the hands of the Royal Niger Company, chartered in 1886.

Germany has secured possession of but a small fragment of the Soudan,-the colony of Togoland, on the Slave Coast, between Dahomey and Ashanti, with a shore-line of 37 niles, an area of 16,000 square miles and a population estimated at 500,000. Its occupation as a German protectorate dates from 1884.

The Portuguese, by whom the whole seaboard was discovered, and whose flag was hoisted in token of possession in 1482, retain nothing of West Soudan except the mainland between the Cacheo and Rio Grande rivers, known as Portuguese Guinea, and the Bissagos archipelago, off the coast, a territory having an area of 14,000 square miles, and a population of 150,000. Not more than 30 square miles, and hardly any more than 10,000 of the inhabitants, are actually under Portuguese authority, and the small trade of the colony is almost wholly in the hands of French merchants. French territory entirely shuts it in, except for the few miles of coast. Portugal, with her possession on these shores for more than 400 years, has made no attempt to explore the interior, not even to reach the ancient city of Jinni, or Guinni, in the Joliba or Upper Niger basin, from which the kings of Portugal took the title of Lords of Guinea.

Between the British colony of Sierra Leone on the north and the French possessions on the Ivory Coast, lies the negro American state of Liberia. It extends along the Grain or Pepper Coast from northwest to southeast, and inland about 200 miles. It has an area of over 14,000 square miles and a population of 1,000,000, about 20,000 of whom are the dominant English-speaking class, descendants of the freedmen removed since 1820 from the United States to this region by the American Colonization Society. The emancipated slaves have made scarcely any advance in general culture, and have done nothing to improve the moral status of the surrounding pagan populations. Neither have they developed the resources of the country. The whole trade of the republic, imports and exports combined, amounts to about $2,500,000.

In the region around the Lake Chad basin, the two independent Mohammedan sultanates of Bornu and of Wadai rank next to Morocco as self-governed African states. Wadai has extended its supremacy over two other native states, Kanem and Baghirmi. Bornu has an area of 56,000 square miles, with a population of 5,000,000; Wadai, 180,000 sq. miles, pop. 2,500,oco; Baghirmi, 70,000 sq. miles, pop. 1,500,000; Kanem, 34,000 sq. miles, pop. 150,000.

Of more recent explorations in West and WestCentral Soudan, the expedition of Captain Binger, in 1887-89, from the Upper Niger to the Gulf of Guinea, had most important geographical, political and commercial results. Binger reached the famous town of Kong, Feb. 20, 1888. He found that where the Kong Mountains, a huge mountain mass, had been figured on our maps since the time of Mungo Park, there exist only rising grounds of moderate elevation, forming the divide between the Niger

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system and the coast streams which flow south toward the Gulf of Guinea. Binger's expedition, making a complete circuit round the hitherto unvisited region back of the Gold Coast, brought under French protection and open to French commerce the whole vast territory extending from the Senegal to the Ivory Coast. French military power in 1890-91 brought into subjection the Mohammedan chiefs in the Upper Senegal and Joliba basins, and the occupation of Timbuktu, early in 1894, completed the French conquest of West Soudan.

In East and East-Central Soudan, Dr. Schweinfurth's work (1870-72) was especially completed by that of Dr. W. Junker, whose 11 years devoted to exploration (1875-86) filled up one of the large blank spaces, that of the water-parting between the Nile and the Congo systems, which till then existed on the map of Africa. In 1889 Major C. M. Macdonald, British commissioner to the Oil Rivers, ascended the Benue, the large eastern branch of the Niger, a distance of 600 miles, and thence followed the course of the Kebbi to a shallow lagoon within a few miles of the water-shed that divides the basin of the Niger from that of Lake Chad.

In 1891 M. J. Dybowski, sent out by the French government, crossed the chain of iron-bearing rocks forming the divide between the basin of the Congo and the Lake Chad basin. He was followed, in 1892-93, by the French political agent, Maistre, who put the keystone to the work of exploration in the interior of the continent, by filling up the last space which still separated the routes of travelers up the Nile from those leading from the Congo basin northward to the headwaters of the Nile. French activity in this region has contemplated establishing a cordon of stations from their Congo possessions, by the way of Baghirmi, to Lake Chad for the purpose of arresting the further advance of British enterprise in the Chad basin.

SOUDANESE. The Soudanese populations fall under three general heads: Semitic Arabs, Hamites pure and mixed, Tibus, Tuaregs and Fulahs and negroes pure and mixed. Throughout the entire black zone the negro variety of mankind everywhere constitutes the distinct aboriginal element, in many places exclusively, in others associated or intermingled with Hamitic Berbers and Semitic Arabs from the north and east. Pure or almost pure negro populations prevail throughout the Senegambian and Guinea Coast lands; along the banks of the Lower Niger and of the Binue, its great eastern branch; in the Oil Rivers district east of the delta of the Niger; in all the southern parts of the Chad basin; in many parts of Wadai, Darfur and South Kordofan (Dar-Nuba); in the Upper Nile region as far south as about 3 N. lat.; everywhere along the Congo-Chad and Congo-Nile divides; and in the Welle-Makua basin. Pure or nearly pure Hamites (Tibus and Tuaregs) are found chiefly in the northern districts of Senegambia, within the Niger bend as far south as 15° N. lat., around the northwest shores of Lake Chad, and on the northwest frontiers of Darfur. Pure or nearly pure Semites (Arabs) are mainly confined to the

northeast and east shore of Lake Chad, to parts of Wadai, Darfur and Kordofan, and to both banks of the White Nile between the Sobat and Atbara confluences. Lastly, mixed negroid populations, which greatly outnumber all the rest, and which consist mainly of negro and Hamite elements, occupy nearly all the central regions between Lake Chad and Senegambia.

In general, the pure negroes are fetish and nature worshipers, speaking an immense number of distinct languages, and occupying a low stage of culture, little removed from the savage state. To some extent they have founded powerful political communities, but for the most part political organization among them has not passed beyond the tribal state. The nation, as distinct from the tribe, has nowhere been developed in pure negroland.

The pure Hamites and Semites, though widespread in Soudan, are not numerous. They are all Mohammedans, for the most part of a fanatical type, speaking only four distinct languages (Fulah, Tamashek, Tibu and Arabic), and possessing sufficient culture to be regarded as semi-civilized. Intermediate between these and the fetish-worshiping negro are the mixed negroid peoples. They are little more than nominally Mohammedans, indifferent to the progress of Islam, and to some extent amenable to Christian and European influences. Under their Mohammedan guides these negroid populations have founded large and rudely organized states, in which the tribal groups have in many places been merged in the nation, and which have reached a considerable degree of culture. The mediæval Songhay, Ghana and Melle empires attained political and social conditions, reflecting not a little barbaric splendor. The same conditions prevail in the negroid kingdoms that have not yet lost their independence,- Bornu, Baghirmi and Wadai. In the opinion of the latest observers, the future of the Soudan is bound up with the mixed negroid peoples. They are of industrious and peaceful habits. They possess natural intelligence and the commercial spirit, and under wise European control they will be found capable of indefi nite material and moral progress. The pure negro element is of too low a grade of intelligence, and is too inactive and indolent, to give any promise of advancement or elevation, while the pure Hamitic and Semitic elements are slaves to a blind religious fanaticism.

As a rule, the inhabitants of the coast lands, and generally of the southern fringe of the black zone, stand at a much lower grade of culture than those of the interior. In the inland regions, the peoples have been merged in powerful communities, speaking a few widely diffused languages, while the coast populations have almost everywhere remained in the tribal state, each little group speaking a language unintelligible to its neighbor.

The Soudanese Arabs have hardly any communities in the west, and very few in the center, but in the east of Soudan (Egyptian Soudan) they are the dominant people. The Jalins of Khartoum and surrounding districts are the most numerous, influential, and purest of all the Soudanese Arabs. They

The

are great traders and notorious slave-hunters. Kababish ("goat-herds") and Bakkara ("cowherds") Arabs are essentially pastoral peoples, the latter owning numerous herds of cattle, and the former being large breeders of horses and camels as well as of goats. Both of these tribes are a peaceful people, who could be counted on against the Mahdists, if advantage was properly taken of their friendly disposition. The trading and slave-hunting Arabs are essentially the disturbing element in Egyptian Soudan. Proud, ignorant, bigoted and insolent, considering it a disgrace to practice any manual labor, for the most part nomads or wanderers, large owners of cattle, camels, horses and slaves, leaving their women to cultivate corn sufficient for the wants of the tribe, they are essentially hunters, robbers and warriors, devoting all their energies, after caring for their cattle, to slave-hunting and war. An even still lower element is formed by those Arabs who have given up the tribal relations and enlisted in whatever work of murder and rapine they could find.

FULAHS. Among the Soudanese Hamites the Fulahs hold in the west a position somewhat similar to that of the Arabs in the east. They are conquerors, and preachers of Islam, but they are a new people, who were scarcely heard of till quite recent times. Until the opening of the present century they were despised and persecuted herdsmen, scattered in small pastoral communities from Senegambia to Darfur, except that of the single instance of the independent principality of Suladugu. A Fulah religious teacher, Othman dan Fodiye, in a state ruled by a pagan prince, the northern Hausa state of Gober, was rebuked by the prince for his excessive zeal in preaching Moslem doctrine, and in reply raised a standard of revolt in 1802, round which the Mohammedan Fulahs rallied from all quarters. After a period of reverses the revolt became successful, and Othman rapidly overran the greater part of Soudan, until he had established an empire called Sokoto, and extending from the Niger to the frontiers of Bornu. At the death, in 1817, of Othman, the larger eastern division of his empire fell to his son, Bello, and the western provinces to his brother, Abd-Allahi, under the name of the Empire of Gando. By treaties with these potentates, Great Britain, in 1885, established a protectorate over West-Central Soudan.

In French Soudan the Wolofs in the north are the blackest known negroes, although their features are negroid, rather than pure negro, and are often described as almost regular. The remotely allied Serers in the south are the tallest members of the negro race, many exceeding six feet four inches in height. They are also noted for their great muscular development, pronounced negro features, and herculean frames, which, however, as is usual with Africans, fall off in the lower extremities. The bulk of the Serers are still pagans, believing in the transmigration of souls, holding snakes in great veneration, and worshiping two powerful deities, Takhar ("god of justice") and Tuirakh ("god of wealth"). Most of the Wolofs claim to be Mohammedans, while some about the stations call themselves Christians.

In British Gambia the substratum of the population belongs to the widespread Mandingan race.

They are Mohammedans of a mild type, remark- | ably intelligent, industrious and enterprising. The type is distinctly negro. All are excellent husbandmen and enterprising traders.

The most powerful of the rude negro tribes of the coast-lands south of Gambia are the Timni of Sierra Leone. Most of them are still pagans, but they form an industrious peasantry, from whose well-tilled fields the English colony draws most of its supplies. Sierra Leone, which was in the eighteenth century (1713-87) a depot for slaves supplied by an English company to the Spanish-American plantations, and which became, after 1787, a free settlement for emancipated blacks, either brought hither from America or rescued on the coast from slavers, is now a hybrid community with a certain degree of culture, shown by skill in the mechanical arts, by general profession of some form of Protestant Christianity, and by the regular attendance of the children at school. Both this community and the state of Liberia, which lies to the south of Sierra Leone, leave the impression that the negro is not capable of rising to the general level of European culture.

The Ivory Coast natives are pure negro tribes of a very low grade of culture, with some extremely repulsive customs. They are generally eager traders, and, although still pagans, sometimes show proverbial honesty.

The Gold Coast natives, numbering collectively many millions, form fundamentally one great ethnical and linguistic division of the negro race, with three sub-groups which show a gradual advance in civilization from their situation at a greater or less distance from the coast. British occupation of Kumassi in 1874 not only shattered the Ashanti military power, but put an end to indescribable bloody horrors of negro custom. Kumassi is a large place, with a reputed population of 70,000 to 100,000. It is well laid out, with broad, open streets, shaded with trees and flanked by continuous lines of huts. It has a circuit of nearly four miles, not including the sacred suburb of Bantana and the royal quarter of Assafu.

The Slave Coast natives are full-blood negro peoples, who in early life display a degree of intelligence fully equal to that of European children, yet become later so deadened in intellect as to sink to the lowest level of heathen brutalism. The kingdom of Dahomey, until the overthrow of native power in 1892-93, was the scene of nameless bloody horrors almost impossible to conceive of human beings perpetrating.

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people have grouped themselves for defense against the incessant slave-hunting expeditions, to which a stop has been recently put. The Yoruba people are favorably distinguished by their naturally peaceful disposition, industrious habits, and friendliness. toward strangers. The physical type is negroid rather than decidedly negro. Mental superiority is shown by agricultural skill and by marked progress in the mechanic arts. While agriculture is the chief industry, weaving, dyeing, pottery, tanning and forging are practiced in all the large towns. The people make their own agricultural implements, and as builders are unrivaled in negroland. The spacious dwellings of the chiefs, often containing 40 or 50 rooms, are constructed with rare skill and tastefully embellished with wood-carvings. The Bible and numerous other religious works have been translated into Yoruba. Lagos, the chief seat of British authority, and the commercial center of the whole region, has in recent times become the most important place on the West African seaboard. It trades directly with Liverpool, and is a port of call for all steamers plying on the West Coast of Africa.

The vast plateau region within the Niger bend north of Upper Guinea, is occupied by groups of people living in small tribal communities at a very low level of culture, that of the merest savages, and constantly subject to the visitation of marauders, who will often destroy a whole community in securing a few captives, to be carried away as slaves.

Mossi, a part of Yorubaland, lying mainly between lat. 11° to 13° N. and long. 2° to 5° W., has never yet been traversed by any European. It is still one of the few remaining independent native states of Africa, although lying diplomatically within the French sphere of influence. It has great agricultural resources, but the arts are in a backward state, being mainly limited to a little coarse weaving, tinkering and rude copper, iron, and silver work. It has very little trade, and seems altogether to be in a state of rapid decline.

KONG STATE. The Kong State, a confederacy of petty states, of which the commercial center is the city of Kong, lies entirely within the French sphere, but does not recognize a definite French protectorate. It has been for 200 years ruled by Mohammedan princes of the South Mandingan Wattara family. Although Mohammedan, they have been extremely tolerant, practically accepting as identical the three religions, of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed, on the ground that "all lead to the same God." The people are industrious and peace-loving, with an instinctive horror of war.

century. Their culture, strange and even barbaric | as it seems, is an immense advance on the average standard which has anywhere been reached by fullblood negro populations, such as those of Ashanti or Dahomey. They are of industrious habits, tillers of the land, skilled in many mechanical arts, and very far from the savage condition, although still addicted to many barbarous practices. They have developed a fully organized political administration, a royal court and government, with all proper dignities and offices, and a military system which, for Central Africa, may be considered fairly well worked out. A note of their barbarism appears in the fact that the whole policy of the state is still based on slavery, the supply of captives being kept up by organized expeditions to the pagan lands in the south, and the slave-trade still flourishing vigorously, especially across the desert northward to Fezzan and Tripoli. The center of the slave-trade is Kuka, the present capital of Bornu. It is also one of the great markets of Central Africa for cattle, sheep, poultry, goats, asses, ivory, leather, skins of lions and leopards, ostrich feathers, indigo, wheat, corn and fruits, and butter, milk and eggs. Wealth derived from the lucrative slave-trade has made Bornu the most powerful of all the native states in Soudan. The head of the state is the Mai, with wholly despotic authority, and held to be infallible in all his decisions. Next to him is the Digma, the head of a ministry. Besides the dominant Kanuri, there are many other tribes, the great bulk of which are still pagans, and are treated by the government as subject to being seized and sold into slavery.

BAGHIRMI-WADAI. Southeast of Bornu a lowlying, sandy and swampy region, watered by the Logon-Shari, is occupied by the ancient sultanate of Baghirmi, founded about the year 1520, and brought into subjection to the Sultan of Wadai in 1871. The natives are all of pure negro type. All the hard work is done by the women, whose costume is a mere strip of skin around the loins. Wadai, although a strong sultanate, well administered, is much lower in culture than Bornu, or even its dependency, Baghirmi. The people are fierce, quarrelsome and cruel, especially under the influence of the intoxicant melissa (durra beer), the abuse of which is universal. Sheik Aly, who succeeded to the throne in 1858, greatly encouraged agriculture and the industrial arts, maintained a rule both wise and severe, and promoted the wide diffusion of Mohammedan culture. His son, Mohammed Sherif, is the present ruler of an empire estimated at about 170,000 square miles in extent, with a settled and nomad population of 2,600,000. His power is absolute, limited only by custom and the precepts of the Koran. He has a standing army of about 7,000, which is employed chiefly in securing his tribute from vassal states.

WELLE-MAKUA BASIN. A great but somewhat heterogeneous division of the negro family are the Bandas of Dar Bandar, which region extends across the Congo-Chad water-parting, and the Welle-Makua peoples, occupying the whole of the Welle-Makua basin, between the Nile-Congo and Congo-Chad water-parting in the north and the northeastern affluents of the Congo in the south. The region has

been the theater of tremendous social and political convulsions, intertribal warfare and slave-raiding expeditions, migratory movements either peaceful or aggressive, and other disturbances involving dislocations and dispersions of tribes in all directions. Great physical differences appear in the natives, especially the endless gradations of color, from deep black to yellow-brown, although black, woolly hair, the most certain characteristic of the negro, is common to all. The social conditions present every shade of transition, from the lowest savage and hunting tribes to highly organized native states, with oral records and dynastic genealogies going back several generations. Before slave-hunting and other "civilized" intrusion had reached them, two powerful empires had been developed, the Mombuttu, about the head-waters of the Welle, and the Zandeh, along the middle course of that river and on its northern affluents. These had a culture shown in well-developed political organization, ingenious architecture, and marked progress in agriculture, pottery, wood-carving, metal-work, and other industrial arts; yet they were savages at heart, and amongst the worst cannibals in the whole of Africa. The complete destruction of these states, due to intrusion from the south, has been followed by the introduction, from the Congo Free State on the west, of influences, under Belgian direction, which promise to establish permanent order, to keep out the Arab slavers, and to suppress cannibal orgies.

DARFUR. Eastward from Wadai lies Darfur, which was an independent state until its conquest by the Egyptians in 1875. It had an area of some 180,000 square miles and a population of not less than 4,000,000. It fell, with the rest of East Soudan, into the hands of the Mahdi in 1884. What little recent information there is appears to show that it has recovered its independence and re-established its ancient monarchy.

The loss of East Soudan to Egypt was due to two almost simultaneous revolts against the oppressive, corrupt and irresponsible rule of the Khedive of Egypt. One of these was that of native negro tribes in the White Nile provinces; the other was that of Mohammedan fanatics, led by the Mahdi, in the Kordofan and Nubian provinces. Mohammed Ahmed, a retired Egyptian official and an active slave-trader, raised the standard of revolt in 1881. He claimed to be the Mahdi ("guided"), a sort of Mohammedan Messiah, last of the 12 Imams ("leaders"), destined to convert all unbelievers or else to utterly destroy them. An attempted military revolt of Arabi Pasha occasioned the armed intervention of England to put down Arabi and preserve the Khedive's government. English bombardment of the Alexandrian forts (July, 1882) and the complete defeat of Arabi in the battle of Tel-el-Kebir (Sept. 13, 1882), established Great Britain in control of Egyptian administration, but was without effect in the Soudan. The Mahdi, in December, 1883, completely destroyed an Egyptian army of 11,000 men at Kashgil, under General Hicks, and again, in February, 1884, routed another Egyptian force under Baker Pasha. Before the close of 1884 the Mahdists had reduced the province of Bahr-el-Ghazal, and had