406 



GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND. 



the company, which did not differ from those 

 raised by British merchants. He found that 

 Nupe, the territory where Herr Honigsberg was 

 arrested, was independent of the sultanate of 

 Gandu, and was therefore not included in the 

 British protectorate, the extent of which was 

 defined in the official notification of Oct. 18, 

 1887. Consequently vessels and goods passing 

 up the Niger to Nupe have no duties to pay or 

 regulations to observe. He reported that the 

 territory of the company ends below the conflu- 

 ence of the Niger and Benue at Lokoya, and 

 that it was doubtful whether any districts on the 

 Benue beyond Nupe were subject to the com- 

 pany's jurisdiction. In regard to the assertion 

 that the high duties were necessary to enable the 

 company to discharge its administrative duties, 

 he found that 250,000 of capital alleged to have 

 been applied to securing territorial rights was 

 treated as a public debt of the Niger region, and 

 12,500 were paid as interest to the subscribers 

 out of the receipts of the administration. The 

 company was accused of imposing a prohibitive 

 duty on spirits to shut out the Hamburg mer- 

 chants, and at the same time carrying on an 

 active trade in the article. In accordance with 

 the Brussels general act the sale or barter of 

 spirituous liquors north of 7 of north latitude 

 has been forbidden. The German traders were 

 disappointed in their expectation of gaining 

 access to the Benue by the extension of the Ger- 

 man sphere from the Cameroons to Nupe as 

 their Government did not care to contest the 

 claims based on the treaties made with the Sul- 

 tans of Gandu and Sokoto by Joseph Thomson. 

 The native rulers said that they supposed Eng- 

 glish, French, and Germans to be all the same, 

 and that in making those treaties they were 

 opening their countries to general European in- 

 tercourse. The Niger Company repaired its 

 omissions by making a separate treaty with the 

 King of Nupe and others with the chiefs in the 

 northern part of the old Yoruba Kingdom which 

 lies between Nupe and the German protectorate 

 and also approaches the French possession at 

 Abeokuta. The French, who had some claim 

 over the region, agreed to limit their sphere by a 

 line drawn from Badagry, on the western bound- 

 ary of Lagos, north to 9 of north latitude and 

 thence northwestward. The earlier treaties, 

 which were rather of a commercial than of a 

 political character, have since been replaced by 

 others giving the company full civil, fiscal, and 

 criminal jurisdiction in Sokoto and Gandu, and 

 a treaty with the large and important Kingdom 

 of Borgu secures the middle Niger from French 

 interference either from the Western Soudan or 

 from the direction of Dahomey. The Anglo- 

 French agreement delimits the English and 

 French spheres on the Niger, but not in the 

 Central Soudan, and the French and the Niger 

 Company are each endeavoring to anticipate the 

 other to the south and the east of Lake Tchad. 



The total population under British control in 

 the region of the Niger and the Oil rivers is 

 estimated at 12,000,000. The chief article of ex- 

 port, as in the west coast colonies, is the produce 

 of the cocoa-nut palm, the oil as extracted by the 

 natives by fermentation in pits, or the kernels 

 or copra. 



The Oil Rivers district, the low, unhealthful 



delta of the Niger, forms a complicated network 

 of creeks, most of them flowing out of the 

 Niger, although the principal of the Oil rivers, 

 the Calabar, and some of the others have no 

 connection with that river. British traders 

 have been established there for a century, but 

 until the race for African possessions began the 

 British Government had no desire to claim the 

 country because they were slave holders formerly 

 and were still employers of slaves and many of 

 the natives were cannibals. The district, under 

 an order of council issued in 1885, has been 

 governed by a consular staff. In the latter part 

 of 1889 some of the Liverpool merchants who 

 do business there petitioned to have it incor- 

 porated in the Niger territory, while others 

 were in favor of annexation to the crown colony 

 of Lagos. They first applied for a separate 

 royal charter after uniting in a company with a 

 nominal capital of 2,000,000, four times the 

 fixed capital of their African establishments. 

 They had no chance of obtaining a charter for 

 themselves when the fact came out that they 

 shipped 10,000 hogheads of gin to the Oil rivers 

 annually. They formed themselves into an 

 African Association for the very purpose of pre- 

 venting the country from being handed over to 

 the Niger Company and their prosperous trade 

 from being ruined by high tariffs. In conse- 

 quence of the complaints from all quarters the 

 Niger Company reduced the import duties, but 

 did not change the still more objectionable and 

 restrictive duties on exports. The trade of the 

 Oil Rivers for the three years ending with 1888 

 amounted to the average of 1,800,000, of which 

 over 1,000,000 were exports. Except Hamburg 

 spirits the imports are mostly of British manu- 

 facture. Besides palm oil and kernels, rubber 

 is exported in considerable quantities, the natives 

 in the peaceful districts having in recent times 

 been taught to prepare it. The most important 

 of the islands belonging to Great Britain near 

 the coast of Africa is Mauritius, formerly a 

 French colony, which was under direct Crown 

 administration till 1885, when an elective ele- 

 ment was introduced. The Executive Council is 

 composed of 7 members, and of these 5 are the 

 chief officials of the colony and 2 are delegates 

 from the Council of Government, selected from 

 the elected members, of whom there are 10, while 

 9 are appointed by the Governor and 8 are 

 official. The present Governor is Sir Charles 

 Cameron Lees, appointed in 1889. The area of 

 the island is 708 square miles. The population 

 on Jan. 1, 1889, was 369,302, of whom 207,157 

 were males and 162,145 females. The Indian 

 population numbered 251,550, and the remainder 

 of 117,752 was made up of whites, Africans, 

 mixed races, and Chinese, of whom there were 

 3,935. The revenue in 1888 was 8,574,058 rupees, 

 and the expenditure 7.771,579 rupees. The im- 

 ports were valued at 15,341,202 rupees and the 

 exports at 32,291,978 rupees, 28,754,798 rupees 

 representing the staple product of the colony, 

 raw sugar. The white people of the island are 

 French Creoles, who cling to their old language 

 and customs in spite of attempts to anglicize 

 them. A society formed for the preservation 

 of the French language among the people, 

 called the French Alliance, was recently forbid- 

 den by the Archbishop of Port Louis, and its 



