278 COMMERCIAL PROSPECTS 



Those who read the works of the English, German, and French 

 explorers who travelled at the back of our West African colonies on the 

 Niger, in the Western Sudan, and about Lake Chad down to, let us say, six 

 years ago, must admit that unless one and all of these travellers had been 

 deliberately lying, the bloodshed and misery that went on in these regions 

 was incomparably more awful than the whole sum of " atrocities " inflicted 

 by ill-conducted Europeans, or produced by European warfare with the 

 natives incidental to the extension of European rule over the western third 

 of Africa. I for one, with every desire to be unpn-ejudiced, cannot come 

 to any other conclusion than that tlie natives of Nigeria have immensely 

 gained in happiness and security of life and property wherever we have 

 undertaken the direct administration and control of the countries in which 

 they live. Those who may desire to realise what the condition of the 

 natives was before British control of some kind was established in Nigeria 

 should espjecially read the works of Barth, Kohlfs, and Baikie, and the 

 African (Slave Trade) Blue Books from 1866 to 1884: 200, 300 Negroes 

 may have been killed in a war which abolished the bloody rule of Benin, 

 but this abolished o'Sgime caused the death, often under circumstances of 

 horrible torture, of at least 1,000 negroes per annum, while under this 

 dominion no one but the king or the sorcerer dared to grow rich or had 

 any security that the property accumulated by his industry would remain 

 with him and descend to his children. Visit the rivers of the Niger 

 Delta now and see if you can state with truth that the negroes are not 

 happy, numerous, and commencing to lead a civilised and comfortable life. 

 Then, again, in British Central Africa. Prior to the effective develop- 

 ment of British control continual loss of life was going on amongst the 

 natives. The Arabs and their adherents, the Muhammadan Yaos, traded 

 and raided all through the eastern part of the territory for slaves, this 

 slave-raiding resulting in a very great loss of life, whilst the miseries 

 endured by the slaves on their way to the coast have scarcely, if at all, 

 been exaggerated by travellers like Livingstone. Mlozi, the Arab raider 

 who lost his life in the final struggle at the north end of Lake Nyasa, must 

 have been responsible in his time for the death of something like 10,000 

 negroes of the surrounding Wankonde tribes. The Arab often killed for tlie 

 mere lust and joy of killing. His black slaves and soldiers shared his ferocity. 

 Captive women were needlessly murdered in cold blood. Their children 

 were torn from them and thrown into the camp fires or spitted on spears. 

 A large number of boys were mutilated to provide eunuchs for Muham- 

 madan harims. Bands of Zulus who had left South Africa owing to the 

 civil wars in the early part of the nineteenth century established kingdoms 

 which involved jierpetual bloodshed in internecine fighting and aggressive 

 attacks on other tribes in the territories west of Lake Nyasa. Portuguese 



