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and his relations hitherto he has done more than any white man to open up the wastes of Africa. It is an old story dealt with many times before, but the teachings of Islam even when proclaimed with sword and brand possess a power of raising the negro from a state of naked savagery and making him a useful producer or at least a soldier.

France has clearly recognised this, and her officers have been tirelessly exploiting the hinterland, while our Government, after listening often to deputations of merchants who greatly desired to make the situation plain, has in this respect of late years done mainly nothing. Now the result is apparent. The Gambia, Sierra Leone, and the Gold Coast have been cut off from the inland region where alone there is any hope of founding a white man's colony, and save for the foresight of the Chartered. Company upper Nigeria might also have fallen into

the hands of France. When one hears old stories of Emirs' cavalry bodyguards wearing silver corselets and splendidly mounted on desert horses, of one Sultanate ruling a thousand miles of hinterland so well that costly merchandise might be laid anywhere beside the trade roads and no man dare touch it, and others of the kind, even if all are not wholly true there is hope for the restoring of a great province. And again an advancing tide of Islam is rolling south, for the Mallah have already passed Lokoja, while it is not flattering to remember what they have done in the north, and then to contemplate the state of things just outside Bonny town, or to hear what the Brass cannibals whose haunts lie behind a British Consulate did when they sacked Akassa.

To give an idea of this region would require a book in itself. Even on its southern borders moving north along the river it has many large trading towns, where the native population live to some degree in peace and order, but being Company's stations, Abo, Asaba, Onitsha, and Lokoja are perhaps the best known to Europeans, and

Lokoja at the confluence of the Niger and Benue is the first Moslem town. It holds the gates to much of the Western Soudan. Men of many shades of colour and languages throng its streets, from the white and blue clad merchant of the semi-civilized north to the half-naked heathen trader of the deltaic swamps. Also a great

military depot has been established there, and in any future troubles along the frontier the name of Lokoja will be prominent. Indigo is largely grown in the upper portions of Nigeria, and a beautiful native cotton cloth dyed with it is spun which commands a higher price than the Manchester product. Wide tracts are cultivated with high skill and method, and many other industries, including leather-work and metal-forging, are practised. There is much rubber in it and also ivory, though the latter sometimes travels south by a circuitous route to the French Gaboon. Besides others of lesser note, there are three populous cities, Kuka, Kano, Socoto, whose names are known over northern Africa, which though partly ruinous still show what they have been, but it may yet be said that few Europeans have much acquaintance with them. One result of a monopoly is that the holders of it do not encourage their servants to talk freely of the things they have seen. Now, however, when the door may be opened wide to every comer, there will probably be a sudden development of this part of Africa.

The first necessity is the building of light railroads, such as that which is started from Lagos towards the Yoruba country, for the great obstacle in the way of West African commerce is the lack of transport. Every pound of produce that goes in or out is carried on slaves' heads along footwide trails, sometimes ambushed by spear-armed marauders, or at least only safely passable on the payment of a heavy toll, or very slowly in dug-out canoes down muddy rivers, with the chance that some of the craft will never come out at all. And it would be interesting even close down to the coast to figure exactly how many stockades have been

blown up and how much blood of white officer and black soldier is poured out every year in the Niger delta to keep these trade-routes open.

There are sanguine traders who compare the northern Sultanates to a new India, while others predict we shall have both hands full before we break the power and check the depredations of every mutinous Emir, and then be saddled with a profitless burden after all. The former at least can point to what this land has been twice before, and they have tangible grounds to hope that with the building of steamers and railways, the maintenance of order, and equal justice, a still greater British Province may be built up upon the ruins of its fallen power.

Many Englishmen, some with full knowledge, and others with but dim glances into futurity, have died working for this, or have dragged out weary lives in sufferings manifold. What the full result of their toil will be no man as yet can say,that only the future can show, but part at least will ere long be made clearly manifest.

THE SOUTH AFRICAN REPUBLIC.

BY AFRICANUS.

FOR several years past the English newspapers have devoted much attention to Transvaal affairs, with the result that an imperfect acquaintance with South African history has been, in the minds of most of their readers, substituted for the blank ignorance which prevailed in 1881. Unfortunately, it cannot be said that the press, as a whole, has approached this very difficult subject with either knowledge or candour. One party will hear no evil, the other believe no good, about the Boer. It is apparently rare for any journalist who disapproves of the retrocession of the Transvaal to admit that the Boers have ever had genuine grievances. On the other hand, most of those who praise Mr. Gladstone's South African policy find it necessary to vilify the Uitlanders of Johannesburg. Very few writers have attempted to tell the story of the Transvaal as a connected whole. It is therefore hoped that an attempt to give a brief abstract of Transvaal history from a non-partisan point of view may not be without interest. The authorities on the period are in many cases conflicting, and it is not easy to reach the truth. In some cases facts are uncertain, and motives are always a matter for dispute. Moreover, the vexed questions in the Transvaal, one and all, await settlement, and it is difficult to examine the past dispassionately at a moment of extreme tension.*

The South African Republic, as is well known, owes its existence to the "Great Trek" of farmers of French and Dutch blood who left Cape Colony for the North in 1836. Some pioneers had previously explored as far as Delagoa Bay, but the main emigration took place in 1836-37. A great deal has been written on the subject of the Trek, but the Manifesto published by Pieter Retief at Grahamstown

* Written on September 15.

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in January, 1837, seems to explain sufficiently the reasons for the emigration. In this he states that he and his friends 'despair of saving the colony from those evils that threaten it in the turbulent and dishonest conduct of vagrants who are allowed to infest the country in every part." They complain of the losses caused by the emancipation of the slaves, and the vexatious laws enacted respecting them; of the devastation caused by Kafir invasion, and of the unjustifiable odium cast on the farmers by missionary agents. It is indisputable that gross injustice was done to slaveholders by the terms of emancipation, that the removal of all restrictions from the movements of Hottentots and halfcastes rendered order insecure, that the policy of Lord Glenelg towards the Kafirs was an insult and an injury to the colonists-Dutch and English alike,—and that the highly-coloured reports of various missionaries had created an extreme prejudice, both in Cape Town and in England, against the Border farmers. Comparatively few slaves, indeed, had been owned by the emigrants, but the hard measure given to the Western Province slave-owners was not calculated to inspire any confidence in the honesty of the Home Government. Lord Glenelg's frontier policy was a greater grievance. After a fierce war against the Kafirs, the colonists were told by the Colonial Secretary that they had been in the wrong, and were forbidden to profit by the results of victories gained by their aid. Moreover, the frontier farmers received no compensation for the losses sustained, which included the total destruction of 456, and partial destruction of 350, farmhouses, and the loss of 5,715 horses, 111,930 head of cattle, and 161,930 sheep.

It is not surprising that the Voortrekkers left Cape Colony with feelings of dislike for British rule. The authorities were alarmed at the intended exodus, but Lieutenant-Governor Stockenstrom, in August, 1836, publicly stated that "he was not aware of any law which prevents any of His Majesty's subjects from leaving his dominions and settling in another country." Mr. Oliphant,

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