, <i>see</i> <a href="#Treaties">Treaties</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Béthancourt, De, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_374"></a>[374]</span>Bilma, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Binger, Commandant, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_249">249</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Binue, <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Biru, <i>see</i> <a href="#Walata">Walata</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bismarck, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Blyden, Dr., <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_149">149</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Bohn">Bohn, M., <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#French_West_African_Company">French West African Co.</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bondu, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bonny, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Borgu, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bornu, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Brass, <a href="#Page_79">79</a>, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Brazza, De, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315-316</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bretonnet, Lieut., <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">British Cotton Growing Association, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a>, <a href="#Page_190">190</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Brown, Dr. Robert, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Brüe, Sieur de, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Brussels, Act of, <i>see</i> <a href="#Treaties">Treaties</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Burutu, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Bussa, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Butter-tree, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Ca-de-Mosto, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Caix, Count Robert de, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cambyses, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cameroon, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Caravan traffic, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62-65</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cardew, Sir F., <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cardi, Count de, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cattier, M., <a href="#Page_313">313</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Chad, Lake, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_260">260</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Chalmers, Sir David, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_282">282</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Chama, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Chamberlain">Chamberlain, Right Hon. Joseph, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <i>see also</i>
+    <a href="#Colonial_Office">Colonial Office</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Christianity">Christianity, in Abyssinia, <a href="#Page_237">237</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Uganda, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in West Africa, <a href="#Page_208">208-37</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Clapperton, <a href="#Page_35">35-51</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Clarke, Sir Andrew, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Clarke, Sir Marshall, <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Clozel, M., <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Codrington, Mr. Robert, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Colonial_Office">Colonial Office, <a href="#Page_165">165</a>, <a href="#Page_169">169</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_283">283</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#Chamberlain">Chamberlain</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Comptoir Colonial français</i>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_336">336</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Conakry, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Concessions <i>régime</i>, <i>see</i> <a href="#French_Congo">French Congo</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Congo_State">Congo State, history of, <a href="#Page_312">312-326</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">“trade of,” <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343-53</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">taxation in, <a href="#Page_327">327-29</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_339">339</a>, <a href="#Page_340">340</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">native policy of, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_328">328-29</a>, <a href="#Page_337">337</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_345">345</a>, <a href="#Page_352">352</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">land policy, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">commercial policy of, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">traffic in arms, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>Force publique</i>, <a href="#Page_329">329</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+<li class="isub1"><i>Domaine Privé</i>, <a href="#Page_327">327-42</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_347">347</a>, <a href="#Page_351">351</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">privileged Companies in, <a href="#Page_330">330-38</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Stokes’ affair, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Rabinek affair, <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344-49</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">and Belgian Parliament, <a href="#Page_333">333-334</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">on Tanganyika, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Nile Valley, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">slavery in, <a href="#Page_296">296</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">influence in France, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Copal, <i>see</i> <a href="#Trade">Trade in Gums</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Copra, <a href="#Page_80">80</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Copts, <i>see</i> <a href="#Gober">Gober</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cotton, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181-200</a>, <i>see also under</i> <a href="#Trade">Trade</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cousin, M. Albert, <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Cousturier, M., <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_375"></a>[375]</span>Crampbel, Paul, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Crown Agents, <i>see</i> <a href="#Crown_Colony_System">Crown Colony System</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Crown_Colony_System">Crown Colony system, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_16">16</a>, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_31">31</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_92">92</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_184">184</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Crowther, Bishop, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Currency, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Dahomey, <i>see under</i> <a href="#French">French</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dakar, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Daw, Mr., J. A., <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Décrais, M., <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Degama, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Delafosse, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Denham, <a href="#Page_35">35-51</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dennett, Mr., <a href="#Page_289">289</a>, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Denton, Sir George, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Desert">Desert, the, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dilke, Sir Charles, <a href="#Page_276">276</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dobson, Archbishop, <a href="#Page_233">233</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Donovan, Captain, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dubois, M. Félix, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dufferin, Marquis of, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Dybowski, M., <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Ebony, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#Timber">Timber</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Edrizi, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Egga, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Eichtal, M. d’, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">El Bekri, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">El-Haji-Omar, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_223">223</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">El-Kuti, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ellis, A. B., <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Etienne, Eugène, <a href="#Page_250">250-63</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Faidherbe, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_226">226</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_250">250</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fans, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ferry, Jules, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Finances of British West Africa, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>; <i>see also</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">of Nigeria, <a href="#Page_17">17</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a>; <i>see also</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Finances of Lagos, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>; <i>see also</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">of Sierra Leone, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>; <i>see also</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">of French Colonies, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>; <i>see also</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Flatters, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fondère, M., <a href="#Page_294">294</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Forcados, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Foreign Office, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Foureau, M., <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Freeman, R. Austin, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="French">French, exploration and discovery, <a href="#Page_238">238-48</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">trade, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_265">265-75</a></li>
+<li class="isub1" id="French_policy">policy, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_249">249-84</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in French Guinea, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281-84</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Dahomey, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Chad region, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_260">260-64</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Western Sudan, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Senegal, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+<li class="isub1" id="French_Congo">in French Congo, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285-304</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Ivory Coast, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">and British, <a href="#Page_238">238-48</a>, <i>see also under</i> <a href="#Nigeria">Nigeria</a>, <a href="#French_policy">French policy</a>, and <a href="#French_Congo">French in French Congo</a></li>
+<li class="isub1" id="French_West_African_Company">West African Company, <a href="#Page_285">285</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#Bohn">Bohn</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Frey, Colonel, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Fulani">Fulani, origin of, <a href="#Page_136">136-52</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">history of, <a href="#Page_125">125-29</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130-135</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Yoruba, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Hausa States, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_102">102</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125-30</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Gambia, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+<li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_376"></a>[376]</span>in Futa-Jallon, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Senegal, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Western Sudan, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Gurma, <a href="#Page_134">134</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Adamawa, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Baghirmi, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Congo Basin, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Segu, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Baghena, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Bornu, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Melle, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Omdurman, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Massina, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">and Portuguese, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">and British, <a href="#Page_46">46-50</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">and French, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">and Hebrews, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">characteristics of, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a>, <a href="#Page_148">148</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">religion of, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">language of, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fula, <i>see</i> <a href="#Fulani">Fulani</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fulbe, <i>see</i> <a href="#Fulani">Fulani</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Fulfalde, <i>see</i> <a href="#Fulani">Fulani</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Futa-Jallon, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_139">139</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_274">274</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Gaboon, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gambia, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gambetta, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gando, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gao, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Geary, Sir William, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Générale Africaine, Société</i>, <i>see</i> <a href="#Congo_State">Congo State</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gentil, Lieut., <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="German">German, trade, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">agricultural committee, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Colonial advisory board, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">German Colonial Society, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ghana, <a href="#Page_131">131</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ghanata, <i>see</i> <a href="#Walata">Walata</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Gober">Gober, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gold Coast, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_13">13</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_183">183</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gold, <i>see</i> <a href="#Mining_Industry">Mining Industry</a>; <i>also under</i> <a href="#Trade">Trade</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Goldie, Sir George, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Grand Bassam, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_273">273</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Green, Mrs. J. R., <a href="#FOREWORD">Foreword</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gregory, Professor, <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Grogan, Mr. H. S., <a href="#Page_178">178</a>, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ground-nut, <i>see under</i> <a href="#Trade">Trade</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Guiraudon, Capt. de, <a href="#Page_148">148-50</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Gutta-percha, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Hamarua, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hanno, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hatton and Cookson, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hausa Association, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">language, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_73">73</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">history, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_54">54</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">religion, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hausas as manufacturers and traders, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">as travellers, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">as soldiers, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">as slave-owners, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">relations of with Fulani, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Helm, Mr. E., <a href="#Page_182">182</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Herodotus, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hess, M. Jean, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Holt, Mr. John, <a href="#Page_300">300</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Horneman, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Houdas, M. O., <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hourst, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_26">26</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hut-tax in Sierra Leone, <i>see under</i> <a href="#Taxation">Taxation</a></li>
+<li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_377"></a>[377]</span>in French Congo, <i>see under</i> <a href="#Taxation">Taxation</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hutton, Mr. Arthur, <a href="#Page_11">11</a>, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Hyksos, <a href="#Page_140">140</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a>, <a href="#Page_143">143</a>, <a href="#Page_145">145</a>, <a href="#Page_146">146</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Ibi, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Idah, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Igarras, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ilorin, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Illushi, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Indigo, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">In Salah, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">International Congo Association, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314-20</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Islam">Islam in West Africa, <a href="#Page_208">208-23</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Bornu, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Hausa States, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_101">101</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Baghirmi, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Kanem, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Gambia, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Yoruba, <a href="#Page_208">208</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Adamawa, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Lagos, <a href="#Page_213">213-15</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Sierra Leone, <a href="#Page_213">213-15</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Futa-Jallon, <a href="#Page_215">215</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Western Sudan, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Kong, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in French possessions, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ivory Coast, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <i>see also under</i> <a href="#French">French</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ivory, <i>see under</i> <a href="#Trade">Trade</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Jago, Consul, <a href="#Page_64">64</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Jalonkes, <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Jebba, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Johnson, Dr. O., <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Johnston, Sir H., <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a>, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_265">265</a>, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Joloffs, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Jones, Sir Alfred, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Kanem, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kano, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_46">46</a>, <a href="#Page_52">52</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62-67</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_191">191</a>, <a href="#Page_192">192</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kanuri, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_128">128</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Katamansu, battle of, <a href="#Page_28">28</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Katanga Co., <i>see</i> <a href="#Congo_State">Congo State</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Katsena, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kingsley, Miss Mary, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_124">124</a>, <a href="#Page_141">141</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_173">173</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_232">232</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a>, <a href="#Page_266">266</a>, <a href="#Page_276">276</a>, <a href="#Page_353">353</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Koelle, the Rev., <a href="#Page_72">72</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kola, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kontagora, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kotonu, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Krause, the Rev., <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Kuka, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Labat, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Labour, native, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_77">77</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170-87</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Ordinance in Gold Coast, <a href="#Page_13">13</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lagos, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_186">186</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lahou, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lamy, Lieut.-Colonel, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lamy, <i>see under</i> <a href="#Trade">Trade</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lander, Richard, <a href="#Page_40">40</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Land-tenure, in West Africa, <a href="#Page_170">170-87</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Sierra Leone, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Ivory Coast, <a href="#Page_171">171</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in French Congo, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_292">292</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Congo State, <i>see</i> <a href="#Congo_State">Congo State</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lansdowne, Lord, <a href="#Page_302">302</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lau, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Laveran, <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Leather-ware, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Leo Africanus, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lepsius, Professor, <a href="#Page_143">143</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Leucæthiopes, <i>see</i> <a href="#Fulani">Fulani</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Liberia, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a>, <a href="#Page_229">229</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_378"></a>[378]</span>Liquor traffic, <a href="#Page_179">179</a>, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#Ross">Ross</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Logon River, <a href="#Page_43">43</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lokoja, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Lomami</i>, <i>see</i> <a href="#Congo_State">Congo State</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">London School of Tropical Medicine, <a href="#Page_20">20</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lucas, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lugard, Sir Frederick, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_99">99</a>, <a href="#Page_104">104</a>, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Lyon, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Macdonald, Sir Claude, <a href="#Page_11">11</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">MacGregor, Laird, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Sir William, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_162">162</a>, <a href="#Page_163">163</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_168">168</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>, <a href="#Page_189">189</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Maclaud, Dr., <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mahogany, <i>see under</i> <a href="#Trade_Timber">Trade (Timber)</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Maistre, M., <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Makrizi, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Malaria">Malaria, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_153">153-69</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Manatus, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mandara, <a href="#Page_39">39</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mandingoes, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Maritime Zone, <a href="#Page_290">290</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Marmol, <a href="#Page_133">133</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Maroba, <a href="#Page_97">97</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Méline, M., <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Melle, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_195">195</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mendis, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Merchants, British, in West Africa, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_30">30</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_238">238</a>, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in French Congo, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_291">291</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298-304</a>, <a href="#Page_306">306</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">and liquor traffic, <a href="#Page_235">235</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">German, in West Africa, <a href="#Page_23">23</a>, <a href="#Page_24">24</a></li>
+<li class="isub2">in French Congo, <a href="#Page_291">291</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">French, early exploits of, <a href="#Page_240">240-42</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Senegal, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Ivory Coast, <a href="#Page_81">81</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mille, M. Pierre, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_330">330</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Mining_Industry">Mining industry, in Gold Coast, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_29">29</a>, <a href="#Page_182">182-83</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Ivory Coast, <a href="#Page_270">270-71</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Misahöhe, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Missionaries, <i>see</i> <a href="#Christianity">Christianity</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mitchi, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mohammed-el-Kanemy, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_51">51</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mohammed Lebo, <a href="#Page_129">129</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mohammedans, <i>see</i> <a href="#Islam">Islam</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Moloney, Sir Alfred, <a href="#Page_203">203</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mongolia, atrocities in, <i>see</i> <a href="#Congo_State">Congo State</a>s</li>
+
+<li class="indx">Monopoly, <i>see</i> <a href="#Congo_State">Congo State</a> and <a href="#French">French in French Congo</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Monteil, Lieut.-Colonel, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Moor, Sir Ralph, <a href="#Page_90">90</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Moore, Francis, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mosis, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_251">251</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Mosquitoes, <i>see</i> <a href="#Malaria">Malaria</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Muni River, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_350">350</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Murzuk, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Nachtigal, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Nathan, Sir Matthew, <i>see</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">National African Company, <i>see</i> <a href="#Niger_Company">Niger Company</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Natron, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Navarette, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">New Calabar, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">N’Gaundere, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Niger Coast Protectorate, <i>see</i> <a href="#Nigeria">Nigeria</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Niger_Company">Niger Company, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_88">88</a>, <a href="#Page_90">90</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Niger, <i>see</i> <a href="#Nigeria">Nigeria</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Nigeria">Nigeria, discovery of Northern, <a href="#Page_35">35-51</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">inhabitants of, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">trade of, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_60">60-66</a>, <a href="#Page_84">84</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91-93</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">finances of, <a href="#Page_89">89</a>, <a href="#Page_93">93</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">administration of, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_83">83-88</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_258">258</a></li>
+<li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_379"></a>[379]</span>forest ordinances in, <a href="#Page_184">184-87</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">national industry in, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">and the French, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Nikki, <a href="#Page_9">9</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Northcott, Lieut.-Colonel, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Nupe, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_104">104</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Ogowe, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ogute Lake, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Old Calabar, <a href="#Page_79">79</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Onitsha, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Orashe River, <a href="#Page_75">75</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Osogbo, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Othman_Fodio">Othman Fodio, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_125">125</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_222">222</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Oudney, Dr., <a href="#Page_35">35-51</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Overweg, <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Palm-oil industry, in Southern Nigeria, <a href="#Page_74">74-82</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a></li>
+<li class="isub2">in Dahomey, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+<li class="isub2">in Lagos, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+<li class="isub2">in Sierra Leone, <a href="#Page_123">123</a>, <i>see also under</i> <a href="#Trade">Trade</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">-kernels industry, in Southern Nigeria, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+<li class="isub2">in Dahomey, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <i>see also under</i> <a href="#Trade">Trade</a></li>
+<li class="isub2">in Lagos, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Park, Mungo, <a href="#Page_36">36</a>, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_150">150</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Paw-paw, <a href="#Page_114">114</a>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Peddie, Major, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Peuhl, <i>see</i> <a href="#Fulani">Fulani</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pickersgill, Consul, <a href="#Page_317">317</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pilcher, Lieut.-Colonel, <a href="#Page_69">69</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Pliny, <a href="#Page_35">35</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Polygamy, <i>see</i> <a href="#Islam">Islam</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Porto Novo, <a href="#Page_268">268</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Portugal and the Congo</li>
+<li class="isub1">and the Fulani, <i>see</i> <a href="#Fulani">Fulani</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">and Great Britain, <i>see</i> <a href="#Treaties">Treaties</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Portuguese discoveries in West Africa, <a href="#Page_239">239</a>, <a href="#Page_240">240</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Church in West Africa, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Potash, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Prempreh, <a href="#Page_26">26</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Prince Henry the Navigator, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ptolemy, <a href="#Page_141">141</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Punitive expeditions, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_98">98</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Puttkamer, Herr von, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Quadriyah, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_220">220</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Rabba, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rabah, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rabinek, <i>see under</i> <a href="#Congo_State">Congo State</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Racka, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Railways, in British West Africa, <a href="#Page_12">12</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_22">22</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in French Guinea, <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_32">32</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Dahomey, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Senegal, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Northern Nigeria, <a href="#Page_8">8</a>, <a href="#Page_66">66</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Matadi, Stanley Pool, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>, <a href="#Page_287">287</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Reclus, Élisée, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Religion, <i>see</i> <a href="#Christianity">Christianity</a> and <a href="#Islam">Islam</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Richardson, James, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_96">96</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Rev. J., <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ripon, Marquis of, <a href="#Page_12">12</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Ritchie, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">“Rivers,” the, <i>see</i> <a href="#Nigeria">Nigeria</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Robinson, John A., <a href="#Page_70">70</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Canon, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_72">72</a>, <a href="#Page_231">231</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rollit, Sir Albert, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Ross">Ross, Major R., <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_152">152-69</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Roume, M., <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rubber, in Nigeria, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119-24</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in French Congo, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+<li class="isub1"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_380"></a>[380]</span>in Lagos, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_123">123</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Rubber, in Congo State, <i>see</i> <a href="#Congo_State">Congo State</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Russell, Lord John, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Sahara, <i>see</i> <a href="#Desert">Desert</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Salisbury, Lord, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Salmon, C. S., <a href="#Page_20">20</a>, <a href="#Page_170">170</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Salt, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_167">167</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Samory, <a href="#Page_256">256</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sandford, General, <a href="#Page_316">316</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sangha, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_293">293</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sanitation, <a href="#Page_153">153-69</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sapelli, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sarbah, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_184">184</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Schön, <a href="#Page_70">70</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Schurz, <a href="#Page_98">98</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sekondi, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Senegal, <a href="#Page_25">25</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_243">243</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a>, <i>see also under</i> <a href="#French">French</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Senussi, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sette Camma, <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Shari, <a href="#Page_43">43</a>, <a href="#Page_44">44</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_258">258</a>, <a href="#Page_259">259</a>, <a href="#Page_261">261</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Shea-butter, <a href="#Page_113">113</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sherbro, <a href="#Page_82">82</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Shongo, <a href="#Page_76">76</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Shuwa, <a href="#Page_75">75</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sierra Leone, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_28">28</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_164">164</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201</a>, <a href="#Page_242">242</a>, <a href="#Page_245">245</a>, <a href="#Page_252">252</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_275">275</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Silver, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Slavery, in West Africa, <a href="#Page_100">100</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">over-sea, <a href="#Page_228">228</a>, <a href="#Page_255">255</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">domestic, <a href="#Page_94">94-109</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Sierra Leone, <a href="#Page_283">283</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, <a href="#Page_107">107</a>, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Nupe and Ilorin, <a href="#Page_109">109</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Congo State, <a href="#Page_296">296</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#Congo_State">Congo State</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">the “New Slavery,” <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#Congo_State">Congo State</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Slave-raiding, <a href="#Page_87">87</a>, <a href="#Page_94">94-109</a>, <a href="#Page_171">171</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Slaves, “White Slaves of England,” <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Sokoto, treaties with, <i>see under</i> <a href="#Treaties">Treaties</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">under Bello, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_45">45</a>, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_49">49</a>, <a href="#Page_50">50</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>,
+    <i>see also under</i> <a href="#Fulani">Fulani</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Songhays, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_210">210</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_236">236</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Soninkes, <a href="#Page_211">211</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Stanley, Sir H. M., <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_312">312</a>, <a href="#Page_315">315</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>, <a href="#Page_321">321</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_337">337</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Stewart, Captain Donald, <a href="#Page_281">281</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Stokes, <i>see under</i> <a href="#Congo_State">Congo State</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Strachan, Dr., <a href="#Page_163">163</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Strachir, Monsignor, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Strauch, Colonel, <a href="#Page_315">315</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Susus, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Tanganyika, <a href="#Page_349">349</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><i>Tarik</i>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_132">132</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Taxation">Taxation, in Sierra Leone, <a href="#Page_14">14</a>, <a href="#Page_18">18</a>, <a href="#Page_27">27</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281</a>, <a href="#Page_284">284</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Lagos, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Dahomey, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_279">279</a>, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Ashanti, <a href="#Page_279">279-81</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Gambia, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in French Guinea, <a href="#Page_274">274</a>, <a href="#Page_277">277</a>, <a href="#Page_278">278</a>, <a href="#Page_281">281-84</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Congo State, <i>see</i> <a href="#Congo_State">Congo State</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in French Congo, <a href="#Page_293">293</a>, <a href="#Page_295">295</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Hausa States, <a href="#Page_127">127</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">direct in West Africa, <a href="#Page_280">280</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Terrier, Auguste, <a href="#Page_262">262</a>, <a href="#Page_302">302</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Thomson, Joseph, <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_39">39</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_126">126</a>, <a href="#Page_211">211</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Thys, Colonel, <a href="#Page_37">37</a>, <a href="#Page_288">288</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a>, <a href="#Page_348">348</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tibati, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tijaniyah, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_219">219</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Timber">Timber, <i>see under</i> <a href="#Trade">Trade</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Timbo, <a href="#Page_139">139</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Timbuctoo, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_253">253</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tin, <a href="#Page_118">118</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_381"></a>[381]</span>Togoland, <a href="#Page_193">193</a>, <a href="#Page_196">196</a>, <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Trade">Trade, British trade with British West Africa, <a href="#Page_2">2</a>, <a href="#Page_3">3</a>, <a href="#Page_4">4</a></li>
+<li class="isub2">French West Africa, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a>, <a href="#Page_6">6</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+<li class="isub2">German West Africa, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="isub2">Portuguese West Africa, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_5">5</a></li>
+<li class="isub2">Congo State, <a href="#Page_297">297</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">of Gambia, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Gold Coast, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Lagos, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_267">267-69</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Sierra Leone, <a href="#Page_284">284</a>, <i>see also</i> <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">of Kano, <a href="#Page_60">60</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">of Nigeria, <a href="#Page_4">4</a>, <a href="#Page_74">74-82</a>, <a href="#Page_91">91-93</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">of French possessions, <a href="#Page_265">265-75</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">of Congo State, <a href="#Page_286">286</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343-53</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">early in West Africa, <a href="#Page_238">238-48</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in ivory, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_61">61</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in Gold, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>, <a href="#Page_118">118</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>,
+    <i>see also</i> <a href="#Mining_Industry">Mining Industry</a> and <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in ostrich-feathers, <a href="#Page_38">38</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in kola, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_116">116</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in benni-seed, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in skins, <a href="#Page_38">38</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in “lamy,” <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+<li class="isub1" id="Trade_Timber">in timber, <a href="#Page_117">117</a>, <a href="#Page_201">201-207</a>, <a href="#Page_271">271</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>, <i>see also</i>
+    <a href="#APPENDIX">Appendix</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in bees-wax, <a href="#Page_67">67</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in gums, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_112">112</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in shea-butter, <a href="#Page_113">113</a>, <a href="#Page_114">114</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in cottons, <a href="#Page_59">59</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in palm-oil, <a href="#Page_74">74-82</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in palm-kernels, <a href="#Page_74">74-82</a>, <a href="#Page_268">268</a>, <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in ground-nuts, <a href="#Page_76">76</a>, <a href="#Page_81">81</a>, <a href="#Page_194">194</a>, <a href="#Page_269">269</a>, <a href="#Page_270">270</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">in rubber, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_82">82</a>, <a href="#Page_110">110</a>, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119-124</a>, <a href="#Page_298">298</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_299">299</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">piassava, <a href="#Page_117">117</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Treaties">Treaties, Anglo-French, <a href="#Page_24">24</a>, <a href="#Page_67">67</a>, <a href="#Page_246">246</a>, <a href="#Page_247">247</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Anglo-German, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Anglo-Portuguese, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Franco-German, <a href="#Page_111">111</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">with Fulani Emirs (Sokoto), <a href="#Page_9">9</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_86">86</a>, <a href="#Page_95">95</a>, <a href="#Page_97">97</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_257">257-58</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Berlin Act, <a href="#Page_177">177</a>, <a href="#Page_297">297</a>, <a href="#Page_299">299</a>, <a href="#Page_300">300</a>, <a href="#Page_301">301</a>, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_306">306</a>, <a href="#Page_307">307</a>, <a href="#Page_308">308</a>, <a href="#Page_314">314</a>, <a href="#Page_318">318</a>, <a href="#Page_319">319</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_321">321</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_343">343</a>, <a href="#Page_344">344</a>, <a href="#Page_345">345</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">Brussels Act, <a href="#Page_303">303</a>, <a href="#Page_323">323</a>, <a href="#Page_324">324</a>, <a href="#Page_325">325</a></li>
+<li class="isub1">of Vienna, <a href="#Page_243">243</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Trentinian, Général de, <a href="#Page_196">196</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tripoli, <a href="#Page_33">33</a>, <a href="#Page_41">41</a>, <a href="#Page_42">42</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_62">62</a>, <a href="#Page_63">63</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Trotter, Captain, <a href="#Page_94">94</a>, <a href="#Page_103">103</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tuareg, <a href="#Page_53">53</a>, <a href="#Page_56">56</a>, <a href="#Page_58">58</a>, <a href="#Page_71">71</a>, <a href="#Page_85">85</a>, <a href="#Page_128">128</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_260">260</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tuckey, Captain, <a href="#Page_37">37</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tugwell, Bishop, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Tukulors, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_253">253</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Twin Rivers, <a href="#Page_204">204</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Ubanghi, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215</a>, <a href="#Page_262">262</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Uganda, <a href="#Page_181">181</a>, <a href="#Page_227">227</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">United States, <a href="#Page_200">200</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204</a>, <a href="#Page_309">309</a>, <a href="#Page_310">310</a>, <a href="#Page_316">316</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_318">318</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Unyoro, <a href="#Page_179">179</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Verneau, Dr., <a href="#Page_138">138</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Viera, <a href="#Page_239">239</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Villadestes, <a href="#Page_132">132</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Villaut de Bellefonds, <a href="#Page_240">240</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Vohsen, Consul, <a href="#Page_308">308</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Volta, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Wadai, <a href="#Page_57">57</a>, <a href="#Page_64">64</a>, <a href="#Page_254">254</a>, <a href="#Page_257">257</a>, <a href="#Page_263">263</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Wahuma, <a href="#Page_144">144</a>, <a href="#Page_180">180</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Wa-Kavirondo, <a href="#Page_181">181</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx" id="Walata">Walata, <a href="#Page_131">131</a>, <a href="#Page_133">133</a>, <a href="#Page_134">134</a>, <a href="#Page_137">137</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx"><span class="pagenum"><a id="Page_382"></a>[382]</span>Waldeck-Rousseau, <a href="#Page_244">244</a>, <a href="#Page_285">285</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Washington, Booker T., <a href="#Page_199">199</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Wauters, A. J., <a href="#Page_312">312</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">West African Frontier Force, <a href="#Page_86">86</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Western Sudan, <a href="#Page_35">35</a>, <a href="#Page_129">129</a>, <a href="#Page_130">130</a>, <a href="#Page_147">147</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a>,
+    <a href="#Page_272">272</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Winterbottom, <a href="#Page_147">147</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Woermann, <a href="#Page_197">197</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Yola, <a href="#Page_111">111</a>, <a href="#Page_119">119</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Yoruba, <a href="#Page_193">193</a></li>
+
+<li class="ifrst">Za Dynasty, <a href="#Page_209">209</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Za-Kasai, <a href="#Page_209">209</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Zaky, <i>see</i> <a href="#Othman_Fodio">Othman Fodio</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Zanfara, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Zaria, <a href="#Page_57">57</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Zeg-Zeg, <a href="#Page_54">54</a>, <a href="#Page_55">55</a></li>
+
+<li class="indx">Zimmerman, Dr. A., <a href="#Page_175">175</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<p class="titlepage">Printed by <span class="smcap">Ballantyne, Hanson &amp; Co.</span><br>
+London &amp; Edinburgh</p>
+
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 75580 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
+
diff --git a/75580-h/images/cover.jpg b/75580-h/images/cover.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..24db2f0
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/cover.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/heinemann.jpg b/75580-h/images/heinemann.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dfae83b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/heinemann.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus01.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus01.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..825fd71
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus01.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus02.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus02.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..09ea56c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus02.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus03.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus03.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a17812c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus03.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus04.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus04.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..23378e8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus04.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus05.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus05.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..dc3d160
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus05.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus06.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus06.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a9899f3
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus06.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus07.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus07.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..41db696
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus07.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus08.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus08.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4afe447
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus08.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus09.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus09.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e86f469
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus09.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus10.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus10.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ab4778a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus10.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus11.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus11.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4c95863
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus11.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus12.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus12.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5d4c68a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus12.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus13.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus13.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..a19c327
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus13.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus14.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus14.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e4916ae
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus14.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus15.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus15.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5ee567
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus15.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus16.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus16.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..99c9d93
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus16.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus17.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus17.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..d311bb2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus17.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus18.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus18.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ad39a1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus18.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus19.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus19.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b5aeef5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus19.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus20.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus20.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4730401
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus20.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus21.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus21.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8aa3a1d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus21.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus22.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus22.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..48059ca
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus22.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus23.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus23.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ecdbfec
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus23.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus24.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus24.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..299e071
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus24.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus25.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus25.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f45ad87
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus25.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus26.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus26.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b4608ba
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus26.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus27.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus27.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..246c25a
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus27.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus28.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus28.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..afa6bef
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus28.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus29.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus29.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cb2d05c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus29.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus30.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus30.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..525ed13
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus30.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus31.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus31.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..cce1744
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus31.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus32.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus32.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..be5d60c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus32.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus33.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus33.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..437eec1
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus33.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus34.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus34.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..79945be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus34.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus35.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus35.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..39ec2be
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus35.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/illus36.jpg b/75580-h/images/illus36.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..ec356e9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/illus36.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/map1.jpg b/75580-h/images/map1.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6eb2ea9
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/map1.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/map2.jpg b/75580-h/images/map2.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..c57b547
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/map2.jpg
diff --git a/75580-h/images/map3.jpg b/75580-h/images/map3.jpg
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..f11f4f2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/75580-h/images/map3.jpg
diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..6312041
--- /dev/null
+++ b/LICENSE.txt
@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
+Procedures for determining public domain status are described in
+the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org.
+
+No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in
+jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize
+this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright
+status under the laws that apply to them.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..fe902e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #75580 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/75580)