German settlement in Africa is not altogether the outcome of the scramble for Africa in 1884; German settlements on the West coast of Africa date back to 1683, and Prussian or German protectorates in Africa were discussed during the sixties of the 19th century. Ships from Emden^[204] and Gretsyl, belonging to the Friesland possessions of the Electorate of Brandenburg (the mother of the Prussian monarchy), stole out of the North Sea and took a part in the West African trade in slaves and gold. These ships were much harassed by the French, Portuguese, and Dutch, but the Brandenburgers, together with the Prussian Company of Emden, managed to establish a foothold at the close of the 17th century on the Gold Coast, where they held for a time Grossfriedrichsburg and Takrana. The little island of Arguin near Cape Blanco, off the Senegal coast, was bought by Frederic William (the Great Elector of Brandenburg) from the Dutch, and was held for some years. The Brandenburg Africa Company was definitely founded in 1681, but by 1720 these North Germans, distracted by quarrels at home, had abandoned their West African enterprise.

During the forties of the 19th century some consideration was given in Germany to the question of colonization, but attention was directed to unoccupied territories in America, and nothing was said about Africa. About 1850 German steamships (under the Hamburg flag) began to trade along the West Coast of Africa; and in that year the celebrated House of Woermann opened its first agencies at Monrovia (Liberia) and elsewhere on the West Coast.

Many German missionaries and colonists between 1845 and 1865 went out to South Africa to settle chiefly in Cape Colony, Namakwaland and Natal. Between 1860 and 1865, a Hanoverian Baron, von der Decken, was exploring Kilima-njaro and the East coast of Africa. It began to dawn on him that Zanzibar and the Zanzibar coast would form a legitimate field for German enterprise, settlement, and colonization, “especially after the opening of the Suez Canal.” Although von der Decken was killed on the Jub River in 1865, he transmitted his opinions to Otto Kersten, who wrote an article in 1867, stating that von der Decken had had ideas of buying Mombasa from the Sultan of Zanzibar in order to found a German settlement. By this time Hamburg merchants had established a flourishing trade at Zanzibar, and until 1885 the German representative at that place was almost invariably a Hamburg man; indeed before the unification of the German Empire there was a Hamburg (Hanseatic) consul at Zanzibar, rather than a German representative. Until the deliberate intervention of Germany on the East coast of Africa, these Hanseatic merchants practically placed themselves under British protection.

In 1878 the German African Society of Berlin was founded as a branch of the International African Association. It absorbed two similar societies dealing with Africa, more from a geographical than political point of view. German “international” stations were founded between Zanzibar and Tanganyika, and German explorers made a careful examination of the country round Lake Mweru and of the river Lualaba. Other German explorers (Wissmann amongst their number) traversed and mapped the southern half of the Congo basin; and, when the present writer visited the Congo in 1882-3, the German explorers, nominally in the service of the King of the Belgians, made no secret of the desire of Germany to acquire control over the Western Congo. This, no doubt, was one reason why Bismarck opposed the Anglo-Portuguese treaty of 1883-4 (pp. 89-343). But, when the conference he had negotiated was brought about, he felt that French and Belgian opposition, united, and the absence of German treaty claims, made a German Congo State impossible. The energies of Germany were then directed towards the Niger, but here they were thwarted by the National African, afterwards the Royal Niger Company.

Several emissaries were, however, sent out to Nigeria by the German Colonial Society. This institution was founded at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1882, and at once met with enthusiastic support.

In the fifties, sixties, and seventies, German Protestant missionaries had established themselves in Damaraland and Namakwaland, in South-West Africa. In 1864 some of these missionaries bought the estates of the Walfish Bay Copper Company, to the north-east of Walfish Bay, and here they hoisted the German flag. So early as 1877 Sir Bartle Frere began to regard the proceedings of the German missionaries with suspicion, and, to combat their action, proposed adding Damaraland to the South African Empire. But the British Government would only permit the annexation of Walfish Bay. About 1880 the German missionaries renewed their complaints as to the treatment they suffered at the hands of the natives and the lack of protection they received from the British authorities. Prince Bismarck took up these claims, and asked the British Government whether it was prepared to protect Europeans in Damaraland and the Namakwa country. Lord Granville repudiated any responsibility outside Walfish Bay, and informed the Governor of the Cape that the Orange River was the north-western boundary of Cape Colony. In 1881 the German missionaries asked for a gunboat to protect their interests on the Namakwa coast. The Foreign Office was consulted, and again repudiated any British claims to this territory outside Walfish Bay. At the beginning of 1883 Herr Lüderitz of Bremen, acting possibly under the inspiration of the German Colonial Society, asked the German Government whether he would receive German protection if he acquired territories in South-West Africa. He received a guarded consent (after the German Foreign Office had again consulted the British Government and received a vague reply). In April 1883 the agents of Herr Lüderitz went with a German ship to the Bay of Angra Pequena, 150 miles north of the Orange River. The Germans landed there, and marched inland 100 miles to the German mission station of Bethany. The Hottentot chief of that district sold to these agents of Herr Lüderitz a piece of land 24 miles long and 10 miles broad, with that breadth of frontage on the Bay of Angra Pequena, including all sovereign rights. On the 2nd of May, 1883, the German flag was hoisted on the shore of Angra Pequena Bay over the first German colony. When the news reached the Cape, an English gunboat, the Boadicea, went to Angra Pequena, and was met at that place by a German gunboat, whose commander informed the captain of the Boadicea that he was in German waters, and could exercise no authority there. Nearly five months had apparently elapsed between the hoisting of the German flag at Angra Pequena and this visit of the British warship, and during that period no action had been taken in England. Nor, indeed, could any action have been taken after the explicit manner in which both Lord Beaconsfield’s and Mr Gladstone’s Administrations had disavowed any British claims to the coast of South-West Africa. Too late, Lord Granville informed Prince Bismarck that “any claim of sovereignty or jurisdiction on the part of a foreign power over any part of the coast between the Portuguese boundary and the Orange River would be regarded as an encroachment on the legitimate rights of Cape Colony.” Even then Germany did not proceed to immediate action, but repeatedly pressed the question whether England did or did not intend to take upon herself the administration of this Damara coast. The British Government sought to evade a direct reply by consulting the Cape Government. No answer was returned by the latter till May 1884, when the Cape offered to take over the control of the whole coast up to Walfish Bay. But in April Germany had made a statement that she would not recognize British protection over this coast, and on the 21st of June she secured from England a recognition of a German protectorate. If the action of the British authorities was blameworthy (from a national point of view) in refusing to take Germany seriously, and in puzzling her by declining to proclaim a British protectorate between the Orange River and the Portuguese possessions, the blame falls equally upon the Cape Parliament. It was the parsimony of Cape Colony which feared to be led into expense, coupled with the shortsightedness of the English Ministry of the day which refused to believe in the possibility of Germany desiring colonies, that permitted Germany to establish herself as a South African power. As to the German Government, it behaved throughout with perfect “correctness.” It gave the British Government ample time and opportunity to make good any preceding rights.

Germany did not act here as she did in the Cameroons, where she merely informed the British Government that Dr Nachtigal had been commissioned by the German Government to visit the West coast of Africa in order to report on the state of German commerce, and asked that he might be furnished with recommendations to the British authorities in West Africa. Her ambassador did, it is true, mention that Dr Nachtigal would conduct negotiations connected with certain questions, but the context implied that these questions were commercial matters. Therefore the British Government, which had already made arrangements for establishing a protectorate over the whole coast between Lagos and the Cameroons, did not cause Consul E. H. Hewett to return to his post with any undue hurry. Dr Nachtigal arrived at the Isles de Los, on the Sierra Leone coast of Africa, on the 1st of June, 1884, with the intention of taking under German protection the River Dubreka, situated in the district which the French call Rivières du Sud; but, as there was some doubt as to French claims, nothing further was done at the time; and, when afterwards the German flag was hoisted, it was at once removed on the receipt of a French protest. On the 5th of July Nachtigal reached a district on the east of the English Gold Coast colony, now known as Togoland. Here arrangements were made with the native chiefs and the country was declared a German protectorate. Then Dr Nachtigal steamed right across to the Cameroons. Here he was just in time. The principal chief, King Bell, had been won over by the gift of £1000 to sign a treaty with Germany. The other chiefs refused to do so, and Bell himself waited for a week to see if Consul Hewett would arrive. However, when the Consul did come on the 19th of July, King Bell had signed the treaty, and the German flag had been hoisted over the Cameroons River. Consul Hewett was in time to carry out the rest of his programme, and, so far as actual treaty-signing went, the British had only lost a small piece of the coast-line they had determined to secure; but, in order that a grudging spirit might not be shown to Germany, she was finally allowed to take over all the Cameroons district^[205].

In East Africa Germany’s procedure may be summarized thus. Count Pfeil, Dr Carl Peters, and Dr Jühlke arrived at Zanzibar on the 4th of November, 1884, as deck passengers, dressed like mechanics. Officially discountenanced by the German Consul, they nevertheless left at once for the interior; and on the 19th of November the first treaty was signed with a native chief, and the German flag was hoisted in Uzeguha. Eventually other treaties were concluded in Nguru, Usagara, Ukami, and other adjoining countries, which resulted in a solid block of 60,000 square miles being ostensibly secured on paper. Dr Peters hastened back to Berlin, and on the 12th of February, 1885, he had already founded a German East African Company, to whom he transferred his treaty rights. On the 27th of February following, the German Emperor issued an official notice of the extension of his protection to the territories acquired, or which might be further acquired. In vain the Sultan of Zanzibar protested. The British representative was instructed to support German claims, and eventually it was decided that the Sultan of Zanzibar’s authority was to be limited to a strip ten miles broad along the coast between Cape Delgado and Somaliland.

In May 1885 the Foreign Office informed Germany that a British company desired to develop the country between the Mombasa coast and the Victoria Nyanza. The foundation for this scheme was the treaties which the present writer had concluded on or near Kilima-njaro in the preceding year, and which at the suggestion of the Foreign Office had been transferred to the late Mr James Hutton of Manchester. The Sultan of Zanzibar, however, refused to give in, even to British representations, and made strenuous efforts to support his claims to the hinterland of the East African coast. On the 7th of August, 1885, a German squadron hove to in front of Zanzibar and delivered an ultimatum. The Sultan bowed to the inevitable, and recognized the German territorial claims, including a protectorate over Vitu^[206], a little patch of territory near the Tana River. Gradually, however, matters settled down. An agreement was come to in 1885 between the British and German Governments for a recognition with France of the independence of the Sultan of Zanzibar, and the definition of his exact dominions by a joint commission. Eventually, in 1886, the respective British and German spheres in East Africa were defined. In the same forceful manner the Germans had taken Kilima-njaro. Except for the bulge of Kilima-njaro, a line drawn from Wanga on the coast (near the river Umba) straight to the north-east shore of Lake Victoria Nyanza is the Anglo-German frontier in East Africa. The limit of the British sphere on the north was the Tana River, Germany maintaining her hold on Vitu. The German Government then came to terms with Portugal, and agreed that the territories of the two powers in East Africa should march together as far as the east coast of Lake Nyasa. Germany also concluded treaties along the Somali coast.

The German Colonization Society and the German Colonial Society subsequently united under the latter title, while the German East African Association had been incorporated by Imperial charter. Further subsidiary companies were organized; and by 1888 numerous plantations had been established in the north of German East Africa, near the coast. In 1888 the German East Africa Company obtained from the Sultan of Zanzibar the lease for 50 years of the whole of the Sultan’s coast territory from the Ruvuma River to the Umba. A great development then took place in the Company’s operations, which were more and more identified with the German Government. A staff of over 60 officials was sent out to carry on the new administration. Sir Charles Euan Smith, who had succeeded Sir John Kirk as British Agent at Zanzibar, warned the German administration in a friendly manner that, unless greater care for Arab susceptibilities was shown in replacing the Sultan of Zanzibar’s government on the coast, troubles with the Arabs might ensue. His warning was only too well founded. Five days after taking over the administration of the country—on the 21st of August, 1888—disturbances fomented by the Arab and Swahili population broke out, and in another month the Germans held very few posts on the coast or in the interior. An animosity also began to be directed not only against the Germans, but against all Europeans, and the situation became very serious. In 1889, the resources of the Company having broken down, Captain Hermann Wissmann (afterwards Major von Wissmann) was appointed Imperial Commissioner for East Africa. With 1000 native troops, mainly Sudanese recruited with the help of the British Government, 200 German sailors, and 60 German officers and non-commissioned officers, von Wissmann carried on a vigorous campaign against the Arabs and Swahili, and by the end of 1889 he had put down the revolt and captured and executed the leader of it, Bushiri. It took six months longer, however, to quiet some of the interior districts and those near the River Ruvuma.

In the middle of 1890 Germany concluded a very wise arrangement with England, by which, as has already been described in another chapter, all German possessions to the north of the British boundary at the Umba River were given up, and a British protectorate over Zanzibar was recognized, while the German boundaries were carried inland to the frontier of the Congo State. On the south, Great Britain was admitted to the south end of Tanganyika, and secured all the west coast of Lake Nyasa. From 1890 to the present time German settlement and the development of German East Africa have gone on without any disagreeable check so far as the Arabs or the European powers are concerned. In 1893 a large and well-appointed steamer, the Hermann von Wissmann, was placed on Lake Nyasa; and the British authorities round that lake were amply rewarded for any help they might have contributed towards its conveyance thither by the services which the German steamer afterwards rendered in acting as a transport for a portion of the British forces in the last war against the Lake Nyasa Arabs. At the beginning of the 20th century the Germans had placed a fine war-steamer on Lake Tanganyika.

On the Zanzibar coast new quarters in the old Arab towns sprang up like magic, the streets being widened, kept clean, and well lit. Flourishing plantations covered many acres of what was formerly waste land. There was fair security for life and property, even in the distant interior. The Arabs became reconciled to German rule, while on the other hand the German officials slowly learnt the art of dealing tactfully with subject races. Since 1890, when the coast strip leased from the Sultan of Zanzibar was finally purchased from him, the whole of German East Africa has been under direct Imperial administration. This German possession has now an area of about 384,000 square miles, with a population—mainly Bantu negroes—estimated at 10,000,000. The Asiatic settlers are stated at only 7000, and the Europeans (mainly Germans) at 3800. It is likely to turn out in course of time a flourishing tropical settlement; not a country which Germans could colonize in the sense that Australia or Canada are colonizable, but a Ceylon, a Java, a Southern India, where the German planter may make a competence, where the goods of Germany may find unrestricted markets, and where the Teuton may educate and raise into a higher state of civilization a vigorous negro people—some tribes of which, like the Wanyamwezi and the Waswahili, possess fine qualities. The plateau region to the north and north-east of Tanganyika may support here and there small but flourishing colonies of white men. British Indians are already settling somewhat thickly in the coast towns and are exchanging their nationality for that of German subjects.

In 1891, scarcely two years after Wissmann had broken the power of the Arabs, the Germans found themselves fighting a more difficult, brave and unaccountable enemy, the Wa-hehe of the plateau region south of the Rufiji river. These people seem to have some distant affinity with the Zulu in appearance, character, and mode of warfare. This may be due to their having been influenced by the Wa-ngoni further south (partly in Portuguese, partly in German East Africa), the Wa-ngoni (under various tribal names) being derived from Zulu clans which left South-east Africa early in the 19th century and crossed the Zambezi, reaching northwards nearly to the Victoria Nyanza. The German war with the Wa-hehe lasted till about 1893. Then ensued a period of comparative peace till the year 1905, when a most serious native rising took place in the southern districts of the colony, between North Nyasa and the Kilwa coast. Nearly all the tribes, Muhammadan and Pagan, joined in attempting to oust the Germans. Officials, Catholic missionaries (male and female), planters, and traders were murdered. It took nearly a year and a half to subdue this rebellion completely, and something like 120,000 natives (adults and children) died during this struggle, or from its immediate results; they were killed in battle, by famine resulting from the destruction of crops or neglect of agriculture, or by disease. The effects of this depopulation are still to be seen in the coast belt of Kilwa and in the Ruvuma watershed. The Wa-ngoni (or Magwangwara as they are sometimes called) were almost exterminated—an achievement by no means to be greatly mourned, since they had kept East Africa (Lake Nyasa to the Indian Ocean) unsettled by their raids, sparsely populated, and scarcely cultivated for some fifty years previously. The Germans subdued this native rising with a small army of German officers and non-commissioned officers, and Masai and Sudanese soldiers, and even brought the Oceanic negro of New Guinea face to face with his African brother for the first time for something like three hundred thousand years! But these Papuan and Melanesian soldiers were not altogether a success.

It was alleged that this great rising was caused by misgovernment, and by imposing on the people labour taxes which were most unpopular, especially when this forced labour was leased out to conscienceless European planters. Herr Dernburg—then German Colonial minister—came out to investigate the cause of this revolt in 1907. Since his recommendations were adopted the whole of German East Africa has been peaceful.

In 1890 railway construction began, firstly in a line from Tanga (a northern port) to Usambara and eventually Kilimanjaro. This at present (1912) has a length of 108 miles. In the early years of the 20th century a Dar-es-Salaam^[207]-Tanganyika line was begun which already reaches Kilimatinde, 240 miles inland. Another line, starting from Kilwa on the southern coast, aims at the northern end of Lake Nyasa.

The later history of the Cameroons has been much like that of German East Africa—revolts, “sharp lessons,” then attacks by hostile tribes inland, which are quelled by expeditions and the building of forts, followed by other revolts still further in the interior, to be succeeded by still further victories and advances; but on the whole increasing peace and order throughout the country, and a great development of trade. Unfortunately, as amongst some officials of the East Africa Company and Administration, so among a few of the Government servants in the Cameroons, there were instances of great cruelties committed between 1887 and 1896, cruelties which led to a serious revolt among the negro soldiery (1895). Germany wisely did not hush up these affairs, but investigated them in an open court and punished the guilty. It will be seen, I fancy, when history takes a review of the foundation of these African states, that the unmixed Teuton—Dutchman or German—is on first contact with subject races apt to be harsh and even brutal, but that he is no fool and wins the respect of the negro or the Asiatic, who admire rude strength; while his own good nature in time induces a softening of manners when the native has ceased to rebel and begun to submit. There is this that is hopeful and wholesome about the Germans. They are quick to realise their own defects, and equally quick to amend them. As in commerce so in government, they observe, learn and master the best principles. The politician would be very shortsighted who underrated the greatness of the German character, or reckoned on the evanescence of German dominion in strange lands.

In 1904-5 there were risings of the Bantu negroes against German authority in the western part of the Cameroons^[208] colony. These were suppressed after much bush fighting, but the cause of them being oppressive legislation, the Governor of the Cameroons was changed in 1906, since which time the whole country has been peaceful. In the far interior German influence was established over the banks of the Shari and of Lake Chad by 1902; and about the same time Germans began to open up relations with the “Fang” country in the western part of the Congo watershed. Railways were begun in the first decade of the 20th century. One from Victoria (Ambas Bay—the original settlement of the Baptist mission—see p. 244) runs round the southern flanks of Cameroons Mountain to Buëa, the German capital (3000 ft. above sea-level); another from the Cameroons river (Duala) to the Manenguba mountains and Bayoñ (this will eventually link up with the Victoria-Buëa line and be built northwards towards the Shari river); and a third from Duala south-eastward to the Nyanza river.

In 1911-12, Germany obtained from France additional territory on the south and west of the Cameroons Colony to the extent of 100,000 square miles, bringing this African dominion eastwards into the Central Sudan, to the Mubangi river, main Congo, and north coast of the Gaboon. Germany thus secures the whole basin of the Sanga river (a valuable waterway into the Fang country) and now possesses in the Cameroons—or as it is spelt in the German fashion, Kamerun—an Empire in Western Equatorial Africa of some 292,000 square miles, with a population of negroes and negroids numbering about 4,000,000. The country is rich in valuable products, and already the annual trade amounts to about £2,200,000 in value.

In South-west Africa Germany, by arrangement with Portugal and eventually with England, secured a protectorate or sphere of influence over a very large stretch of country—322,450 square miles—bounded on the north by Portuguese West Africa, on the south by the Orange River, and on the east by British Bechuanaland, with, in addition, a long, narrow strip, which reached the Zambezi at its confluence with the Chobe. This country along the coast-line is very barren; it is, in fact, a hopeless desert, most hopeless of all between the Orange River and Walfish Bay. But the interior is mountainous, and in these mountains there are stretches of well-watered country where cattle are kept in enormous herds. Moreover, this mountainous country is very healthy. With the Bantu Herero, who inhabit the northern part of German South-west Africa, the Germans at first got on very well, thanks to the influence exerted by the German missionaries; but with the pure-blood and half-caste Hottentots, who inhabit the southern section of the colony and almost all the coast-belt, the Germans have been constantly at war. These Hottentots, many of whom have some slight infusion of Dutch blood which renders them more warlike than their relations in Cape Colony, are Christians of a kind, wear clothes, and bear Dutch names. They at first found a leader in a certain Hendrik Witbooi, who again and again inflicted defeats on small parties of German soldiers, made treaties and broke them, and from first to last gave the Germans a great deal of trouble. Although he could boast of but a paltry number of followers, he fought in a waterless, mountainous country, where concealment was easy and pursuit difficult. In 1894 he made peace with the Germans and remained more or less their ally till 1904. As he spoke Cape Dutch fluently he soon mastered German, and for a time seemed really reconciled to the Germanization of his people—already Calvinist or Lutheran Christians.

But in 1903, the Hottentots living on the north of the Orange River and largely mixed with Boer blood—the Bondelzwarts—rose against the Germans; and, although they only numbered some five thousand fighting men at most, they occupied the German forces for four years before they were conquered, mainly by extermination. The deserts in which they lived (yet from which they were being dispossessed) were remote and inaccessible except from the British possessions. Whilst the German forces were attacking the Bondelzwarts, the Bantu Damara or Ova-herero in the far north broke out into rebellion, attacked the German settlers and traders without warning, and murdered some of them, destroying all the homesteads they could find. The excuse they gave for this furious outburst was that, when they signed the original treaties of friendship and acceptance of protection, they had no idea they were signing away their native land; and that subsequently much vacant land in the Damara country had been given or sold by the German Chartered Company^[209] or government to white settlers, some of whom also on unfair pretexts had taken away native cattle. Reinforcements came out from Germany under General von Trotha, and the mass of the Herero army was attacked in its stronghold, the Waterberg range of mountains in about Lat. S. 21°. The Herero warriors were slaughtered in numbers; nevertheless, the larger proportion of the fighting men succeeded in evading the encircling movement of the Germans and escaped under the leadership of a chief, Samuel Maherero, and fought against the Germans for months after their great defeat in the Waterberg mountains in August 1904^[210].

In the early autumn of that year the Hottentots broke out again with renewed vigour, first under the leadership of a Herero half-caste, Morenga, and a few days later under the renowned Hendrik Witbooi. The Nama Hottentots, as a signal of their defiance of the German power, assassinated about sixty German settlers in the south-east part of the Colony, scrupulously distinguishing between them and the Boers or British residing in or travelling through the country. These (as the Herero had done, far to the north) they left uninjured in any way. General von Trotha was baffled by the double enemy—Hottentots and Bastards in the south, Herero in the north. He issued proclamations of a somewhat savage tone in his exasperation, and these being annulled by the Imperial Government he resigned and returned to Germany in 1905. In the autumn of that year a new governor—von Lindequist—arrived, and by reasonable measures of conciliation and by the allotment of definite native reserves made peace with the Ovaherero. Samuel Maherero however preferred to remain on British territory, where he had taken refuge. Since the close of 1906, however, there has been no more trouble between the Germans and the Herero, who are slowly recovering from the awful loss of life and diminution of their notable nation during this terrible war of fierce hatred on either side^[210]. The Ovambo farther north have given signs of unrest, but are believed now to have become reconciled to German rule.

Hendrik Witbooi died in 1905; and Morenga was finally killed by a British police patrol, in August 1907, in the Kalahari desert. He had fled to British territory in 1906, but had not been surrendered to the Germans. On the contrary, he was treated as a political refugee and given every chance of settling down peacefully. He only abused this kindness, however, in order to organize attacks on the Germans from the secure basis of the British frontier. Therefore his death in a skirmish with British mounted police was entirely his own fault.

By 1908 all these troubles were at an end, and German South-west Africa was free from native foes. But the long war in these deserts and bare, rocky mountains had cost the Germans the lives of over five thousand soldiers and settlers, and an expenditure of 15 millions sterling! So that it would have been cheaper at the commencement of this colony’s history to have carried out a fair land-settlement which would have contented the natives and still have left more than half the area of South-west Africa at the disposal of the white man.

In 1908 diamonds were discovered in the sandy desert country at the back of Luderitz Bay. Their quality was that of the Brazilian or Liberian diamond, rather than of the type of Cape Colony or Transvaal stone. Though as yet not large in size they were of good “water,” and in 1909 the total value of the diamonds exported was £771,776 in value. In succeeding years the supply fell off somewhat. In the northern part of the Colony, at Otavi and Tsumeb, copper mining is carried on; and the output of copper is sufficient to warrant the construction of railways of considerable length. Cotton cultivation has been begun, and the keeping of cattle, sheep, and Angora goats has revived once more with the cessation of warfare. The amount of sheep indeed is beginning to approach a total of half a million. Cattle thrive well in the interior, especially in the northern half. So also do horses, camels, asses and pigs. Camels have proved most useful for the desert regions of the coast-belt and the south.

The guano islands along the coast all belong to British subjects and are part of Cape Colony. So also is the only really good harbour on the coast—Walfish Bay. This little enclave of 430 square miles belongs to Cape Colony and is British territory. It would be an act of not wasted generosity some day to transfer this little patch to Germany for the benefit of German South-west Africa. Its retention by the British Empire is of the dog-in-the-manger type of policy. It is no longer of any use to us, nor does the want of it cripple German South-west Africa; yet its possession by Germany would relieve her of the continued heavy expenditure needed to maintain the adjoining Swakopmund as a landing-place for passengers and goods.

A railway of over two hundred miles now connects the southern port, Luderitzhafen (Angra Pequena) with the inland settlement of Keetmanshoop, and will be extended some day to the Orange River and the Cape railway system. Another and longer railway (359 miles) goes from Swakopmund to the Tsumeb copper mines. A third railway (237 miles) of small gauge—the first constructed—connects Swakopmund with the administrative capital, Windhoek. There is also a short line between the Otavi copper mines and Groot Fontein. So that, between 1900 and 1912, Germany has constructed over 1000 miles of railway in her colony of South-west Africa.

This indeed comes nearer to being a real colony than any other possession of Germany in Africa. Out of a total population of not quite 100,000, nearly 11,000 are Germans, the rest of the twelve to thirteen thousand whites being Boers and British. (The negro population—Bantu, Hottentot, Bushman, and half-castes—only numbers about 85,000 since the wars of 1903-7.) The climate is nearly everywhere healthy for the white man, and the tsetse fly is almost completely absent from the entire colony of 322,450 square miles. Only in the extreme north, near the Kunene River, the Kubango, and Kwando is there malarial fever. In the interior, more or less parallel with the coast, are mountain ranges rising to considerable altitudes—8972 feet is the highest point. They enclose fertile valleys, and their mists and rains nourish perennial streams, which however do not send their waters to the sea except in flood time. Indeed over much of this central and northern mountain region the average yearly rainfall, between October and April, is only 20 inches.

Germany has made far from a bad bargain with Fate in investing in what was thought at the time by ignorant statesmen in England and Cape Colony to be a derelict portion of South Africa. Like parts of the French Sahara, German South-west Africa may turn out to be a singularly healthy and wealthy tract of land. But can it remain long a German Colony? Will not the attraction of the South African Union be more powerful than the fiat of governments five thousand miles away in London and Berlin? The parallel instances of Texas, Florida, and the United States may be quoted some day, very appositely. But such a movement, if it ever does come about, will be a peaceful one because it will be irresistible; and it may be coeval with a very close alliance in Europe, Asia, and Tropical Africa between Germany and her oldest Colony—Britain.

Togoland, between the Gold Coast and Dahomé, became a German protectorate in 1884. It has an area of 33,700 square miles and a negro population of about 1,000,000. Its boundaries were finally settled with France and Britain in 1899, and the neutral sphere, which contained the towns of Yendi and Salagá, was divided between Germany and Britain. Togoland stretches northward to the 11th degree of N. Lat. (its boundary with France) and includes the important Muhammadan towns of Yendi and Sansanne Mangu, in which the trading population is mainly Hausa. The administrative capital is Lome on the very narrow coast-belt. High and less unhealthy land for European settlement has been discovered in the interior; there have been no disturbances with the natives, and German trade has prospered. The annual total of imports and exports is now (1912) about £900,000. There is a railway, in all of about 130 miles, which links up Lome with other coast stations and with the hill stations in the interior. Togoland is the only German colonial possession which is self-supporting and does not require an annual subsidy towards its upkeep. The land has not been taken from the natives, and the native “Kings” and chiefs not only remain in power but are much consulted by the German government. Consequently there has never been any native rising or discontent with the white man’s over-rule.

Germany now possesses an African Empire of 1,032,000 square miles with a population of about 14,500,000 negroes and 30,700 whites—mainly Germans.