of Lake Victoria Nyanza. The ill-defined Sultanate of Zanzibar, in spite of the well-meaning efforts of the late Sultan, had long been, and, under the necessarily weak rule of a Mohammedan Power, could hardly fail to be, a haunt of slave hunters and slave dealers; and the effect of the new agreement will be, as regards the misgoverned mainland, to seat the Sultan more securely than ever upon his throne, and to cause his sceptre to be wielded by hands more competent and far stronger than his own. The district thus acquired by Germany is of great extent, and comprehends within it an actual German protectorate over a certain limited district, this having been the subject of a separate arrangement. The whole of the German territory is important, as well geographically as in regard to its commercial prospects. Sir Richard Burton, than whom there can be no higher authority, tells me he has a high opinion of the future, under better influences, of the tribes between the coast and Lake Tanganyika, notably the people of the Unyamwesi highlands. Our own sphere of influence' is smaller in extent, but certainly of still greater potential value, for it includes within its limits Mombasa, the finest and perhaps the only good harbour besides Delagoa Bay on the East African coast line. Our territory runs back to the sources of the Nile itself, with an unlimited power of extension towards the west, and it contains a great virgin ivory district, with regions unsurpassed in fertility in all Eastern Africa, and inhabited by black men far more advanced in the ways of civilisation, and therefore more available for trade, than the natives of the south and west. To the south of German Zanzibar comes the great Portuguese colony of Mozambik; a possession but skin-deep, as it were; for Portuguese tenure of territory, except along the river Zambesi and the stream which forms the navigable limb of its delta and debouches at Kilimane, nowhere extends into the interior, and it must, we fear, be admitted that the Portuguese colonists, if they deserve that name at all, live a precarious existence all along this coast: indeed so far are they from awing the tribes of black men, that they may be said to hold their own lives in their hands. The alterations effected upon the political map of East Africa by Germany and Great Britain are certainly on a great scale, and, whether for good or for evil, cannot but issue in some important changes for negro humanity. Whether they are to be for the benefit of the African race will depend wholly upon the enlightenment and humanity and energy of the European nations concerned, upon our own rightdoing and loyalty, upon Germany's, and upon the right and enlightened action of Portugal. It may be asked, and indeed has recently often been asked, with some show of reason, why this 'spoliation' by the European nations should take place at all; and why should Africa not belong to the Africans themselves?--an obvious question in the mouth of one who comes fresh to the study of this difficult problem in human destinies, yet the answer is pretty obvious too: it is because savage Africa has been proved to be wholly unable and wholly unwilling to govern itself; because African Home Rule would inevitably tend to what it always tends to be in Africa, anarchy, or a tyrannic absolutism and servitude which is worse than anarchy; because in all ages of the world's history the dominant and civilising nation has had to overcome the barbarous or the effete one, and to hold it in subjection, before the lower race can be raised, revived, and civilised; because there is no royal road' to civilisation-no short cut to effect that which time and patience and influence from the outside alone can bring about. Before considering what can be done to arrest the greatest and most crying wrong and tyranny suffered by negro Africa it is well to define exactly the nature of this wrong. It must ever be borne in mind that African slavery is of two distinct kinds: first, inland or intertribal slavery or servitude, which, in one form or another, is the normal condition of all rude nations divided into petty contiguous tribes; and secondly, that other and abnormal kind of slavery which includes excursions and razzias for slaves and the carrying of them to far-off markets, on the coast or in the interior. This latter form of slave-hunting and slave-dealing is carried on in Africa by Arabs, or by negroes and half-castes under strong Arab and Mohammedan influences. To abolish tribal servitude it would be necessary in the first instance to abolish African conditions of life, African institutions, and perhaps the negro himself. Such slavery is engrafted and engrained in his very nature. It is of this kind of slavery that it has been said that in many parts of Africa it is a risk to send three negroes on a message, lest two of the party join to bind the third and sell him into captivity. On the other hand, to suppress the second form of slavery: to stop the traffic of the Arabs who plan slave hunts over the whole vast interior of Africa, and carry their quarry through every forest to distant trade centres: to do this is not an impossibility. To stop the unspeakable cruelties suffered on journeys lasting it may be for half a year, over burning wastes, by naked men and women and children travelling day after day through thorny brakes and fever-haunted marshes, bound and yoked and overladen and beaten more cruelly and shamefully than the most brutal men dare load and beat their beasts of burden to save these fellow human beings of ours, thus tormented by thirst and fatigue and hunger and wounds and disease: to abolish this huge, foul, and monstrous crime against humanity, is, to speak calmly and by the card, possible, nay more, if things go well and the civilised peoples of the world co-operate to the end, a practical and even a probable thing in the near future. As a whole nation we are not greatly concerned to inquire into the prospects of African commerce. We are not bound to consider closely whether good or bad trade will be the outcome of the recent agreement between France, Germany, and Great Britain on the affairs of Zanzibar, or what will be the trade results of our own recent great acquisition of exclusive influence in the southern parts of the country. It must yet be borne in mind that trade questions are themselves intimately bound up with the rescue of the African from his tyrants; seeing that commerce, as it is at present conducted in many parts of Eastern Central Africa, even that larger kind of commerce with which the white man eventually deals at the sea-coast emporia, necessarily involves the employment of slaves as carriers. In roadless regions inhabited by people who are too primitive to breed cattle, and where belts of country infested by the tsetse fly have to be crossed, none but human beasts of burden can bear the products of industry. An elephant may be killed a thousand miles from the coast, and each tusk is the burden of a negro slave to the nearest seaport, while it will have taken three or four negroes to carry the calico required to pay the elephant hunter in the far interior. Slavery and slave carriage is therefore at present a necessary incident of trade in many parts of Africa. It is evident that if civilised modes of carriage are once established in the German and English spheres of influence,' slave-borne traffic will give way to cheaper and more speedy conveyance by road, by rail, or by navigable river. This being the one admirable consequence of the extension of civilised commerce, it will be well to glance very rapidly at what is being done and is meant to be done by the white man throughout the huge, roadless, tropical Siberia lying along the forty degrees of latitude which intervene between our Cape Colony and the sources of the Nile. Commencing from the northern borders of our own long-settled temperate colonies, we naturally find there the beginnings of more considerable activity than in other parts of these vast regions. From Durban, in Natal, the railroad that has been already constructed to Ladysmith is about to be carried to Coldstream and the confines of the Orange Free State. Were the Boers of this self-isolating country disposed to allow the line to be continued through their territory, a rich goldfield would be opened out and important commercial benefit conferred upon the world at large and upon the Boers themselves; but such liberality is opposed to Boer sentiment, and I am told on very good local authority that there is no immediate prospect of the grant of a concession. Some three hundred and fifty miles north of Durban is the splendid harbour of Delagoa Bay, the finest in all Africa, and here oddly enough the Portuguese, themselves notable obstructionists, are suffering apparently from the same obstruction at the hands of the Boers of |