our noble selves and ask the world to remark the glorious work we have accomplished. We speak as if the good to the native had been enormous, and our intercourse with him an unmitigated benefit and blessing. We look back with pride to our sacrifices in the suppression of the slave trade, and point to our West Coast settlements as centres of secular light and leading, to our numerous missionary stations as stars twinkling in the night of heathendom with a heaven-sent light, to the returns of our trade, increasing with every new entrance to the heart of the country, as showing the spread of our beneficent influence.

We see clearly that the work of other nations has been pernicious in the extreme, that they have been brutal in their dealings with native races, and have thought only of their own sordid interests and national aggrandizement-all in marked contrast, we think, to our own aims and methods. That they resent this, however. may be seen in any daily paper, each being equally well convinced of the purity of its motives and the disinterestedness of its ends.

Among no people have the magic words, progress and civilization, been more persistently used than among the French. It has been in their interests, too, that the Germans have levelled every town on the East Coast, and bespattered the ruins and the jungles with the life-blood of their inhabitants. It was under their banner that Major Serpa Pinto advanced up the Shire and slaughtered the Makololo, who did not perceive he came for their good. In fact, it is the same with all the European nations. Whatever has been done by them in Africa, has been at the dictates of civilization and for the good of the negro, while, as if not content with that. inore than one leader of African enterprise, on looking back over his blood and ruin marked path, has seen the evidence of a guidance and support more than human.

But we must not suppose that this spirit of philanthropy, Christian chivalry and altruism, of which we now hear so much, is of entirely modern growth, and that the good of the African was never thought of previous to our day. Quite the contrary, in fact. It was the Portuguese who alike instituted African exploration and Christian enterprise among the natives. Early

in the fifteenth century they commenced that marvellous career of discovery which stopped not till they had crept with evergrowing boldness and experience to the southernmost point of the continent, and, rounding the Cape, pushed on to the conquest of the Indies. But it was a career inspired by no mere sordid motives. The desire to do noble and worthy deeds, to extend the Portuguese empire, and with it the kingdom of God, were the underlying exciting causes. Each new discovery of heathen lands gave a new impetus to the vigorous missionary enthusiasin of the time, till it rose to a pitch never surpassed.

No outward bound ship was complete without its complement of ardent missionaries vowed to the cause of Christ, and before the close of the sixteenth century a chain of missionary posts surrounded almost the entire coast line of Africa, and, especially in the Congo and Zambesi regions, extended far into the interior. That was the glorious period of Portuguese history, when, still animated by the highest Christian and chivalrous motives, and untainted by the frightful national diseases which soon afterward attacked her, Portugal carried on a noble work among the African natives.

That period unhappily was short. Between Philip II of Spain by land, and the Dutch and ourselves at sea, Portugal as a nation was nearly extinguished. With her political glory and lustre went all else that was great and noble, till, lagging behind in the current of life, she was isolated from its healthy movement, and in Africa became the noxious malaria-breeding backwater we have so long known her to be.

With the fall of Portugal from her high, estate there occurs a significant blank in the brighter aspect of European intercourse with Africa. Of such aspect, in fact, there was not a glimmer, for England, Spain, Portugal, France and Holland werc hard at work in perpetrating upon Africa one of the most gigantio crimes that has ever stained a nation's history. For two centuries that crime grew in magnitude and far-reaching consequences of the most direful description. Government, churches, and people alike seemed unconscious of the frightful wrongs that were being committed-wrongs far exceeding any in the annals of Roman despots or Eastern tyrants.

Happily, the conscience of Europe was only masked, not dead. The end of the last century heard the awakening voice, and, once made conscious of the national sin, Britain arose and ended its connection with the traffic in human flesh and blood. Meanwhile an Association was being organized, which was destined to commence a new chapter in African history. This was the African Association, whose object was the exploration of the interior of the continent, which till the end of last century had lain an almost absolutely unknown land to Europe. Their first successful man was Mungo Park, and to him belongs the honor of pioneering the way, and starting that marvellous series of expeditions, the last of which is even now filling the daily papers.

The end of last and the beginning of this century was a period fraught with great things for the future of Africa. It saw not only the abolition of the slavetrade and the commencement of the exploration of the continent, but also the landing of the first Protestant missionaries. It seemed, indeed, as if Europe was determined to pay off the moral debt it had incurred.

Traveller followed traveller, each more eager than the other to open up the dark places of the continent. Ninety out of the hundred became martyrs to their zeal, but there was no dearth of volunteers; fifty were ready where one fell. In each one's instructions were the magic words, " opening up of Africa to commerce and civilization." The benefit of the natives was always mentioned alongside the prospective good to the traveller's country, if such and such objects were achieved. Each narrative of successful exploration breathed the same spirit, telling how the traveller had not toiled and suffered in vain if he had done something in the interests of civilization and the common cause of humanity.

Nor was missionary enterprise behind in this race to do deeds worthy of a Christian people. Long and terrible has been the death-roll of those who have perished in its cause; but it has illustrated the saying that "the blood of martyrs is the seed of the Church."

Thus, almost from the first, now four hundred years ago, to the last, the good of the negro has ever held a foremost place in the programine of African expeditions.

During that long period, European commerce has exercised its influence with everwidening effect, while more directly hundreds of lives, and untold sums of money, have been spent in the single-ininded hope that the heathen might be brought within the educating sphere of Christianity. In addition to all this active agitation we have to take into consideration the incalculable effect of mere example; of simple contact with the European; the sight of his mode of life; his dress, houses, and all the amenities of civilized life.

And now let us ask, what has been the net result of all this? these direct and indirect efforts and sacrifices, and all this intercourse between the European and the African?

The impression to be acquired from our daily papers, our missionary magazines, and from pulpit and platform oratory is, that the beneficent effects are enormous.

Unhappily, my conclusions on the subject have not been obtained from such sources, and I cannot share this rose-colored view. Over the whole of East Central Africa, from north of the equator to Mozambique, from the Indian Ocean to the Congo, and along the whole of the West Coast from the Gambia to the Cameroons, I have been enabled to see for myself the nature of those effects, and to draw my own conclusions. The result has been, as it were, to put a pin into the beautiful iridescent bubble I had blown for myself in common with the rest of the world, from the materials supplied by the ignorant, the interested, the color-blind, and the hopelessly biassed.

Taking a bird's-eye view of the whole situation in time and space, so that each factor may assume its proper relative position and proportion, I unhesitatingly affirin in the plainest language that, so far, our intercourse with African races, instead of being a blessing, has been little better than an unmitigated curse to them. A closer and more detailed examination reveals many bright points in the night-like darkness, full of promise undoubtedly, and capable of bursting into sunlike splendor, but as yet little more than potential, mere promise of the may be-not of what is, or has been.

These are strong statements, and require confirmation. If true, what can possibly have caused this frightful miscarriage of the noblest aspirations of a Christian peo

ple? The answer is simply, the nature of our commerce with Africa in the past and present. To the slave-trade, the gin-trade, and that in gunpowder and guns may be ascribed the frightful evils we have brought upon the negro race, beside which the good we have tried to achieve is hardly discernible.

We have already seen with what high and noble objects the first Portuguese explorers set forth on their career of conquest and discovery. Their motto might be said to be for God and King. Only too soon, however, the lust for gold followed that of conquest. The people who had gone forth to the reaping of souls soon commenced a harvest of a very different kind. As early as the year 1503 they despatched their first batch of human beings to work in the Spanish plantations of South America. Once started, the traffic grew by leaps and bounds. By 1511 the Spaniards had joined in the profitable business, though there were not wanting enlightened men who fought consistently against it as alien to the Christian spirit. Among these was Cardinal Ximenes, the regent during the minority of Charles V. The French Government, with Louis XIII. at its head, was duped by assurances that the main object of the traffic was to facilitate the conversion of the poor Africans to Christianity, and, thus imposed upon, gave its sanction.

Queen Elizabeth, inore incredulous, even after being assured that the traffic was for the welfare of the negroes, and for the most part rescuing them from a cruel death, while they themselves were eager to emigrate to happier lands, expressed her concern lest any of 66 the Africans should be carried off without their free consent, declaring that it would be detestable, and call down the vengeance of Heaven upon its undertakers.

ture.

The slave trade was thus not started in absolute ignorance or absence of a consciousness of its frightfully criminal naEnlightened opinion was against it, but it was an opinion easily hoodwinked and overruled, and, once started, the trade increased at an enormous rate.

For quite three hundred years the unfortunate natives were treated as wild beasts intended for the use of higher races, As wild beasts and things accursed they were shot down in myriads that others might be enslaved and transformed NEW SERIES.-VOL. LI., No. 4.

into the beasts of burden, hewers of wood and drawers of water of Europeans. The whole land was transformed into an arena of murder and bloodshed that our markets might be supplied, our plantations tilled. Chiefs were tempted to sell their subjects, mothers their children, men their wives; tribe was set against tribe, and village against village. Between Portugal, Spain, France and Britain many millions of people were transported to the American plantations. Before that number could be landed in America several millions more must have succumbed en route, and untold myriads been shot down in the raids in which they were captured.

Twenty millions of human beings probably underestimates the number of killed and captured for European gain, and his was not the most fortunate fate who lived to become a slave. For him was reserved the spectacle of slaughtered relatives and a ruined home; for him the slave-path, with all its horrors-chains, the slavestick, the lash, the killing load and toilsome march, the starvation fare, and every species of exposure and hardship. him also were all the horrors of the middle passage in European ships, and but slight was the improvement in his experiences when, knocked down in auction to the highest bidder, he was transferred to the plantation.

For

It may be urged that this is now an old story, that the slave-trade is a thing of the past, and that we at least, as a nation, have atoned for our participation in it by enormous sacrifices of money.

If compensating the slave-holders means atonement, then we may rest in peace. But where is the compensation to Africa for the frightful legacy of crime and deg. radation we have left behind? Where is the reparation and atonement for the millions torn from their homes, and the millions massacred, for a land laid waste, for the further warping of the rudimentary moral ideas of inyriads of people, and the driving of them into tenfold lower depths of savagery than they had ever known before?

For answer, it will no doubt be said that "legitimate commerce" has replaced the vile traffic in human flesh and blood. Still the same old story-legitimate commerce-magic words which give such an attractive glamour to whatever can creep under their shelter-words which have too

was

often blinded a gullible public to the most shameful and criminal transactions. There are still those who believe that every trading station, once the slave traffic stopped, became a beacon of light and leading, beneath whose kindling beams the darkness of heathen barbarism was bound to disappear. The truth of the matter is that, taken as a whole, our trading stations on the greater part of the West Coast of Africa, instead of being centres of beneficent and elevating influences, have been in the past disease-breeding spots which have infected with a blighting and demoralizing poison the whole country around. They have been sources of corruption where men have coined money out of the moral and physical ruin of the nations and tribes they have supplied.

What has been the character of this socalled legitimate commerce? It consisted, to an enormous extent, of a traffic in vile spirits and weapons of destruction-the one ruining the buyers, the other enabling them to slaughter their neighbors. It is a trade which commenced in congenial union with that in slaves. In exchange for Africa's human flesh and blood, the best England could give was gin, rum, gunpowder, gurs and tobacco. With these combined we intensified every barbarous and bloodthirsty propensity in the negro's nature, while arousing new bestial appetites calculated to land him in a lower depth of squalor and degradation.

With the stoppage of the slave-trade the gin-traffic only received a more powerful stimulus. To its propagation all the energies of the traders were devoted. For spirits there was already a huge demand, and it was increasing out of all proportion to the taste for better things. It required no exertions on the part of the merchants to set it agoing, and once started it grew and spread of itself without any danger of its stopping. The profits, too, were enormous and certain, because the appetite for drink had to be assuaged, no matter what the price. Yet in all conscience the pleasures of intoxication are not expensive in West Africa. Over the doorway of hundreds of traders' houses might be hung the signboard of Hogarth's picture, "Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence," only the "clean straw for nothing" would have to be left out. With the traffic in useful articles it was entirely

different. To push it was a slow and laborious task, and the profits were uncertain, which did not suit men who wanted to make money rapidly.

The result of this state of matters is that the diabolical work commenced by the slave-trade has been effectually carried on and widened by that in spirits. I for one am inclined to believe that the latter is producing greater-and what are likely to be quite as lasting evils than the former. The spirit traffic has a more brutalizing effect; it more effectually blights all the native's energies, it ruins his constitution, and, through the habits it gives rise to, his lands are left as desolate as after a slave raid.

What are the most characteristic European imports into West Africa? Gin, rum, gunpowder and guns. What European articles are most in demand? The same. In what light do the natives look upon the Europeans? Why, as makers and sellers of spirits and guns. What largely supports the Governmental machinery of that region? Still the same articles.

The ships which trade to Africa are loaded with gin out of all proportion to more useful articles; the warehouses along the coast are filled with it. The air seems to reek with the vile stuff, and every hut is redolent of its fumes. Gin-bottles and boxes meet the eye at every step, and in some places the wealth and importance of the various villages are measured by the size of the pyramids of empty gin-bottles which they erect to their own honor and glory and the envy of poorer districts. Over large areas it is almost the sole currency, and in many parts the year's wages of the negro factory workers is paid in spirits, with which they return home to enjoy a few days of fiendish debauch.

Outside such towns as Sierra Leone and Lagos, which, thanks to special circumstances, form small oases in the wild wastes of barbarisin, not the slightest evidence is to be found that the natives have been influenced for good by European intercourse. Everywhere the tendency is seen to be in the line of deterioration. Instead of a people "white unto harvest" crying to the Churches, "Come over and help us ;" to the merchant, "We have oil and rubber, grain and ivory-give us in exchange your cloth and your cutlery;" or to the philanthropist," We are able and willing

to work, only come and show us the way" -in place of such appeals, the one outcry is for more gin, tobacco, and gunpowder. To walk through a village on the Kru Coast is like a horrible nightmare-the absolute squalor of the huts, the uncultivated lands-the brutality and vice of their owners, is without a parallel in the untouched lands of the interior. There, women and children, with scarcely a rag on their filthy besotted persons, follow one about eagerly beseeching a little gin or tobacco. Eternally gin and tobacco, hardly the slightest evidence of a desire for anything higher.

Our West African settlements instead of being, as they should, bright jewels in the crown of England, are at this day thanks to our methods of dealing with them-standing monuments to our disgrace. Everything tending to the eleva tion of the unhappy people who inhabit them has been blighted. We have done everything in our power to suppress all habits of industry and stop the development of the resources of the country. We have made sure that no healthy tastes, no varied wants, should be aroused. The result is now seen in the backward condition of the settlements, and the fact that the West Coast negro has been transformed into the most villainous, treacherous, and vicious being in the whole of Africa.

That a similar downgrade result is likely to be the outcome of the opening up and exploration of East Africa is only too apparent. Some three years ago, in lecturing on Africa and the liquor traffic, I had occasion to draw a happy contrast between the beneficial results on the East Coast under the Mohammedan rule of the Sultan of Zanzibar, and the deleterious effects of European rule on the west side of the continent. Since that time a great political change has come over the Eastern region. The Germans, after shamefully setting aside the rights of the Sultan, have commenced their civilizing career. Towns have been demolished and hundreds of lives sacrificed. Our mission stations and all the carefully nurtured germs of thirty years of unselfish work have been more or less blighted.

It would be something if we could think that we had seen the worst; but we cannot forget that the Germans are almost the sole manufacturers of gin, that their merchants are quite as keen to make money

as ours, while considerably behind us in their views as to native rights; and when, in addition, it is remembered that at the Berlin Conference it was the Germans who strenuously opposed the prohibition of the liquor traffic on the Congo and the Niger, we cannot by any means be hopeful of their future action in their newly acquired territories.

It is indeed almost certain that, as soon as they have pacified the natives by means of copious blood letting, they will continue their work of civilization by the introduction of the gin-traffic which the late Moham nedan ruler prohibited. They will find a ready market, for palm wine has already inoculated the inhabitants with a taste for intoxicating liquors. In a few years the work of the Fatherland will be made manifest to the world by a great development in the value of the imports to their new conquest, which, to those who can read between the lines, will be a measure of the rate at which the ruin and demoralization of the natives is proceeding.

It

As a nation we have a moral duty laid on us to prevent this same European crime. We ourselves assisted the Germans to take the Sultan of Zanzibar's territories, and therefore we are in some measure responsible for what they do. In East Africa there is no vested interest in the trade to consider. As yet it has got no footing. There is not even any demand for it. would be well if some action could be taken which would insure that it never did get a footing. If the Germans are wise they will not sacrifice the future wellbeing of their new settlements to any consideration of present and immediate profit. But that is almost too much to expect. Certainly we have seen nothing in the past methods of the Germans to make us hope much, and, unhappily, we cannot come to them with clean hands to offer them advice.

It may be urged that in this survey of the results of European intercourse with the African I am only showing the dark side of the picture. Perfectly true, because there is no bright one as seen in the bird's-eye view I have been taking. What is a missionary here and there compared with the thousand agents of commerce who, with untiring and unscrupulous industry, dispense wholesale the deadly products in such great demand? What is a Bible, or a bale of useful goods, in opposition to the myriad cases of gin, the thou