FOOTNOTES:

ToListOil River Natives[To face page 245.Oil River Natives.

[To face page 245.

Speaking however further on the course of this salt trade Ca da Mostro says that some of the merchants of Melli go with it until they come to a certain water, whether fresh or salt his informant could not say; but he holds it most likely was fresh, or there would be no need of carrying salt there; and it is the opinion of the few people who have of late years interested themselves in the matter that this great water is the Niger Joliba. But be this as it may, when those merchants from Melli arrive on the banks of this great water they place their shares of salt in heaps in a row, every one setting a mark on his own. This done, the merchants retire half a day’s journey; then “the negroes, who will not be seen or spoken with, and who seem to be the inhabitants of some islands, come in large boats,” and having viewed the salt lay a sum of gold on every heap and then retire. When they are all gone the negro merchants who own the salt return, and if the quantity of gold pleases them they take it and leave the salt; if not, they leave both and withdraw themselves again. The silent people thenreturn, and the heaps from which they find the gold has been removed they carry away, and either advance more gold to the other heaps or take their gold from them and leave the salt. In this manner, says Ca da Mostro, from very ancient times these negroes have traded without either speaking to or seeing each other, until a few years before, when he was at Cape Blanco among the Azanaghi, who supply the negroes of Melli with their salt as aforesaid, and who evidently get from them gossip as well as gold. They told him that their fellow merchants among the black Moors had told them that they had had serious trouble in consequence of the then Emperor of Melli, a man who took more general interest in affairs than was common in Emperors of Melli, having been fired with a desire to know why these customers of his traders did not like being seen; he had commanded the salt merchants when they next went to traffic with the silent people to capture some of them for him by digging pits near the salt heaps, concealing themselves therein and then rushing out and seizing some of the strange people when they came to look at the salt heaps. The merchants did not at all relish the royal commission, for they knew, as any born trader would, that it must be extremely bad for trade to rush out and seize customers by the scruff of their necks while they were in the midst of their shopping. However, much as the command added to their commercial anxieties, the thing had to be done, or there was no doubt the Emperor would relieve them both of all commercial anxieties and their heads at one and the same time. So they carried out the royal command, and captured four of their silent customers. Three they immediately liberated, thinking that to keep so many would only increase the bad blood, and one specimenwould be sufficient to satisfy the Imperial curiosity. Unfortunately however the unfortunate captive they retained would neither speak nor eat, and in a few days died; and so the salt merchants of Melli returned home in very low spirits, feeling assured that their Emperor would be actively displeased with them for failing to satisfy his curiosity, and that the silent customers would be too alarmed and angered with them for their unprovoked attack to deal with them again. Subsequent events proved them to be correct in both surmises: his Majesty was highly disgusted at not having been able to see one of these people; and naturally, for the description given to him of those they had captured was at least highly interesting. The merchants said they were a span taller than themselves and well shaped, but that they made a terrible figure because their under lip was thicker than a man’s fist and hung down on their breasts; also that it was very red, and something like blood dropped from it and from their gums. The upper lip was no larger than that of other people, and owing to this there were exposed to view both gums and teeth, which were of great size, particularly the teeth in the corners of the mouth. Their eyes were of great size and blackness. As for the customers, for three years went the merchants of Melli to the banks of the great water and arranged their salt heaps and looked on them for gold dust in vain: but the fourth year it was there; and the merchants of Melli believed that their customers’ lips had begun to putrefy through the excessive heat and the want of salt, so that being unable to bear so grievous a distemper they were compelled to return to their trade. Things were then established on a fairly reasonable basis; the merchants did not again attempt to see their customers, and they knewfrom their experience with their captive that they were by nature dumb; for had there been speech in him, would he not have spoken under the treatment to which he was subjected? And as for the Emperor of Melli he said right out he did not care whether those blacks could speak or no, so long as he had but the profit of their gold.

This gold, I may remark, that was collected at Melli was divided into three parts: the first was sent by the Melli caravans to Kokhia on the caravan route to Syria and Cairo; the other two parts went from Melli toTimbuctoo, where it was again divided up, some of it going to Toet,[37]and from thence along the coast to Tunis, in Barbary. Some of it went to Hoden, not far from Cape Blanco, and from there to Oran and Hona; thence it went to Fez, Morocco, Azila-Azasi, and Moosa, towns outside the Straits of Gibraltar, whence it went into Europe, through the hands of Italians, and other Christians, who exchanged their merchandise for the wares of the Barbary moors; and the remainder of the gold went down to the West African Coast to the Portuguese at Arguin. This description of the gold route is by Ca da Mostro, and is the first description of West African trade route I have found.

But I must tear myself from the fascination of gold and its trade routes and return to that silent trade. The next person after Ca da Mostro to mention it is Captain Richard Jobson, who in 1620-1621 made a voyage especially to discover “the golden trade,” of what he calls Tombâk, which is our last author’s Timbuk, by way of the Gambia, then held by many to be a mouth of the Niger.

Jobson’s inquiries regarding this “golden trade” informed him that the great demand for salt in the Gambia trade arose from the desire for it among the Arabiks of Barbary; that the natives themselves only consumed a small percentage of this import, trading away the main to those Arabiks in the hinterland, who in their turn traded it for gold to Tombak, where the demand for it was great, because that city, although possessing all manner of other riches and commodities, lacked salt, so that the Arabiks did a good trade therein. Jobson was also informed that the Arabiks had, as well as the market for salt at Timbuctoo, a market for it with a strange people who would not be seen, and who lived not far from Yaze; that the salt was carried to them, and in exchange they gave gold. Asking a native merchant, who was engaged in this trade, why they would not be seen, he made a sign to his lips, but would say no more. Jobson, however, learnt from other sources that the reason these negroes buy salt from the tawny Moors is because of the thickness of their lips, which hang down upon their breasts, and, being raw, would putrefy if they did not take salt, a thing their country does not afford, so that they must traffic for it with the Moors. The manner they employ, according to Jobson, is this: the Moors on a fixed day bring their goods to a place assigned, where there are certain houses appointed for them; herein they deposit their commodities, and, laying their salt and other goods in parcels or heaps separately, depart for a whole day, during which time their customers come, and to each parcel of goods lay down a proportion of gold as they value it, and leave both together. The merchants then return, and as they like the bargain take the gold and leave their wares, or if they think the priceoffered too little, they divide the merchandise into two parts, leaving near the gold as much as they are inclined to give for it, and then again depart. At their next return the bargain is finished, for they either find more gold added or the whole taken away, and the goods left on their hands.

A further confirmation of the existence of this method of trading we find in that most interesting voyage of Claude Jannequin, Sieur de Rochfort, 1639. He says, “In this cursed country”—he always speaks of West Africa like that—“there is no provision but fish dried in the sun, and maize and tobacco.” The natives will only trade by the French laying down on the ground what they would give for the provisions, and then going away, on which the natives came and took the commodities and left the fish in exchange. The regions he visited were those of Cape Blanco.

To this day you will find a form of this silent trade still going on in Guinea. I have often seen on market roads in many districts, but always well away from Europeanised settlements, a little space cleared by the wayside, and neatly laid with plantain leaves, whereon were very tidily arranged various little articles for sale—a few kola nuts, leaves of tobacco, cakes of salt, a few heads of maize, or a pile of yams or sweet potatoes. Against each class of articles so many cowrie shells or beans are placed, and, always hanging from a branch above, or sedately sitting in the middle of the shop, a little fetish. The number of cowrie shells or beans indicate the price of the individual articles in the various heaps, and the little fetish is there to see that any one who does not place in the stead of the articles removed their proper price, or who meddles with the till,shall swell up and burst. There is no doubt it is a very easy method of carrying on commerce.

In what the silent trade may have originated it is hard to say; but one thing is certain, that the dread and fear of the negroes did not result from the evil effects of the slave trade, as so many of their terrors are said to have done, for we have seen notice of it long before this slave trade arose. Nevertheless, there can be but little doubt that it arose from a sense of personal insecurity, and has fetish in it, the natives holding it safer to leave so dangerous a thing as trafficking with unknown beings—white things that were most likely spirits, with the smell of death on them—in the hands of their gods. In the cases of it that I have seen no doubt it was done mostly for convenience, one person being thereby enabled to have several shops open at but little working expense; but I have seen it employed as a method of trading between tribes at war with each other.[38]We must dismiss, I fear, bashfulness regarding lips as being a real cause; but I will not dismiss the bleeding lips as a mere traveller’s tale, because I have seen quite enough to make me understand what those people who told of bleeding thick lips meant; several, not all of my African friends, are a bit thick about the lower lip, and when they have been passing over waterless sun-dried plateaux or bits of desert they are anything but decorative. The lips get swollen and black, and Ca da Mostro does not go too far in his description of what he was told regarding them.

FOOTNOTES:[28]Clowes and Sons, 1897.[29]Melpomene, IV. 41.[30]Melpomene, IV. 43.[31]See Ellis’sHistory of the Gold Coast, also Tozer’sHistory of Ancient Geography, Beazley’sDawn of Modern Geography, andStrabo,B.C.25, book xvii, edited by Theodore Jansonius ab Almelooven, Amsterdam, 1707.[32]There is doubt as to whether thisPeriplusis the entire one with which the classic writers were conversant.[33]“Et Hanno Carthaginis potentia florente circumvectus a Gabibus ad finem Arabiae navigationem eam prodidit scripto”; (and Hanno, when Carthage flourished, sailed round from Cadiz to the remotest parts of Arabia, and left an account of his voyage in writing) Plinius, lib. ii. cap. lxvii. p.m. 220. See also lib. v. cap. i. p.m. 523, and Pomponius Mela, lib. iii. cap. ix. p. 63, edit. Isaici Vossii.There is an English version of thePeriplus, edited by Falconer, London, 1797; and an Oxford edition of it, and some other works, by Dr. Hudson, 1698. Also there is a work on Hanno’sPeriplusbased on MS. in the Meyer Museum at Liverpool by Simonides, not the Iambic poet, who wrote a ridiculous satire against women, quoted by Ælian; nor yet Simonides who was one of the greatest of the ancient poets, and flourished in the seventy-fifth Olympia; but a modern gentleman connected with America, whose work I am sufficient scholar neither to use nor to criticise.[34]Major identifies this place with Cape Verde, pointing out that the inability of the Lixitae interpreters to understand the language accords with the fact that at the Senegal commences the country of the blacks; “the immense opening” he regards as the Gambia.[35]Melpomene, IV. 96.[36]The writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries commonly divide up the natives of Africa into—1, Moors; 2, Tawny Moors; 3, Black Moors, a term that lingers to this day in our word Blackeymoor; 4, Negroes.[37]Ato, according to the version given in Grynæus.[38]Mr. Ling Roth kindly informs me of further instances of this silent trading to be found inLander’s Journal, Lond., 1832, iii. 161-163, and Forbes’sWanderings of a Naturalist, Lond. 1886, where it is cited for the Kubus of Sumatra. He says it also occurs among the Veddahs, and that there is in no case any fetish control.

[28]Clowes and Sons, 1897.

[29]Melpomene, IV. 41.

[30]Melpomene, IV. 43.

[31]See Ellis’sHistory of the Gold Coast, also Tozer’sHistory of Ancient Geography, Beazley’sDawn of Modern Geography, andStrabo,B.C.25, book xvii, edited by Theodore Jansonius ab Almelooven, Amsterdam, 1707.

[32]There is doubt as to whether thisPeriplusis the entire one with which the classic writers were conversant.

[33]“Et Hanno Carthaginis potentia florente circumvectus a Gabibus ad finem Arabiae navigationem eam prodidit scripto”; (and Hanno, when Carthage flourished, sailed round from Cadiz to the remotest parts of Arabia, and left an account of his voyage in writing) Plinius, lib. ii. cap. lxvii. p.m. 220. See also lib. v. cap. i. p.m. 523, and Pomponius Mela, lib. iii. cap. ix. p. 63, edit. Isaici Vossii.There is an English version of thePeriplus, edited by Falconer, London, 1797; and an Oxford edition of it, and some other works, by Dr. Hudson, 1698. Also there is a work on Hanno’sPeriplusbased on MS. in the Meyer Museum at Liverpool by Simonides, not the Iambic poet, who wrote a ridiculous satire against women, quoted by Ælian; nor yet Simonides who was one of the greatest of the ancient poets, and flourished in the seventy-fifth Olympia; but a modern gentleman connected with America, whose work I am sufficient scholar neither to use nor to criticise.

There is an English version of thePeriplus, edited by Falconer, London, 1797; and an Oxford edition of it, and some other works, by Dr. Hudson, 1698. Also there is a work on Hanno’sPeriplusbased on MS. in the Meyer Museum at Liverpool by Simonides, not the Iambic poet, who wrote a ridiculous satire against women, quoted by Ælian; nor yet Simonides who was one of the greatest of the ancient poets, and flourished in the seventy-fifth Olympia; but a modern gentleman connected with America, whose work I am sufficient scholar neither to use nor to criticise.

[34]Major identifies this place with Cape Verde, pointing out that the inability of the Lixitae interpreters to understand the language accords with the fact that at the Senegal commences the country of the blacks; “the immense opening” he regards as the Gambia.

[35]Melpomene, IV. 96.

[36]The writers of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries commonly divide up the natives of Africa into—1, Moors; 2, Tawny Moors; 3, Black Moors, a term that lingers to this day in our word Blackeymoor; 4, Negroes.

[37]Ato, according to the version given in Grynæus.

[38]Mr. Ling Roth kindly informs me of further instances of this silent trading to be found inLander’s Journal, Lond., 1832, iii. 161-163, and Forbes’sWanderings of a Naturalist, Lond. 1886, where it is cited for the Kubus of Sumatra. He says it also occurs among the Veddahs, and that there is in no case any fetish control.

Concerning the controversy that is between the French and the Portuguese as to which of them first visited West Africa, with special reference to the fort at Elmina.

We will now turn our attention to the other pioneers of our present West African trade, and commence with the French, for we cannot disassociate our own endeavours in this region from those of France, Portugal, Holland, and the Brandenburgers; nor are we the earliest discoverers here. When we English heard the West African Coast was a region worth trading with, those great brick-makers for the architects of England’s majesty, the traders, went for it and traded, and have made that trading pay as no other nation has been able to do. However, from the first we got called hard names—pirates, ruffians, interlopers, and such like—in fact, every bad name the other nations could spare from the war of abuse they chronically waged against each other.

The French claim to have traded with West Africa prior to the discoveries made there by the emissaries of Prince Henry the Navigator.[39]When on my last voyage out I wasin French territory, I own the discovery of this claim of my French friends came down on me as a shock, because on my previous voyage out I had been in Portuguese possessions, and had spent many a pleasant hour listening to the recital of the deeds of Diego Caõ and Lopez do Gonsalves, and others of that noble brand of man, the fifteenth-century Portugee. I heard then nothing of French discoverers, and also had it well knocked out of my mind that the English had discovered anything of importance in West Africa save the Niger outfalls, and I had a furious war to keep this honour for my fellow countrymen. Then when I got into French territory not one word did I hear of Diego Caõ or Lopez; and so as a distraction from the consideration of the private characters of people still living, I started discoursing on what I considered a safer and more interesting subject, and began to recount how I had had the honour of being personally mixed up in the monument to Diego Caõ at the mouth of the Congo, and what fine fellows—I got no farther than that, when, to my horror, I heard my heroes called microbes, followed by torrents of navigators’ names, all French, and all unknown to me. Being out for information I never grumble when I get it, let it be what it may. So I asked my French friends to write down clearly on paper the names of those navigators, and promised as soon as I left the forests of the Equator, and reached the book forests of Europe, I would try and find out more about them. I have; and I own that I owe profound apologies to those truly great Frenchmen for not having made their acquaintance sooner; nevertheless I still fail to see why my honoured Portuguese, Diego and Lopez, should have been called microbes, and I have no regrets about my fights for the honour of the Niger for my own countrymen, nor for my constant attemptsto take the conceit out of my French and Portuguese friends, as a set-off for “the conceit about England” they were always trying to take out of me, by holding forth on what those Carthaginians had done on the West Coast before France or Portugal were so much as dreamt of.

The Portuguese discoveries you can easily read of in Major’s great book on Prince Henry; and as this book is fully accepted as correct by the highest Portuguese authorities, it is safer to do so than to attempt to hunt your Portuguese hero for yourself, because of the quantity of names each of them possesses, and the airy indifference as to what part of that name their national chroniclers use in speaking of them. I have tried it, and have several times been in danger of going to my grave with the idea that I was investigating the exploits of two separate gentlemen, whereas I was only dealing with two parts of one gentleman’s name; nevertheless, it is a thing worth learning Portuguese for. And, in addition to Major’s book, we have now, thanks to the Hakluyt Society, that superb thing, the Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, by Gomez Eanes de Zurara—a work completed in 1453. This work is one on which we are largely dependent for the details of the early Portuguese discoveries, because Gomez Eanes spent the later part of his life in tidying up the Torre do Tombo—namely, the national archives, of which he was keeper—and his idea of tidying up included the lady-like method of destroying old papers. It makes one cold now to think of the things De Zurara may havedestroyed; but he evidently regarded himself, as does the nineteenth century spring-cleaner, as a human benefactor; and, strange to say, his contemporaries quite took his view; indeed, this job was done at the request of the Cortes, and with the Royal sanction. There is also an outstanding accusation of forgery against Zurara, but that is a minor offence, and is one we need only take into consideration when contemplating the question as to whether a man capable of destroying early manuscripts and forgery might not be also capable of leaving out of his Chronicle, in honour of the Navigator, any mention of there being Frenchmen on the Coast, when he sent out his emissaries to discover what might lay hidden from the eye of man down in the Southern Seas. I do not, however, think De Zurara left out this thing intentionally, but that he had no knowledge of it if it did exist, for no man could have written as he wrote, unless he had a heart too great for such a meanness. Certain it is Prince Henry never knew, for these are the five reasons given by Zurara, in the grave, noble splendour of his manner, why the Prince undertook the discoveries with which his name will be for ever associated. I give the passage almost in full because of its beauty. “And you should note well that the noble spirit of this Prince (Henry the Navigator) by a sort of natural constraint was ever urging him both to begin and carry out very great deeds; for which reason after the taking of Ceuta, he always kept ships well armed against the Infidel, both for war and because he also had a wish to know the land that lay beyond the Isles of Canary and that Cape called Bojador, for that up to his time neither by writings nor by the memory of man was known with any certainty the nature of the land beyond that Cape. Some said indeed Saint Brandan had passed that way,and there was another tale of two galleys rounding the Cape which never returned ... and because the said Lord Infant wished to know the truth of this—since it seemed to him if he, or some other Lord, did not endeavour to gain that knowledge, no mariners or merchants would ever dare to attempt it, (for the reason that none of them ever trouble themselves to sail to a place where there is not a sure and certain hope of profit,) and seeing also that no other prince took any pains in this matter, he sent out his own ships against those parts, to have manifest certainty of them all, and to this he was stirred up by his zeal for the service of God, and of King Dom Duarto, his Lord and brother, who then reigned; and this was the first reason of his action.”

“The second reason was that if there chanced to be in those lands a population of Christians or some havens into which it would be possible to sail without peril, many kinds of merchandise might be brought to this nation which would find a ready market, and reasonably so because no other people of these parts traded with them, nor yet people of any other that were known; and also the products of this nation might be taken there, which traffic would bring great profit to our countrymen.”

“The third reason was that as it was said that the power of the Moors in that land of Africa was very much greater than was commonly supposed, and that there were no Christians among them nor any other race of men, and because every wise man is obliged by natural prudence to wish for a knowledge of the power of his enemy; therefore the said Lord Infant exerted himself to cause them to be fully discovered to make it known determinedly how far the power of those Infidels extended.”

“The fourth reason was because during the one and thirty years he had warred against the Moors he had never found a Christian King nor a Lord outside this land, who for the love of Jesus Christ would aid him in the said war; therefore he sought to know if there were in those parts any Christian Princes in whom the charity and the love of Christ was so ingrained that they would aid him against those enemies of the Faith.”

“The fifth reason was the great desire to make increase of the Faith of our Lord Jesus Christ, and to bring to Him all the souls that should be saved.”

According to the Portuguese, Gil Eannes was the first emissary of Prince Henry who succeeded in passing CapeBojador. This feat he accomplished in 1434; but on this his first voyage out he contented himself with passing the Cape: a thing which previous expeditions of Prince Henry had failed to do, and which, so far apparently as Prince Henry knew, had not been done before, for it was regarded as a tremendous achievement.

The next year Prince Henry’s cupbearer, Affonso Gonsalves Baladaya, set out accompanied by Gil Eannes in a caravel; and the coast to the South of Bojador was visited; their furthest expedition was to a shallow bay called by them Angra des Ruives.[40]They then returned to Portugal, and thenext year again went down the coast as far as a galley-shaped rock. This place they called Pedro de Galli, from its appearance; its present name is Pedra de Galla. Their chief achievement was the discovery of the Rio do Oura. It is not an important river in itself, but only one of those deceptive estuaries common on the West coast. But it was the first West African place the Portuguese got gold dust at, hence its name. The amount of gold was apparently not considerable, and the chief cargo that expedition took home was sea wolves’ skins; they reported quantities of seals or sea wolves as they called them here, and this report was the cause of the next Portuguese expedition; for the Portuguese in those days seem to have always been anxious for sea wolves’ oil and skins; and whether this be a survival or no, it seems to me curious that the ladies of Lisbon are to this day very keen on sealskin jackets, which their climate can hardly call for imperatively. But, however this may be, it is certain that we have no account of the Portuguese having passed south of the next important cape South of Bojador, namely, Blanco, before 1443. The terrible tragedy of Tangiers and political troubles hindered their explorations from 1436 to 1441,[41]and the French claim to have been down the West Coast trading not only before this date, but before Prince Henry sent a single expedition out at all, namely, as early as 1346.

The French story is that there was a deed of association of the merchants of Dieppe and Rouen of the date 1364. This deed was to arrange for the carrying on to greater proportions of their already existing trade with West Africa. The original of this deed was burnt, according toLabat, at Dieppe, in the conflagration of 1694.[42]How long before this Association was formed that trade had been carried on, it is a little difficult to make out, I find, from the usual hindrance to the historical study of West Africa, namely, lack of documentary evidence and a profusion of recriminatory lying. This association was under the patronage of the Dukes of Normandy, then Kings of England; and its ultimate decay is partly attributed to the political difficulties these patrons became involved in. The French authorities say the Association was an exceedingly flourishing affair; and it is stated that under its auspices factories were established at Sierra Leone, and that a fort was built at La Mina del Ore, or Del Mina, the place now known as Elmina, as early as 1382. Now it is round the subject of this fort that most controversy wages, for this French statement does not at all agree with the Portuguese account of the fort. The latter claim to have discovered the coast—called by them La Mina, by us the Gold—in 1470, with an expedition commanded by João de Santarim and Pedro de Escobara. The Portuguese, finding this part of the coast rich in gold, and knowing the grabbing habits of other nations where this was concerned, determined to secure this trade for themselves in a sound practical way, although they were already guarded by a Papal Bull. The expedition that discovered La Mina was the last one made during the reign of Affonso V.; but his son, who succeeded him as João II., rapidly set about acting on the information it brought home. This king indeed took an intelligent interest in the Guinea trade, and was well versed in it; for a part of his revenues before he came to thethrone had been derived from it and its fisheries. João II. energetically pushed on the enterprise founded by his father Affonso V., who had in 1469 rented the trade of the Guinea Coast to Fernam Gomez for five years at 500 equizodas a year,[43]on the condition that 100 leagues of new coast should be discovered annually, starting from Sierra Leone, the then furthest known part, and reserving the ivory trade to the Crown. The expedition sent out by King João, commanded by the celebrated Diego de Azambuja, took with it, in ten caravels and two smaller craft, ready fashioned stones and bricks, and materials for building, with the intention of building a fort as near as might be to a place called Sama, where the previous expedition had reported gold dust to be had from the natives. This fort was to be a means of keeping up a constant trade with the natives, instead of depending only on the visits of ships to the coast. Azambuja selected the place we know now as Elmina as a suitable site for this fort. Having obtained a concession of the land from the King Casamanca, on representing to him what an advantage it would be to him to have such a strong place wherein he and his people could seek security against their enemies, and which would act as a constant market place for his trade, and a storehouse for the Portuguese goods, Azambuja lost no time in building the fort with his ready-fashioned materials, and not only the fort, but a church as well. Both were dedicated to San Gorge da Mina, and a daily mass was instituted to be said therein for the repose of the soul of the great Prince Henry the Navigator, whose body had been laid to rest in November, 1460. Indeed, one cannot but be struck with the wealth of Portuguese information that we possess, regarding thebuilding of the castle at Elmina and by the good taste shown by the Portuguese throughout; for, besides establishing this mass—a mass that should be said in all Catholic churches on the West African Coast to this day in memory of the great man whose enterprise first opened up that great, though terrible region, to the civilised world—King João granted many franchises and privileges to people who would go and live at San Gorge da Mina, and aid in expanding the trade and civilisation of the surrounding region, which is as it should be; for people who go and live in West Africa for the benefit of their country deserve all these things, and money down as well. Having done these, the king evidently thought he deserved some honour himself, which he certainly did, so he called himself Lord of Guinea, and commanded that all subsequent discoverers should take possession of the places they discovered in a more substantial way than heretofore; for it had been their custom merely to erect wooden crosses or to carve on trees the motto of Prince Henry,Talent de bien faire. The monuments King João commanded should be erected in place of these transient emblems he designed himself; they were to be square pillars of stone six feet high, with his arms upon them, and two inscriptions on opposite sides, in Latin and Portuguese respectively, containing the exact date when the discovery of the place was made; by his order the cross that was to be on each was to be of iron and cramped into the pedestal. Major says the cross was to surmount the structure; but my Portuguese friends tell me it was to be in the pedestal, and also that the remains of these old monuments are still to be seen in their possessions; so we must presume that the outfit for an exploring expedition in King João’s days included aconsiderable cargo of ready-dressed stones and materials for monuments, and that from the quantity of discoveries these expeditions made, the sixteenth century Portuguese homeward bound must have been flying as light as the Cardiff bound collier of to-day.

Still it is remarkable that with all the wealth of detail that we have of these Portuguese discoveries in the fifteenth century there is no mention of the French being on the coast before Pedro do Cintra reaches Sierra Leone and calls it by this name because of the thunder on the mountains roaring like a lion, and so on; but he says nothing of French factories ashore. Azambuja gives quantities of detail regarding the building of San Gorge da Mina, but never says a word about there being already at this place a French fort; yet Sieur Villault, Escuyer, Sieur de Bellfond,[44]speaks of it with detail and certainty. Also M. Robbe says that one of the ships sent out by the association of merchants in 1382 was called theVirgin, that she got as far as Kommenda, and thence to the place where Mina stands, and that next year they built at this place a strong house, in which they kept ten or twelve of their men to secure it; and they were so fortunate in this settlement that in 1387 the colony was considerably enlarged, and did a good trade until 1413, when, owing to the wars in France, the store of these adventurers being exhausted, they were obliged to quit not only Mina, but their other settlements, as Sestro Paris, Cape Mount, Sierra Leone, and Cape Verde.

Villault, who went to West Africa to stir up the French to renew the Guinea trade, openly laments the folly of theFrench in ever having abandoned it owing to certain prejudices they had taken against the climate. His account of it is that about the year 1346 some adventurers of Dieppe, a port in Normandy, who as descendants of the Normans, were well used to long voyages, sailed along the coast of the negroes, Guinea, and settled several colonies in those parts, particularly about Cape Verde, in the Bay of Rio Fesco, and along the Melequeta coast. To the Bay, which extends from Cape Ledo to Cape Mount they gave the name of the Bay of France; that of Petit Dieppe to the village of Rio Corso (between Rio France and Rio Sestro); that of Sestro Paris to Grand Sestro, not far from Cape Palmas; while they carried to France great quantities of Guinea pepper and elephants’ tusks, whence the inhabitants of Dieppe set up the trade of turning ivory and making several useful works, as combs, for which they grew famous, and still continue so. Villault also speaks of “a fair church still in being” at Elmina, adorned with the arms of France, and also says that the chief battery to the sea is called by the natives La Battarie de France; and he speaks of the affection the natives have for France, and says they beat their drums in the French manner. Barbot also speaks of the affection of the natives for the French, and says that on his last voyage in 1682 the king sent him his second son as hostage, if he would come up to Great Kommondo, and treat about settling in his country, although he had refused the English and the Dutch. Barbot, however, does not agree with Villault about the prior rights of France to the discovery of Guinea; he thinks that if these facts be true it is strange that there is no mention of so important an enterprise in French historians, and concludes that it would be unjust to the Portuguese toattribute the first discovery of this part of the world to the French. He also thinks it evidence against it that the Portuguese historians are silent on the point, and that Azambuja, when he began to build his castle at Elmina in 1484, never mentions there being a castle there that had been built by Frenchmen in 1385. This, however, I think is not real evidence against the prior right of France. Take, for instance, the examples you get constantly when reading the books of Portuguese and Dutch writers on Guinea. You cannot fail to be struck how they ignore each other’s existence as much as possible when credit is to be given; indeed were it not for the necessity they feel themselves under of abusing each other, I am sure they would do so altogether, but this they cannot resist. Here is a sample of what the Portuguese say of the Dutch: “That the rebels (meaning the Dutch) gained more from the blacks by drunkenness, giving them wine and strong liquors, than by force of arms, and instructing them as ministers of the Devil in their wickedness. But that their dissolute lives and manners, joined to the advantage which the Portuguese at Mina, though inferior in numbers, had gained over them in some rencontres, had rendered them as contemptible among the blacks for their cowardice as want of virtue. That however the blacks, being a barbarous people, susceptible of first impressions, readily enough swallowed Calvin’s poison (Protestantism), as well as took off the merchandise which the Dutch, taking advantage of the Portuguese indolence sold along the coast, where they were become absolute pirates.” Then, again, the same author says, “The quantity of merchandises brought by the Dutch and their cheapness, has made the barbarians greedy of them, although persons of quality and honour assured them that they wouldwillingly pay double for Portuguese goods, as suspecting the Dutch to be of less value, buying them only for want of better.”[45]I could give you also some beautiful examples of what the Dutch say of the Portuguese and the English, and of what the French say of both, but I have not space; moreover, it is all very like what you can read to-day in things about rival nations and traders out in West Africa. I myself was commonly called by the Portuguese there a pirate because I was English, and that was the proper thing to call the English,—there was no personal incivility meant; and I quote the above passage just to impress on you that when you are reading about West African affairs, either ancient or modern, you must make allowance for this habit of speaking of rival nations—it is the climate. And although the Portuguese and the Dutch may choose to ignore the French early discoveries, yet they both showed a keen dread of the French from their being so popular with the natives, and did their utmost to oust them from the West Coast, which they succeeded in doing for a long period. And then again to this day, when a trader in West Africa finds a place where trade is good, he does not cable home to the newspapers about it. If it is necessary that any lying should be done about that place he does it himself; but what he strives most to do is to keep its existence totally unknown to other people; sooner or later some other trader comes along and discovers it, and then that place becomes unhealthy for one or the other of its discoverers,—and that is the climate again. Thus by the light of my own dispassionate observations in West Africa, I am quite ready to believe in that early French discovery; and Iquite agree with Villault about the quantity of words derived from the French that you will find to this day among the native tongues, and even in the trade English of the Coast, and in districts that have not been under French sway in the historical memory of man. One of these words is the word “ju ju,” always regarded by the natives as a foreign word. Their own word for religion, or more properly speaking for sacred beings, is “bosum,” or “woka.” They only say “ju ju” so that you white man may understand. The percentage, however, of Portuguese words in trade English is higher than that of French.

After the fifteenth century it is not needful now to discuss in detail the subject of the French presence in West Africa; for both Dutch and Portuguese freely own to the presence there of the Frenchmen, and openly state that they were a source of worry and expense to them, owing to the way the natives preferred the French to either of themselves.

The whole subject of the French conquests in Africa is an exceedingly interesting one, and one I would gladly linger over, for there is in it that fascination that always lies in a subject which contains an element of mystery. The element of mystery in this affair is, why France should have persisted so in the matter—why she should have spent blood and money on it to the extent she has, does, and I am sure will continue to do, without its ever having paid her in the past, or paying her now, or being likely to pay her in the future, as far as one can see. There are moments when it seems to me clear enough why she has done it all; but these moments only come when I am in an atmosphere reeking of La Gloire or La France—a thing I own I much enjoy; but when I am back in the cold intellectual greyness of commercial England, France’s conductin Africa certainly seems a little strange and curious, and far more inexplicable than it was when one was oneself personally risking one’s life and ruining one’s clothes, after a beetle in the African bush. I really think it is this sporting instinct in me that enables me to understand France in Africa at all; and which gives me a thrill of pleasure when I read in the newspapers of her iniquitous conduct in turning up, flag and baggage, in places where she had no legal right to be, or, worse still, being found in possession of bits of other nations’ hinterland when a representative of the other arrives there with the intention of discovering it, and to his disgust and alarm finds the most prominent object in the landscape is the blue to the mast, blood to the last, flag of France, with a fire-and-flames Frenchman under it, possessed of a pretty gift of writing communications to the real owner of that hinterland—a respectable representative of England or Germany—communications threatening him with immediate extinction, and calling him a filibuster and an assassin, and things like that. For the life of me I cannot help a “Go it, Sall, and I’ll hold your bonnit” feeling towards the Frenchman. It is not my fault entirely. Gladly would I hold my own countryman’s bonnet, only he won’t go it if I do; so I have to content myself with the knowledge that England has made the West Coast pay, and that she certainly did beat the Dutch and Portuguese off the Coast in a commercial war. Still she will never beat France off in that way, because the French interest in Africa is not a commercial one. France can and will injure our commerce in West Africa, in all probability she will ultimately extinguish it, if things go on as they are going, while we cannot hit back and injure her commercial prosperity there because she has none to injure.There is also another point of great interest, and that is the different effect produced by the governmental interference of the two nations in expansion of territory. That the expansion of trade, and spheres of influence are concurrent in this region is now recognised by our own Government;[46]although the Government somewhat flippantly remarks “possibly too late.” It is, in my opinion, certainly too late as regards both Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast; but yet we see small evidence of our Government taking themselves seriously in the matter, or of their feeling a regret for having failed to avail themselves of the work done for England on the West Coast by some of the noblest men of our blood. I have often heard it said it was a sad thing for an Englishman to contemplate our West African possessions, save one, the Royal Niger; but I am sure it is a far sadder thing for an Englishwoman who is full of the pride of her race, and who well knows that that pride can only be justified by its men, to see on the one hand the splendid achievements of Mungo Park, the two Landers, the men who held the Gold Coast for England when the Government abandoned it after the battle of Katamansu, of Winwood Reade who, in the employ of Messrs. Swanzy, won the right to the Niger behind Sierra Leone, and many others; and on the other hand to see the map of West Africa to-day, which shows only too clearly that the English Government’s last chance of saving the honour of England lies in their supporting the Royal Niger Company.

It seems that as soon as a West Coast region falls under direct governmental control with us a process of petrification sets in, and a policy of international amiability andReubenism, for which we have Scriptural authority to expect nothing but failure. It was of course necessary for our Government to take charge in West Africa when the partitioning of that continent took place; but I fail to admire those men who at the Council Board of Europe lost for England what had been won for her by better, braver men. Still it is no use, in these weird un-Shakespearian times, for any one to use strong language, so I’ll turn to the consideration of the advance made in West Africa by France; for any one can understand how a woman must admire the deeds of brave men and the backing up of those deeds by a brave Government.

The earlier history of the French occupation of Africa is that of a series of commercial companies, who all came to a bad end. Of the Association of the Merchants of Dieppe and Rouen in the fourteenth century I have already spoken; and whatever may be the difficulty of proving its existence in 1364, there is, I believe, no one who doubts that it had an existence that terminated in 1664. The French authorities ascribe its fall to the wars in France that succeeded the death of Charles VI, 1392, and to the death of some of the principal merchants belonging to it; but “the greatest cause of all was that many who had gotten vast riches began to be ashamed of the name of traders, although to that they owed their fortunes, and allying with the nobility set up as quality,” and neglected business in the usual way, when this happens. The most flourishing settlements went into decay, and were abandoned all save one, on the Isle of Sanaga, or what Labat calls the Niger, the river we now call the Senegal.[47]

This French settlement is to this day one of the main French ports in Africa, and it has remained in their possession, with the brief interval of falling into the hands of the English for a few months.

The company that took over the enterprise of this Rouen and Dieppe Association in 1664 was called the Compagnie des Indes Occidentals; it paid for the stock and rights of the previous association the sum of 150,000 livres, and it had tremendous ambitions, for not only did it buy up the West African enterprise, but also the rights of the lords proprietors in the isles of Martinique, Guadaloupe, St. Christopher, Santa Cruz, and Maria Galanta in the West Indies. This company came to a sad end when it had still thirty years of its charter to run; in 1673 it sold its remaining term of West African rights to a new company called d’Afrique for 7500 livres. Its West Indian possessions the king seized in 1674, and united them with the Crown.

Its successor, the Compagnie d’Afrique, started with its thirty years’ charter, and all the great ambitions of its predecessor. The king gave it every assistance in the way of ships and troops to carry out its designs; and it availed itself of these, for finding its trade incommoded by the Dutch, who were then settled at Anguin and Goree in 1677, it got the king to remove the Dutch nuisance from Goree by an expedition under Count d’Estras, and in 1678, by an expedition of its own, under M. de Casse, it cleared the Dutch out of Anguin.

This company also made many treaties with the native chiefs. In 1679, by means of treaty with the chiefs of Rio Fresco, nowadays barbarously spelt Rufisque, and Portadali, now Portindal, and Joal, whose name is still uninjured, it acquired rights over all the territory betweenCape Verde and the Gambia;[48]an exclusion from there of all other traders, and an exemption from all customs; and in addition to these enterprises it entered into a contract with the King of France to provide him with 2,000 negroes per annum for his West Indian Islands, and as many more as he might require for use in the galleys. Shortly after this the Compagnie d’Afrique expired in bankruptcy, compounding with its creditors at the rate of 5s.in the £, which I presume was paid mainly out of the 1,010,000 livres for which it sold its claim to its successors. The successors were a little difficult to find at first, for there seems to have been what one might call distaste for West African commercial enterprise among the French public just then. However, a company was got together to buy up its rights, accept its responsibilities and carry on business in 1681.

In the matter of the company that succeeded the d’Afrique, confusion is added to catastrophe, owing to the then Minister of State, M. Seignelay, for some private end, having divided up the funds and created two separate companies,—one to have the trade from Cape Blanco and the Gambia—the Compagnie du Senegal; the other to hold the rest of the Guinea trade to the Cape of Good Hope, the Compagnie du Guinea. This arrangement, of course, left the Senegal Company with all the responsibility of the compagnie d’Afrique, and without sufficient funds to deal with them; and the Compagnie du Senegal complained, when, in 1694, it found its affairs in much confusion, throwing the blame on the Government; but, says Astley, “the great are seldom without excuses for what they do,” and thedivision of the concession was persisted in, on the grounds that when the company that succeeded d’Afrique was intact it failed to fulfil the Government contract of sending 2,000 negroes annually to the West Indies; and also that it had not imported as much gold from Africa as it might have done. Against this the Directors remonstrated loudly, saying that, during the two years and a half during which they had been responsible for exporting negroes to the West Indies, they had supplied 4,560 negroes, that the register of the Mint proved they had sent home in three years 400 marks of gold, and that it had cost them 400,000 livres to re-establish the trade of the Compagnie d’Afrique, for which they had already paid more than it was worth. All they got by these complaints was an extension of their trade rights from Gambia to Sierra Leone and a confirmation of their monopoly in exporting negroes to the French West Indies, and of their rights to Anguin and Goree, that is to say, a promise of Government assistance if those Dutch should come and attempt to reinstate themselves to the incommodation of French commerce.

All this however did not avail to make the Compagnie du Senegal flourish, so in 1694 it sold its remaining seventeen years of rights for 300,000 livres, to Sieur d’Apougny, one of the old Directors; and this enterprising man secured the assistance of eighteen new shareholders, and obtained from the Crown a new charter, and started afresh under the name of the “Compagnie du Senegal, Cap Nord et Coté d’Afrique.” It did not prosper; nevertheless it may be regarded as having produced the founder of modern Senegal, for it sent out to attend to its affairs, when things were in a grievous mess, one of the greatestmen who have ever gone from Europe to Africa—namely, Sieur Brüe.

The name of this company of Sieur d’Apougny was d’Afrique; and the usual thing happened to it in 1709, when, for 250,000 livres, it made over its rights to a set of Rouen merchants, reserving, however, to itself the right of carrying on certain branches of the trade for which it held Government contracts; failing to carry these out they were taken from it and handed over to the company of Rouen merchants, who succumbed to their liabilities in 1717. Their rights were then bought up, for 1,600,000 livres, by the already established Mississippi Company of Paris—a company which survived until 1758.

In 1758 the English again captured St. Louis, the French main post in Senegal. In 1779 the French recaptured it, and it was ceded to them by England officially in the treaty of 1783. This was merely the usual kind of international amenity prevalent on the West Coast in those days. Dutch, French, English, Danes, Portuguese, and Courlanders would gallantly seize each other’s property out there, while their respective Governments at home, if the matter were brought before their notice, and it was apparently worth their while, disowned all knowledge of their representatives’ villainies and returned the booty to the prior owner on paper. The aggrieved Power then engaged in the difficult undertaking of regaining possession; the said original villain knowing little and caring less about the arrangements made on the point by his home Government. But just at this period England dealt French trade a frightful blow. The whole of her iniquity took the form of one John Law, a native of Edinburgh,[49]who raised himself to the dignity of comptroller-generalof the finance of France by a specious scheme for a bank, an East India Company and a Mississippi Company, by the profits of which the French national debt was to be paid off, a thing then in urgent need of doing, and every one connected with the affair was to make their fortunes, an undertaking always in need of doing in any country. The French Government gave him every encouragement, and in 1716 he opened the bank; in 1719 the shares of that bank were worth more than eighty times the current specie in France; in 1720 that bank burst, spreading commercial ruin. To this may be ascribed the period of paralysis in the Senegal trade from 1719. The Compagnie de Senegal had handed over their interest to the Mississippi Company involved in John Law’s bank scheme. After this, up to 1817, France like F. M. the Duke of Wellington anent playing upon the harp, “had other things to do” than attend to West Africa. During the Napoleonic Wars England took all the French possessions in West Africa, but by the treaty of Paris of 1814 she handed back those in Senegal, save the Gambia. The Frenchvessel sent out to take over the territory was the ill-starred and ill-navigatedMéduse. Owing to her wreck it was not until 1817 that France replaced officially her standard on this Coast. On the 25th of January of that year, and represented by Colonel Smaltz, she again entered into possession of Goree and St. Louis in the mouth of the Senegal, which was practically all she had, and that was in a very unsatisfactory state. Colonel Smaltz, in 1819, had to come to an agreement with the Oulof chief of the St Louis district to pay him a subsidy, but a mere catalogue of the wars between the French and the Oulofs is not necessary here; they were mutually unsatisfactory until there enters on the scene that second great founder of the French power in Africa, General Faidherbe, in 1854. Faidherbe is indeed the founder; but had it not been for Sieur Brüe and his travels far into the interior, and the evidence he collected regarding the riches therein, and of the general value of the country, it is not likely that, as things were in 1854, France would have troubled herself so much about extending her power in Senegal.

Faidherbe was also one of those men who get possessed by a belief in the future of West Africa, regardless of any state of dilapidation they may find it in, and who have the power of infusing their enthusiasm into the minds of others; and he roused France to the importance of Senegal, saying prophetically, “Our possession on the West Coast of Africa is possibly the one of all our colonies that has before it the greatest future, and it deserves the whole sympathy and attention of the Empire.”

These were words more likely to inspire France or any other reasonable Power with a desire to give Senegal attention, than those used by the previous French visitorthere, M. Sanguin, in 1785, who, speaking of the island of St. Louis, says it consists entirely of burning sands on whose barren surface you sometimes meet with scattered flints thrown out among their ballast by ships, and the ruins of buildings formerly erected by Europeans; but he remarks it is not surprising the sands are barren, for the air is so strongly impregnated with salt, which pervades everything and consumes even iron in a very short space of time. The heat he reports unpleasant, and rendered thus more so by the reflection from the sand. If the island were not all it might be, one might still hope for better things ashore on the mainland, but not according to M. Sanguin. The mainland is covered with sand and overrun with mangles, not the sort, you understand, that vulgar little English boys used to state their mothers had sold and invested the money in a barrel organ, but what we now call mangroves; then, mentioning that the St. Louis water supply was the cause of most of those maladies which carry off the Europeans so rapidly, that at the end of every three years the colony has a fresh set of inhabitants, M. Sanguin discourses on the charms of West African night entertainments in a most feeling and convincing way, stating that there was an infinity of gnats called mosquitoes, which exist in incredible quantities. He does not mind them himself, oh dear no! being a sort of savage, he says, totally indifferent to the impression he may create in the fair sex, so that, if you please, he smears himself over with butter, which preserves him from the mosquitoes’ impertinent stings. How he came by a sufficiency of butter for this purpose I won’t pretend to know; but he knew mosquitoes, for impertinent is a perfect word for them. M. Sanguin, however, was not the sort of man,with all his ability and enterprise, to advertise Senegal successfully to France. Whatever Frenchman would care to go to a land where he needs must be sufficiently indifferent to the fair sex to smear himself with butter! Dire and awful dangers and miscellaneous horrors, even to being carried off by maladies among mangles in an atmosphere stiff with mosquitoes, but not that!

Now Faidherbe was different. Remember to the honour of the man he started with the above-described environment, but he took the grand tone and did not dwell on local imperfections; the burning sands of Senegal he mentioned, as all who know them are, by a natural constraint, forced, as Azurara would say, to do, but he said our intentions are pure and noble, our cause is just, the future cannot fail us;[50]and with such words, to his credit and to the credit of La France, he spoke to her heart; and he spoke truly, for with all its failures, with all the fearful loss of the lives of Frenchmen, Senegal is a grand thing, and it is a great thing for France, for from it has risen her masterdom over the Western Soudan—a work also inaugurated by Faidherbe, through his support of Lieutenant Maze, who reached the Niger. Practical in his work, Faidherbe was also—by rebuilding the fort at Medina—the annexation of the Oulof country (1856); the institution of a battalion of native Tirailleurs (1857); the telegraph line between St. Louis and Goree (1862); the construction of the harbour at Darkar and the erection of a first-class lighthouse at Cape Verd (1864); and the annexation of the kingdom of Cayore (1865). A grand record! and one that would be grander for France were it not for themismanagement that followed Faidherbe’s rule in commercial and financial matters.

The want of financial success in her enterprise in West Africa is a matter that has constantly irritated France. She is continually saying: “English possessions on that Coast pay, why should not mine?” It is not my business to obtrude on her an answer, I merely dwell on the subject because I clearly see there are creeping nowadays into our own methods of managing Africa, those very same causes of financial failure that have afflicted her, namely, too high tariffs, too exaggerated views of the immediate profits to be got from those regions, and certain unfair methods of dealing with natives.

In attempting, however, to account for the trade from the French possessions in West Africa being proportionately so small to the immense area of country, the make of the country and its native inhabitants must be taken into consideration. Enormous districts of the French possessions are, to put it mildly, not fertile, and capable of producing in the way of a marketable commodity only gum, which is gathered from the stems of the acacia horrida. It is an excellent gum, and there is plenty of this acacia, and other gum-yielding acacias, but pickers are not so plentiful, particularly now French authorities object to native enterprise taking the form of raiding districts for slaves to employ in the industry. Other enormous districts, however, are as fertile as need be, and densely forested with forests rich in magnificent timber and rubber wealth. The inhabitants, a most important factor in the prosperity or otherwise, of West African regions, are varied, but roughly speaking, we may say France possesses the wholeof the tawny Moors, and tawny Moors have their good points and their bad. Their good point, from our present point of view, is their commercial enterprise. From the earliest historical account we have of them to the present day, it has been their habit to suck the trade out of the rich and fertile districts, carry it across the desert, and trade it with the white Moors, who, in their turn, carried it to the Mediterranean and Red Sea ports. The opening of the West Coast seaboard trade, inaugurated by the Portuguese, has acted as a commercial loss to the tawny Moors during the past 400 years, and must be held, in a measure, accountable for the decay of the great towns of Timbuctoo, Jenne, Mele, and so on, though only in a measure, for herein comes the bad point of the inhabitants of the Western Soudan, from our point of view, namely, their devotion to religious differences and politics, which prevents their attending to business. As this state of internecine war came on about the same period as the opening to the black Moors and negroes of a market direct with European traders in the Bight of Benin, it hurried the tawny Moors to commercial decay. Timbuctoo never recovered the blow dealt her by the Moorish conquest in 1591. At the breaking up of the Empire of Askia the Great, revolt and war raged through the region, Jenne revolted in the west, an example followed by the Touaregs Fulah and Malinkase tribes. Both north and south were thrown into confusion, and Timbuctoo, their intermediary, finding her commerce injured, rebelled in her turn. She was conquered and brutally repressed by the Moorish conquerors in 1594. A terrible dearth provoked by a lack of rain visited the town, and her inhabitants were reduced to eating the corpsesof animals, and even of men. This was followed by the pestilence of 1618,[51]but through this arose any quantity of wars and upheavals of political authority among the tawny Moors in the early days of European intercourse with the West African Coast. They assumed a more acute, religious form in our own century, or to be more accurate just at the end of the eighteenth, when Shazkh Utham Danfodio arose among the Fulahs as a religious reformer, and a warrior missionary. He was a great man at both, but as a disturber of traffic still greater, a thing that cannot be urged to so great an extent against the other great Muslam missionary Umaru l’Haji. Still his gathering together an army of 20,000 men in 1854-55, and going about with them on a series of proselytizing expeditions against any tribe in the Upper Niger and Senegal region he found to be in an unconverted state, was little better than a nuisance to the French authorities at that time. Danfodio’s affairs have fallen into the hands of England to arrange, and very efficiently her great representative in West Africa, the Royal Niger Company, has arranged them. But for our Danfodio and his consequences, France has had twenty, and she has dealt with them both gallantly and patiently. But there will always be, as far as one can see, trouble for France with her tawny Moors, now that the sources of their support are cut off from them by many of the districts they once drew their trade from—the sea-board districts of the Benin Bight, like Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast and Lagos, in the English Niger—being in the hands of a nation whose commercial instincts enable it to see the benefits of lower tariffs than France affects. Even were our tariffs tobe raised to-morrow, the trade would again begin to drain back into the hands of its old owners, the tawny Moors, for the Western Soudan is being pacified by France. If some way is not devised of providing the tawny Moors with trade sufficient to keep them, things must go badly there, owing to the unfertility of the greater part of their country and the increase of the population arising from the pacification of the Western Soudan, which France is effecting. I will dwell no longer on this sketch of the history of the advance of France in Western Africa. We in England cannot judge it fairly. Nationally, her honour there is our disgrace; commercially, her presence is our ruin.

Two things only stand out from these generalisations. The Royal Niger Company shows how great England can be when she is incarnate in a great man, for the Royal Niger Company is so far Sir George Taubman-Goldie. The other thing that stands out unstained by comatose indifference to the worth of West Africa to England is her Commerce as represented by her West Coast traders, who have held on to the Coast since the sixteenth century with a bulldog grip, facing death and danger, fair weather and foul. Fine things both these two things are, but they do not understand each other; they would certainly not understand me regarding their affairs were I to talk from June to January, so I won’t attempt to, but speak to the general public, who so far have understood neither Sir George Goldie, nor the West Coast trader, nor for the matter of that their mutual foe France, and I beg to say that France has not been so destructive an enemy to England there as England’s own folly has been as incarnate in the parliamentary resolution of 1865; that the achievements of France in exploration in the Western Soudan make one of the grandest pages of all European efforts in Africa; that the influence of France over the natives has been, is, and, I believe, will remain good. “Our intentions are pure and noble, our cause is just, the future cannot fail us,” said Faidherbe. So far as the natives are concerned, this has been the policy of France in Western Africa. So far as diplomatic relations with ourselves, humanly speaking, it has not; but diplomacy is diplomacy, and the amount of probity—justice—in diplomacy is a thing that would not at any period cover a threepenny-bit. It is a form of war that shows no blood, but which has not in it those things which sanctify red war, honour and chivalry. Nevertheless, diplomacy is an essential thing in this world; it does good work, it saves life, it increases prosperity, it advances the cause of religion and knowledge, and therefore the World must not be hard on it for its being—what it is. Personally, I prefer contemplating other things, and so I turn to Commerce.

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