October i, i 888.1 THE TROPICAL 
AGRICULTURIST. 
279 
COLONISING EAST AFRICA : THE 
BRITISH EAbT AFBIOA COMPANY: 
TME U. E. A, COY. TO HAVE 50,000 MILES. 
Wo reprint today from the London Gazette, of 
I'BBt night the text of the Charter which has just 
been granted to the Imperial British East Africa 
Company. We also print a long account, from 
the pen of a well-informed correspondent, of the 
character, purposes, and prospects of this new and 
very important enterprise, The Charter ha3 been 
issued in response to the petition of Mr. William 
Maokinnon, Lord Brassey, Sir Donald Stewart, Sir 
John Kirk, and others — men whose- character and 
reputation arc a sure guarantee that the great work 
undertaken by them in the foundation of the British 
East Africa Company will be pursued with 
energy, discretion, and humanity. The territory 
to be administered and developed by the Com- 
pany lias been obtained by formal cession from 
the Sultan of Zanzibar and from a large number 
of independent or semi-independent chiefs in the 
interior. It lies wholly within the region recognized 
by agreement between this country and Germany as 
reserved for the exclusive exercise of British influence 
in that portion of Eastern Africa. Starting with a 
strip of coast line, ceded by the Sultan of Zanzibar, 
about 10 miles broad and 150 miles long, including 
tho important and very valuable harbour of Mom- 
bassa, it stretches inwards in the shape of an 
irregular wodge, which has its apex on the eastern 
shore of tho Victoria Nyanza. Its northern boundary 
is the River Tana from the coast for some distance 
inward: 1 , though it ultimately quits that river and 
turns considerably to the northwards before reaching 
tho Victoria Nyanza, so as to include tho northern 
slopes of Mount Kenia ; and its southern boundary 
i the lino of demarcation already agreed upon 
between the respective spheres of British and German 
influence. There Beems, however, to be room for an 
amioabtc rectilication at certain points of this 
somewhat hastily drawn boundary, and it is to be 
hoped that this matter may be adjusted without 
delay, and that no troublesome questions may be 
loft in aboyance, to give rise to dispute hereafter, 
when British and German enterprise have established 
themselves within the respective spheres of influence 
of the two Towers. 
The territory thus formally handed over to the 
new Company has an estimated area of about 50,000 
square miles and ' an estimated population of 
about two millions. It is known to include 
some of the most fertile and salubrious regions 
of Eastern Africa, and there is every reason to 
boliove that its exploitation and development 
will, in time, reclaim a vast area for civilization 
and amply repuy the elTorts of those who have under- 
taken the task. At the same time the magnitude 
and difliculty of the task must not be underesti- 
mated. The coast and the country for some distance 
inland are known to bo far from healthy. It ,is not 
until the elevated plateau of the interior is reached 
that the fertile and salubrious distriets are found 
which havo been described almost as a Paradise by 
those European travellers who hare visit* ,1 tin m 
It is hardly safe, perhaps, to take too literally 
tho nnthusiastio descriptions of explorers and 
discovers. But, whon all reasonable deductions 
are tnndo, thero socms to be no doubt that the 
upland regions which ho between the Zanzibar 
coasts and tho Equatorial Lakes aro eminently 
aduptod for development by European enter- 
prise, It is possible, indeed, that the unhealthiness 
of tho coast may huvo been exaggerated. The 
routes to the interior, which have hitherto boon 
mainly used by slave traders and their caravans, 
ecu) to have been deliboratuly established iu places 
so unhealthy that the slavo-traders were not 
likely to find their passage disputed by robust and 
warlike tribes. If this be so, however, the circum- 
stance is not likely to constitute one of the initial 
difficulties of the new Company. The Company is 
required by its Charter to discourage and, so far 
as may be practicable and consistent with existing 
treaties, to abolish, any system of slave trade or 
domestic servitude within its territories. It will, 
therefore, find the whole slave-trading interest op- 
posed to it from the outset ; and that this is no 
contemptible obstacle to its enterprise seems to bo 
shown by the news, which reaches us this morning, 
of a conflict which has just occurred between tho 
boats of the German gunboat " Mb'we " and a force 
of discontented Arabs and natives at Tanga, near 
Pangani, a place on the Zanzibar coast, within tho 
territory of the German African Company, Tho 
" Mows " has found it necessary to shell tho town, 
and a good deal of excitement seems to prevail 
in the district, though the presence of a German 
fleet in the neighbourhood will probably suffice to 
prevent any serious disturbance. Discontent with 
the procedure of the German Company is said to 
be the cause of the outbreak, and this may be 
regarded as an example of the kind of opposition 
which the British Company is not unlikely to 
encounter in its turn. Nor will it3 difficulties be 
confined to the coast. A considerable portion of 
the uplands of the interior is occupied by the 
warlike Masai tribes, whoare said by our Correspon- 
dent to be the scourge of the whole region. "They 
are," he says, "perpetually carrying slaughter 
and devastation among their neighbours, steal- 
ing their cattle, and redering anything like 
settled industry impossible." The presence 
of these irritable and warlike savages is un- 
doubtedly an obstacle to the immediate civilization 
of a district otherwise eminently adapted for the 
peaceful and beneficent processes of European 
enterprise. But it is not an insurmountable 
obstacle. Tho colonization and commercial de- 
velopment of a new land peopled by savage races 
is never an easy task. But it is a task which 
Englishmen have undertaken over and over again 
and always accomplished in the end. Certainly 
the task has not often been undertaken under 
better auspices at the outset or with better pros- 
pects of ultimate success then those which tho 
Imperial British East Africa Company now enjoys. 
It is no small matter that England is now 
definitely committed to a share in the work of 
carrying European civilization into the recesses 
of the Dark Continent. It may be that this will 
hereafter be regarded as one of the great achieve- 
ments of the nineteenth century. The issue of 
such an undertaking are as yet literally incalcu- 
lable. Africa, especially Eastern Afrioa, seems to 
be like a fruit with a rough and forbidding rind 
and a sweet kernel within. There is no calcu- 
lating as yet what the full value of the kernel 
may be when the rind is once ponetrated and 
stripped oil, but there is no reason to think that 
its value has been greatly overestimated by tho 
fow who have been permitted to tas'e it. It is 
likely enough that, although Africa has been tin' 
last of the great territorial divisions of tho earth's 
surface to yield up its secret and its treasures 
to European curiosity and enterprise, it may yet 
prove in the end to be as rich as any, and 
may surrender moro rapidly and completely to 
tho peaceful conquests of civilization. Tho re- 
sources accessible nowadays to thoso who attempt 
to explore and develop a now country aro far greater 
and moro potent than at any previous period 
of tho world's history. It is, indeed, when wo 
come to uudcrtako a taak such as thai which 
