Sept. 7, 1888.] 



SCIENTIFIC NEWS. 



2 45 



steamer that would be invaluable to us in war time, and our 

 trade would not have been liable, as it is now, to paralysis by the 

 closing of the Canal. 



Third. Sir William Hunter has pointed out that, since the 

 opening of the Canal, India has entered the market as a competitor 

 with the British workman ; and that the development of that part 

 of the empire as a manufacturing and food-exporting country will 

 involve changes in English production which must for a time be 

 attended by suffering and loss. Indian trade has advanced by 

 rapid strides, the exports of merchandise have risen from an 

 average of 57 millions for the five years preceding 1874 to 88 

 millions in 1884, and there has been an immense expansion in the 

 export of bulky commodities. Wheat, which occupied an insignifi- 

 cant place in the list of exports, is now a great staple of Indian 

 commerce, and the export has risen since 1873 from if to 21 

 million hundredweight. It is almost impossible to estimate the 

 ultimate dimensions of the wheat trade, and it is only the fore- 

 runner of other trades in which India is destined to compete keenly 

 with the English and European producers. 



The position in which England has been placed by the opening of 

 the Canal is in some respects similar to that of Venice after the 

 discovery of the Cape route ; but there is a wide difference in the 

 spirit with which the change in the commercial routes was accepted. 

 Venice made no attempt to use the Cape route, and did all she 

 could to prevent others from taking advantage of it ; England, 

 though by a natural instinct she opposed the construction of the 

 Canal, was one of the first to take advantage of it when opened, 

 and so far as the carrying trade is concerned she has hitherto suc- 

 cessfully competed with other countries. 



The increasing practice of the present day is for each maritime 

 country to import and carry the Indian and other commodities it 

 requires, and we must be prepared for a time when England will no 

 longer be the emporium of Eastern commerce for Europe, or possess 

 so large a proportion as she now does of the carrying trade. So 

 great, however, is the genius of the English people for commercial 

 enterprise, and so imbued are they with the spirit of adventure, that 

 we may reasonably hope loss of trade in one direction will be com- 

 pensated by the discovery of new fields of commercial activity. 

 The tendency at present is to shorten sea-routes by maritime 

 canals ; to construct canals for bringing ocean-going ships to inland 

 centres of industry ; and to utilise water carriage, wherever it may 

 be practicable, in preference to carriage by land. For a correct 

 determination of the lines which these shortened trade routes and 

 great maritime canals should follow, a sound knowledge of geo- 

 graphy and of the physical condition of the earth is necessary ; and 

 instruction in this direction should form an important feature in 

 any educational course of commercial geography. The great 

 problem of the future is the inland carrying trade, and one of the 

 immediate commercial questions of the day is — who is to supply 

 the interiors of the great continents of Asia and Africa, and other 

 large areas not open to direct sea traffic ? 



The question of supplying European goods to one portion of 

 Central Asia has been partially solved by the remarkable voyage 

 of Mr. Wiggins last year, and by the formation of the company of 

 the " Phcenix Merchant Adventurers." Mr. Wiggins started from 

 Newcastle-on-Tyne for Yeniseisk, the first large town on the 

 Yenesei, some 2,000 miles from the mouth of that river and within 

 a few hundred versts of the Chinese frontier. On the 9th October, 

 1887, he cast anchor and landed his cargo in the heart of Siberia. 

 The exploit is one of which any man might well be proud, but in Mr. 

 Wiggins's case there is the additional merit that success was the 

 result of conviction arrived at by a strict method of induction, that 

 the Gulf S tream passed through the Straits into the Kara Sea and 

 that its action, combined with that of the immense volume of 

 water brought down by the Obi and Yenisei, would free the sea 

 from ice and render it navigable for a portion of each year. The 

 attempts of England to open up commercial relations with the in- 

 terior of Africa have too often been marked by want, if not open 

 contempt, of geographical knowledge, and by a great deficiency of 

 foresight ; but the competition with Germany is forcing this country 

 to pay increased attention to African commerce, and the formation 

 of such companies as the British East African Company, the 

 African Lakes Company and the Royal Niger Company is a happy 

 omen for the future. 



I am afraid that I have frequently travelled beyond the sphere of 

 geography. My object has been to draw attention to the supreme 

 importance to this country of the science of commercial geography. 

 That science is not confined to a knowledge of the localities in 

 which those products of the earth which have a commercial value 

 are to be found, and of the markets in which they can be sold with 

 the greatest profit. Its higher aims are to divine, by a combination 

 of historical retrospect and scientific foresight, the channels through 

 which- commerce will flow in the future, and the points at which 



new centres of trade must arise in obedience to known laws. A 

 precise knowledge of the form, size, and geological structure of the 

 globe ; of its physical features ; of the topographical distribution of 

 its mineral and vegetable products, and of the varied forms of ani- 

 mal life, including man, that it sustains ; of the influence of geo- 

 graphical environment on man and the lower animals ; and of the 

 climatic conditions of the various regions of the earth, is absolutely 

 essential to a successful solution of the many problems before us. 

 If England is to maintain her commanding position in the 

 world of commerce she must approach these problems in the spirit 

 of Prince Henry the Navigator, and by high scientific training fit 

 her sons to play their part like men in the coming struggle for com- 

 mercial supremacy. The struggle will be keen, and victory will 

 rest with those who have most fully realised the truth of the maxim 

 that " knowledge is power." 



I may add that if there is one point clearer than another in the 

 history of commerce it is this : that when a state cannot effectually 

 protect its carrying trade in time of war, that trade passes from it 

 and does not return. If England is ever found wanting in the 

 power to defend her carrying trade, her fate will only too surely, 

 and I might almost say justly, be that of Venice, Spain, Portugal 

 and Holland. 



In Africa the existence nearly everywhere of a wide coast plain 

 with a deadly climate, and the difficulties attending land transport 

 in a country where the usual beasts of burden, such as the camel, 

 the ox, the horse, and the mule, cannot be utilised, will probably 

 for many years retard the development of the land trade. On the 

 other hand, the Congo with its wide-reaching arms, the Niger, the 

 Nile, the Zambesi, the Shire, and the great lakes Nyassa, Tan- 

 ganyika, and the Victoria and Albert Nyanzas offer great facility 

 for water transport, and afford easy access to the interior without 

 traversing the pestilential plains. Already steamers ply on most of 

 the great waterways — each year sees some improvement in this re- 

 spect ; and a road is in course of construction from Lake Nyassa to 

 Tanganyika which will tend, if Arab raiders can be checked, to 

 divert inland traffic from Zanzibar to Quilimane, and will become 

 an important link in what must be one of the great trade routes in 

 the future. It is possible, I believe, with our present knowledge 

 of Africa, and by a careful study of its geographical features, to 

 foresee the lines along which trade routes will develop themselves 

 and the points at which centres of trade will arise ; but I have 

 already detained you too long, and will only venture to indicate 

 Sawakin, Mombasa, Quilimane, or some point near the mouth of 

 the Zambesi, and Delagoa Bay, as places on the east coast of Africa 

 which, from their geographical position, must eventually become of 

 great importance as outlets for the trade of the interior. 



The future of Africa presents many difficult problems, some of 

 which will no doubt be brought to your notice during the discussion 

 which, I trust, will follow the reading of the African papers ; and 

 there is one especially — the best means of putting an end to slave- 

 hunting and the slave-trade — which is now happily attracting con- 

 siderable attention. It is surely not too much to hope that the 

 nations which have been so eager to annex African soil will re- 

 member the trite saying that " property has its duties as well as its 

 rights," and that one of the most pressingly important of the duties 

 imposed upon them by their action is to control the fiends in human 

 form who, of set purpose, have laid waste some of the fairest 

 regions of the earth, and imposed a reign of terror throughout 

 Equatorial Africa. 



ABSTRACT OF THE ADDRESS TO THE MECHANICAL 

 SCIENCE SECTION OF THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION. 



By William Henry Preece, F.R.S., M.Inst.C.E., etc., 

 President of the Section. 



" Canst thou send lightnings, that they may go, and say unto thee, 

 Here we are ? " were pregnant words addressed to Job unknown 

 centuries ago. They express the first recorded idea in history of 

 the potentiality of electricity to minister to the wants of mankind. 

 From Job to Franklin is a long swing in the pendulum of time. It 

 was not until that American philosopher brought down atmospheric 

 electricity by his kite-string in 1747, and showed that we could lead 

 it where we willed, that we were able to answer the question 

 addressed to the ancient patriarch. Nearly another century elapsed 

 before this mysterious power of nature was fairly conquered. It has 

 been during this generation, and during the life of the British 

 Association, that electricity has been usefully employed ; and it is 

 because I have taken a subordinate position in inaugurating nearly 

 all of its practical applications, that I venture to make the develop- 

 ments of them the text of my address to this section. 



People are singularly callous in matters affecting their own 

 personal safety ; they will not believe in mysteries, and they ridicule 



