30 NORTH-EAST AFEICA. 



fain to reflect that wars and conquests and violent annexations are tlie inevitable 

 preliminaries of universal peace and brotherhood. 



Most of the African seaboard has already been seized by various European 

 states, and every fresh discovery in the interior enables their ofiicials, troops, and 

 collectors to penetrate farther inland. Trade also expands from year to year, and 

 the foreign exchanges of Egypt alone now exceed those of the whole continent 

 during the last generation, which in 1860 were estimated at about £38,000,000. 

 Highways are being constructed from the coasts towards the inland plateaux, 

 whereby future expeditions must be greatly facilitated. Lines of railway have 

 even begun to wind their way from a few seaports along the neighbouring valleys, 

 here and there scaling the escarpments, and slowly moving towards the centre of 

 the continent, where they must one day converge. To these first links, starting 

 from the coasts of Egypt, Tunis, Algeria, Senegambia, the Cape, and Natal, others 

 will soon be added, resembling the trenches cut by a besieging force round the 

 ramparts of some formidable stronghold. The whole of Africa may thus be 

 compared to a vast citadel, whose disunited garrison of some two hundred million 

 men, acting without unity or concert, must sooner or later open their gates and 

 capitulate to their European conquerors or patrons. For the possession of the 

 interior must inevitably fall ultimately to the masters of the sea and surrounding 

 coastlands. Even were any of the central states temporarily to acquire command 

 of the seaboard, they would be compelled to treat with some maritime European 

 power, and thus prepare the way for the invasion of their territories. Thus, 

 although not yet completely discovered, Africa is none the less, from the political 

 standpoint, already a mere dependence of Europe. By the opening of the Suez 

 Canal it has been doubly severed from Asia. To the European States thus belongs 

 the exclusive privilege of introducing a new civilisation into the Dark Continent, 

 and restoring to the inhabitants, under another form, the very culture which 

 Europe herself received from the people of the Nile Y^ley. 



