'250 



EAST AFRICA. 



mesdemoiselles, il est temps de s'en aller," with the 

 best French accent I have ever heard in an English- 

 man's mouth." When " Trilby " had its enormous 

 vogue Du Maurier had one regret. " This boom," 

 he confessed, " rather distresses me when I reflect 

 that Thackeray never had a boom." Not that Du 

 Maurier imagined that a " boom " was any proof of 

 literary excellence, but it meant money. He is re- 

 ported to have said that the success of " Trilby " 

 killed him. That novel has been dramatized and 

 played with great success, a son of the author being 

 in the cast. That son recalls some interesting remi- 

 niscences of his father. He says : 



" Father never thought that ' Trilby ' would be a 

 success as a play when he was first told that it was 

 going to be dramatized. However, he said he didn't 

 care what was done with it, so long as he was not 

 obliged to see it. He always hated the theater, any- 

 way, and never went unless he had to, for the sake 

 of some one else. But he rather changed his mind 

 later about ' Trilby.' That is. he thought it was 

 awfully clever to be able to make a play out of it at 

 all, and was quite pleased at the way in which sev- 

 eral of the scenes were reproduced. He went to the 

 dress rehearsal, and several times after that. 



"As for the book 'Trilby,' my father grew very 

 tired of the furore which that created. Everything 

 in the shops was 'Trilby' for a time gloves, boots, 

 shoe laces it was ridiculous, and the very name 

 grew wearisome to him. Personally, 1 like ' Peter 

 Ibbetson ' much better than ' Trilby,' and I think 

 father also thought it was the better book of the 

 two. He was very much interested in the new book, 

 ' The Martian,' and preferred it to the others." 



" He had not the slightest idea of fashion, or what 

 was the correct thing in dress. People supposed 

 that he noticed those things, of course, and girls 

 used to come to call upon my mother and sisters 

 got up beautifully, and expecting that father would 

 want to put them into his drawings, or would at 

 least get some ideas from them. But, dear me, he 

 hadn't the least notion of what they had on ! My 

 sisters looked to it that he got the right things in 

 his pictures. He would come home sometimes and 

 sketch something which had attracted him in a 

 passer-by on the street. Often it would be some 

 impossibly queer arrangement, and my sisters would 

 protest : ' Why, father, you mustn't use that in 

 " Punch." Nobody wears those things now ; they're 

 dreadfully old-fashioned,' and he would give in im- 

 mediately to what he recognized as their superior 

 judgment. 



" He put himself into all his books; perhaps more 

 directly into ' Peter Ibbetson ' than the others. The 

 dislike of cruelty to dumb animals which he men- 

 tions in several places was a characteristic of his. 

 He never would shoot or hunt in any way when he 

 was a young man. He didn't mind boxing, or any 

 sort of reasonable encounter between men, but the 

 idea of hurting helpless creatures lower in the scale 

 was very repulsive to him. 



" People used to send him jokes from all over 

 England, but he didn't use so very many of them. 

 At least three fourths of all those which appeared 

 were his own. It was a tax. Sometimes it worried 

 him not a little, and to see him walking up and 

 down the room trying to think of a joke oh, it was 

 awful ! " 



E 



EAST AFRICA. In the last century the Imams 

 of Muscat expelled the Portuguese garrisons from 

 Zanzibar and the African mainland, and established 

 their dominion over the native tribes sufficiently to 

 protect the trade routes into the interior. In 1861 

 a dispute having arisen as to the succession between 

 the sons of the deceased Seyyid Said of Muscat, 

 Seyyid Majid set up a separate Government in Zan- 

 zibar, which, by the arbitration of the Governor 

 General of India, Lord Canning, was recognized as 

 independent. Seyyid Majid established custom- 

 houses in the ports along the coast from Warsheikh, 

 in 3 of north latitude, to Tunghi Bay, in 10 42' of 

 south latitude, and maintained a considerable mili- 

 tary force for the protection of the caravan routes for 

 Europeans and East Indians, as well as for Arabs. In 

 1884 agents of the German East African Association 

 concluded treaties with native chiefs back of the coast 

 opposite Zanzibar. The association was chartered 

 as the German East African Company, and received 

 a patent of imperial protection from the German 

 Government on March 3, 1885. In 1886 an agree- 

 ment was made between England, France, and Ger- 

 many, whereby the Sultan of Zanzibar was recog- 

 nized as holding sovereign rights over a strip of 

 coast only 10 miles wide, a German sphere of influ- 

 ence was recognized extending from the Portuguese 

 possession of Mozambique to and including the 

 Kilimanjaro mountains and inland to the boundary 

 of the Congo Free State, and the region north of 

 the German sphere, from the Umba to the Tana 

 river, was recognized as England's sphere of influ- 

 ence, save the sultanate of Vitu, with which Ger- 

 many had concluded a treaty of protection. The 

 German East Africa Company in May, 1888, leased 



the customs of its coast line from the Sultan of 

 Zanzibar for fifty years for the sum of 4,000,000 

 marks. The Imperial British East Africa Company 

 obtained by charter on Sept. 3, 1888, the right to ad- 

 minister the British sphere, and acquired from the 

 ruler of Zanzibar a lease of the ports and the collec- 

 tion of customs and administration of the coast as far 

 north as Kipini. In 1889 it acquired the ports and 

 islands north of the Tana, including Lamu, Manda, 

 and Patta. In 1890, by agreements with Germany 

 and France, Great Britain acquired permission to 

 establish a protectorate over the Sultan of Zanzibar, 

 and an extension of the British sphere of influence 

 northward to the Juba river. Germany at the same 

 time ceded Vitu to England. A British protectorate 

 was effectively established over Zanzibar in October, 

 1891, when the Government was reorganized, with 

 Sir L. Mathews at its head, and the British consul 

 general was placed in control of all expenditure 

 and new undertakings. Zanzibar was declared a 

 free port on Feb. 1, 1892. On Aug, 26 the Sultan 

 of Zanzibar, at the instance of the British Govern- 

 ment, ceded to Italy the Somali ports of Brava, 

 Merka, Mogadoscio, and Warsheikh, of which the 

 Italian Government took possession on Sept. 26, 

 1893. The British East Africa Company evacuated 

 the territory between the Tana and Juba rivers on 

 July 31, 1893, handing over the administration to 

 the Sultan of Zanzibar. On June 15, 1895, a British 

 protectorate was proclaimed over the whole terri- 

 tory of the British East Africa Company from the 

 coast to the boundaries of Uganda, and on June 30, 

 1895, that company evacuated the strip of coast 

 leased by the Sultan of Zanzibar, the administra- 

 tion of which was transferred to the British Im- 



