84.0 REPORT—1896. 
Geography is the study of distribution, and early in that study we must be 
struck with the correlation of these different distributions. If we take a map of 
Africa, and mark on it all the areas within the tropics covered with dense forest 
or scrub, we shall find we have drawn a map showing accurately the distribution 
of the worst types of malarial fever ; and that we have also indicated with some 
approach to accuracy—with, however, notable exceptions—the habitat of the lowest 
types of mankind. These are the facts which give the key to understanding why 
the progress of European colonisation on the West Coast has been so slow. 
Along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea we find settlements of Europeans at 
more or less distant intervals. All along, or nearly all along, this same coast we 
find a wide belt of fever-stricken forest, fairly thickly inhabited by uncivilised 
Negro and Bantu tribes. Inside this belt of forest the country rises in altitude, 
and becomes more open, whilst at the same time there is a distinct improvement 
in the type of native ; and the more we proceed inland, the more marked does this 
improvement become. There appear in fact to have been a number of waves of 
advancing civilisation, each one pressing the one in front of it towards these 
inhospitable forest belts. Near the ¢oast the lowest type of Negro is, generally 
speaking, to be found; then, as the more open country is reached, higher types of 
Negroes are encountered: for example, the Mandingoes of the Senegal region are 
distinctly higher than the Jolas inhabiting the mouths of the Gambia; and the 
Hausas of the Sokoto Empire are vastly superior to the cannibals of the Oil Rivers. 
Tn both these cases the higher types are probably not pure Negroes, but have Fulah, 
Berber, or Arab blood in their veins; for we see, in the case of the Fulahs, how 
they become absorbed into the race they are conquering; near the Senegal River 
they are comparatively light in colour, but in Adamawa they are hardly to be dis- 
tinguished by their features from the negroes they despise. Thus the process 
appears to have been a double one; the higher race driving some of the lower 
aboriginal tribes before them out of the better lands, and, at the same time, raising 
other tribes by means of an admixture of better blood. These waves of advancing 
civilisation seem to have advanced from the north and east, for the more we pene- 
trate in these directions, the higher is the type of inhabitant met with, until at 
last we reach the pure Berbers and the pure Arabs. Thus there are two civilising 
influences visible in this part of Africa: one coming from the north and east—a 
Mahommedan advance—which keeps beating up against this forest belt and occa- 
sionally breaking into it; the other, a Christian movement, which, until the 
middle of this century, was brought to a dead halt by this same obstacle. The 
map of Africa, showing the state of geographical knowledge in 1815, makes it clear 
that, except in a few cases where rivers helped travellers through these malarial 
regions, nothing was known about the interior. No doubt much has been done 
since those days, but this barrier still remains the great impediment to progress 
from the West Coast; and those who desire our influence to spread more effec- 
tively into the interior must wish to see some means of overcoming this obstacle. 
On the East Coast of Africa the conditions are. somewhat different, as there is 
comparatively little dense forest there; but the districts near that coast are also 
usually unhealthy, and how to cross those malarial regions quickly into the healthy 
or less unhealthy interior is the most important problem connected with the 
development of Tropical Africa. 
Other influences have been at work, no doubt, in checking our progress from 
the West Coast. In old days the European possessions in these districts were 
mere depéts for the export of slaves. As the white residents could not hope to 
compete with the natives in the actual work of catching these unfortunate creatures, 
and as the lower the type the more easily were they caught, as a rule, there was 
no reason whatever for attempting to penetrate into the interior, where the higher 
types are met with. But, though this export trade in human beings is now no 
longer an impediment to progress, the slave trade in the interior still helps to bar 
the way. When the forest belt is passed, we now come, generally speaking, to the 
line of demarcation between the Mahommedan and the Pagan tribes, and here slave 
catching is generally rife; when it is so, the constant raids of the Mahommedan 
chiefs keep these border districts in a state of unrest which in every way tends to 
