ABSTRACT
The ways of Africa are not those of the Western world, and neither time nor distance is an object with the Arab merchant in a land where the slavetrade provides sufficient labour. By examples brought down from the hinterland, and occasionally found when the stockade of some rebellious headman of the coastwise heathen is stormed, it would seem that articles of Indian and Persian art are not unknown. Beautifully engraved gunbarrels and richly chased hilts of the straightbladed Arab swords have been found; and though many of the inland Moslem evidently understand the smelting and working of iron, these would seem to bear the stamp of Damascus and the farther East. How they came there across endless leagues of desert, or passed from hand to hand through many different nations, no white man knows; but if the methods of the Arab are primitive, his commerce extends from the Nile to Senegal, and from Fezzan to the Zambesi, France at least is thoroughly alive to the importance of this trade, for while we British have to a great extent been calmly content with the unhealthy coast, she has been tirelessly exploring the hinterland. A
repetition of this statement may be pardoned, for the fact is of supreme importance to the welfare of our colonies, and may be forced upon the attention of those at home sooner or later. The following difference between the policy of the two nations should always be clearly remembered. When we British open up a country we are content to hold the trade, if we can, by means of low prices and the quality of our merchandise, while any nation finds a free market there. Indeed, there are several prosperous German factories in our Niger Protectorate. It is not so with France. Once she establishes a protectorate, the traders of every other country are at once driven out by duties, which is one reason why associations of British merchants have periodically urged the development of the hinterland and the laying down of light railways upon the attention of her Majesty's Ministers, Now, however, a fairly satisfactory arrangement has been come to with France, and the difficulty, so far as that nation is concerned, is over, for a time.
