E.— GEOGRAPHY. 115 



to-day we are confronted by the impact of highly organised Western 

 civilisation, with its immense command over natural forces by means of 

 machinery, science and skill in the arts, on a people and a country in a 

 far more primitive stage of development. 



Perhaps nothing brings this out more clearly than the fact that, with 

 the exception of a comparatively slight infiltration of the use of Arabic 

 script from the north-eastern Sudan and from Zanzibar, we have found in 

 Africa no knowledge of writing, and consequently no means of communica- 

 tion between man and man by means of the written word. 



We still know astonishingly little regarding the history of the interior 

 of the continent. We learn dimly the traditions of the continual move- 

 ment of peoples, constant and almost universal warfare, of slavery and 

 the slave trade. We must admit that the first contact between Europe 

 and Tropical Africa was to take a hand in this last nefarious business, and 

 up to a hundred years ago African trade and commerce may be summed 

 up in the two words ' slaves ' and ' ivory.' 



It was only in the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first 

 decade of the ^jresent century that the interior of Africa became effectively 

 parcelled out among the principal European Powers. In some parts of 

 it we are still in the pioneer stage, in others we are just passing out of the 

 pioneer stage into a new stage of consolidation. 



The history of modern Africa is bound up with the history of the 

 railways which European enterprise is pushing every year into the interior 

 of the continent. Forty years ago there were no railways in Tropical 

 Africa. To-day there are over 10,000 miles, and the locomotive may be 

 taken as the outstanding symbol of this new force which is entering into 

 the continent for the first time. 



One other fact is illustrative of our problem. Money is a new thing 

 in Africa. I have visited a market town in Nigeria where I have seen 

 cowrie-shells still being used as currency. Twenty-eight years ago the 

 missionaries opened the first post-office in Uganda. British administration 

 had not yet been established, and the missionaries produced their own 

 postage-stamps, and the value on those stamps was expressed in cowrie- 

 shells, not in pence. To-day something over £3,000,000 in coin and notes 

 is being paid out annually to Uganda natives for their cotton crop alone. 

 In West Africa money has only recently replaced square-shaped bottles 

 of alleged gin and yards of cloth as the medium of exchange. 



Money is therefore quite a new idea to the African mind, and it is even 

 true to say of many parts of Africa that the idea that the products of the 

 soil or of the forests have a value in the exchange is a new one. The 

 ' economic crop ' is really a new factor. The idea that land has a value 

 is a new factor, particularly among the Bantu people of the continent, 

 whose previous agricultural activities were limited to the production of a 

 sufficient quantity of food by each family for that family and as tribute 

 to a chief, while wives and cattle were regarded as the chief measure of a 

 man's wealth. 



The farther we push our investigations into the contrast between the 

 old Africa of the past and the new just dawning, the more we have to realise 

 how great is the gulf between them. In the old Africa, disease was regarded 

 as the work of evil spirits, and the prevention and cure of maladies was 



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