APPENDIX VI.— ECONOMIC CONDITIONS 513 



himself to mild inquiries, while his rivals secure the trade of the country, 

 is merely on a par with the supineness of the British Government. Having 

 allowed the French to establish themselves at Jibuti, and handed over the 

 fertile province of Harrar to the Abyssinians — part of that policy of 

 ■" graceful concessions " which gave Port Arthur to Russia, and the Western 

 Soudan to France — Lord Salisbury's Government have made the further 

 mistake of letting the French forestall us in establishing railway com- 

 munication with the interior. While the latter are straining every nerve to 

 complete the line between Jibuti and Harrar, and thus secure a monopoly 

 of the Abyssinian trade, our rulers, though frequently urged to do so, have 

 made no effort to secure the same advantage for the British ports. Unless 

 they change their attitude of " masterly inactivity," it needs no prophetic 

 insight to foretell that the French will attain the object they have in view, 

 and the Abyssinian trade with its possibilities of almost indefinite extension 

 be lost to us for ever. 



The disadvantages which the British Protectorate labours under are 

 threefold. First, the wholly unnecessary trans-shipment of goods at Aden, 

 adding greatly to their cost and to the difficulty of competing in European 

 markets with the produce of other regions, e.g. American coffee ; secondly, 

 the growing insufficiency of harbour accommodation owing to the gradual 

 silting up of the port of Berbera ; thirdly, the want of cheap and rapid 

 transit to Harrar and Abyssinia. 



The remedies suggested by a perusal of the Blue Books and personal 

 observation are : first, the establishment of direct communication with 

 Europe by arranging with (and, if necessary, subsidising) one of the 

 existing Hnes of British steamers to call regularly for freight at Berbera 

 and Zeila ; secondly, the systematic dredging of Berbera harbour ; thirdly, 

 the construction of a light railway running from Zeila or Berbera to Harrar, 

 or better still to Tadechamalca, at the foot of the Abyssinian highlands, 

 which would do away with the loss of time and money involved in the 

 re-loading of goods at Gildessa and Harrar. It is to be hoped, now peace 

 is restored in Eastern Somaliland, that the Government will see its way to 

 carrying out at least the third of these works before it is too late. 



2. — Abyssinia 1 



The peculiar formation of the Abyssinian plateau, which rises like a 

 wall of rock from the surrounding plains, and the wide waterless region 



1 The facts and figures contained in this abstract are taken from the Foreign Office 

 Blue Book (Nov. 1900), containing the interesting reports of Mr. J. L. Baird, attached to 

 the British Agency at Adis Ababa, and Mr. J. Gerohmato, British Consular agent at 

 Harrar. 



2 L 



