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But with the battle of Ceuta Africa had ceased to belong solely to the Mediterranean world. Among those who fought there was one. Prince Henry ``the Navigator, '' son of King John I. , who was fired with the ambition to acquire for Portugal the unknown parts of Africa. Under his inspiration and direction was begun that series of voyages of exploration which resulted in the circumnavigation of Africa and the establishment of Portuguese sovereignty over large areas of the coast-lands. Cape Bojador was doubled in 1434, Cape Verde in 1445, and by 1480 the whole Guinea coast was known. In 1482 Diogo Cam or Cao discovered the mouth of the Congo, the Cape of Good Hope was doubled by Bartholomew Diaz in 1488, and in 1498 Vasco da Gama, after having rounded the Cape, sailed up the east coast, touched at Sofala and Malindi, and went thence to India. Over all the countries discovered by their navigators Portugal claimed sovereign rights, but these were not exercised in the extreme south of the continent. The Guinea coast, as the first discovered and the nearest to Europe, was first exploited. Numerous forts and trading stations were established, the earliest being Sao Jorge da Mina (Elmina), begun in 1482. The chief commodities dealt in were slaves, gold, ivory and spices. The discovery of America (1492) was followed by a great development of the slave trade, which, before the Portuguese era, had been an overland trade almost exclusively confined to Mahommedan Africa. The lucrative nature of this trade and the large quantities of alluvial gold obtained by the Portuguese drew other nations to the Guinea coast. English mariners went thither as early as 1553, and they were followed by Spaniards, Dutch, French, Danish and other adventurers. Much of Senegambia was made known as a result of quests during the 16th century for the ``hills of gold'' in Bambuk and the fabled wealth of Timbuktu, but the middle Niger was not reached. The supremacy along the coast passed in the 17th century from Portugal to Holland and from Holland in the 18th and 19th centuries to France and England. The whole coast from Senegal to Lagos was dotted with forts and ``factories'' of rival powers, and this international patchwork persists though all the hinterland has become either French or British territory. Southward from the mouth of the Congo2 to the inhospitable region of Damaraland, the Portuguese, from 1491 onward, acquired influence over the Bantu-Negro inhabitants, and in the early part of the 16th century through their efforts Christianity was largely adopted in the native kingtom of Congo. An irruption of cannibals from the interior later in the same century broke the power of this semi-Christian state, and Portuguese activity was transferred to a great extent farther south, Sao Paulo de Loanda being founded in 1576. The sovereignty of Portugal over this coast region, except for the mouth of the Congo, has been once only challenged by a European power, and that was in 1640-1648, when the Dutch held the seaports.

Neglecting the comparatively poor and thinly inhabited regions of South Africa, the Portuguese no sooner discovered than they coveted the flourishing cities held by Arabized peoples between Sofala and Cape Guardafui. By 1520 all these Moslem sultanates had been seized by Portugal, Mozambique being chosen as the chief city of her East African possessions. Nor was Portuguese activity confined to the coast-lands. The lower and middle Zambezi valley was explored (16th and 17thcenturies), and here the Portuguese found semi-civilized Bantu-Negro tribes, who had been for many years in contact with the coast Arabs. Strenuous efforts were made to obtain possession of the country (modern Rhodesia) known to them as the kingdom or empire of Monomotapa, where gold had been worked by the natives from about the 12th century A. D. , and whence the Arabs, whom the Portuguese dispossessed, were still obtaining supplies in the 16th century. Several expeditions were despatched inland from 1569 onward and considerable quantities of gold were obtained. Portugal's hold on the interior, never very effective, weakened during the 17th century, and in the middle of the 18th century ceased with the abandonment of the forts in the Manica district. At the period of her greatest power Portugal exercised a strong influence in Abyssinia also. In the ruler of Abyssinia (to whose dominions a Portuguese traveller had penetrated before Vasco da Gama's memorable voyage) the Portuguese imagined they had found the legendary Christian king, Prester John, and when the complete overthrow of the native dynasty and the Christian religion was imminent by the victories of Mahommedan invaders, the exploits of a band of 400 Portuguese under Christopher da Gama during 1541-1543 turned the scale in favour of Abyssinia and had thus an enduring result on the future of North-East Africa. After da Gama's time Portuguese Jesuits resorted to Abyssinia. While they failed in their efforts to convert the Abyssinians to Roman Catholicism they acquired an extensive knowledge of the country. Pedro Paez in 1615, and, ten years later, Jeronimo Lobo, both visited the sources of the Blue Nile. In 1663 the Portuguese, who had outstayed their welcome, were expelled from the Abyssinian dominions. At this time Portuguese influence on the Zanzibar coast was waning before the power of the Arabs of Muscat, and by 1730 no point on the east coast north of Cape Delgado was held by Portugal. It has been seen that Portugal took no steps to acquire the southern part of the continent. To the Portuguese the Cape of Good Hope was simply a landmark on the road to India, and mariners of other nations who followed in their wake used Table Bay only as a convenient spot wherein to refit on their voyage to the East. By the beginning of the 17th century the bay was much resorted to for this purpose, chiefly by English and Dutch vessels. In 1620, with the object of forestalling the Dutch, two officers of the East India Company, on their own initiative, took possession of Table Bay in the name of King James, fearing otherwise that English ships would be ``frustrated of watering but by license. '' Their action was not approved in London and the proclamation they issued remained without effect. The Netherlands profited by the apathy of the English. On the advice of sailors who had been shipwrecked in Table Bay the Netherlands East India Company, in 1651, sent out a fleet of three small vessels under Jan van Riebeek which reached Table Bay on the 6th of April 1652, when, 164 years after its discovery, the first permanent white settlement was made in South Africa. The Portuguese, whose power in Africa was already waning, were not in a position to interfere with the Dutch plans, and England was content to seize the island of St Helena as her half-way house to the East3. In its inception the settlement at the Cape was not intended to become an African colony, but was regarded as the most westerly outpost of the Dutch East Indies. Nevertheless, despite the paucity of ports and the absence of navigable rivers, the Dutch colonists, freed from any apprehension of European trouble by the friendship between Great Britain and Holland, and leavened by Huguenot blood, gradually spread northward, stamping their language, law and religion indelibly upon South Africa. This process, however, was exceedingly slow. During the 18th century there is little to record in the history of Africa. The nations of Europe, engaged in the later half of the century in almost constant warfare, and struggling for supremacy in America and the East, to a large extent lost their interest in the continent. Only on the west coast was there keen rivalry, and here the motive was securance of trade rather than territorial acquisitions. In this century the slave trade reached its highest development, the trade in gold, ivory, gum and spices being small in comparison. In the interior of the continent—Portugal's energy being expended—no interest was shown, the nations with establishments on the coast ``taking no further notice of the inhabitants or their land than to obtain at the easiest rate what they procure with as little trouble as possible, or to carry them off for slaves to their plantations in America'' (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3rd ed. , 1797). Even the scanty knowledge acquired by the ancients and the Arabs was in the main forgotten or disbelieved. It was the period when—Geographers, in Afric maps, With savage pictures filled their gaps, And o'er unhabitable downs Placed elephants for want of towns.

The prevailing ignorance may be gauged by the statement in the third edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica that ``the Gambia and Senegal rivers are only branches of the Niger. '' But the closing years of the 18th century, which witnessed the partial awakening of the public conscience of Europe to the iniquities of the slave trade, were also notable for the revival of interest in inner Africa. A society, the African Association, 4 was formed in London in 1788 for the exploration of the interior of the continent. The era of great discoveries had begun a little earlier in the famous journey (1770-1772) of James Bruce through Abyssinia and Sennar, during which he determined the course of the Blue Nile. But it was through the agents of the African Association that knowledge was gained of the Niger regions. The Niger itself was first reached by Mungo Park, who travelled by way of the Gambia, in 1795. Park, on a second journey in 1805, passed Timbuktu and descended the Niger to Bussa, where he lost his life, having just failed to solve the question as to where the river reached the ocean. (This problem was ultimately solved by Richard Lander and his brother in 1830. ) The first scientific explorer of South-East Africa, Dr Francisco de Lacerda, a Portuguese, also lost his life in that country. Lacerda travelled up the Zambezi to Tete, going thence towards Lake Mweru, near which he died in 1798. The first recorded crossing of Africa was accomplished between the years 1802 and 1811 by two half-caste Portuguese traders, Pedro Baptista and A. Jose, who passed from Angola eastward to the Zambezi. Although the Napoleonic wars distracted the attention of Europe from exploratory work in Africa, those wars nevertheless exercised great influence on the future of the continent, both in Egypt and South Africa. The occupation of Egypt (1798-1803) first by France and then by Great Britain resulted in an effort by Turkey to regain direct control over that country, 5 followed in 1811 by the establishment under Mehemet Ali of an almost independent state, and the extension of Egyptian rule over the eastern Sudan (from 1820 onward). In South Africa the struggle with Napoleon caused Great Britain to take possession of the Dutch settlements at the Cape, and in 1814 Cape Colony, which had been continuously occupied by British troops since 1806, was formally ceded to the British crown.

The close of the European conflicts with the battle of Waterloo was followed by vigorous efforts on the part of the British government to become better acquainted with Africa, and to substitute colonization and legitimate trade for the slave traffic, declared illegal for British subjects in 1807 and abolished by all other European powers by 1836. To West Africa Britain devoted much attention. The slave trade abolitionists had already, in 1788, formed a settlement at Sierra Leone, on the Guinea coast, for freed slaves, and from this establishment grew the colony of Sierra Leone, long notorious, by reason of its deadly climate, as ``The White Man's Grave. ''6 Farther east the establishments on the Gold Coast began to take a part in the politics of the interior, and the first British mission to Kumasi, despatched in 1817, led to the assumption of a protectorate over the maritime tribes heretofore governed by the Ashanti.

An expedition sent in 1816 to explore the Congo from its mouth did not succeed in getting beyond the rapids which bar the way to the interior, but in the central Sudan much better results were obtained. In 1823 three English travellers, Walter Oudney, Dixon Denham and Hugh Clapperton, reached Lake Chad from Tripoli—the first white men to reach that lake. The partial exploration of Bornu and the Hausa states by Clapperton, which followed, revealed the existence of large and flourishing cities and a semi-civilized people in a region hitherto unknown. The discovery in 1830 of the mouth of the Niger by Clapperton's servant Lander, already mentioned, had been preceded by the journeys of Major A. G. Laing (1826) and Rene Caillie (1827) to Timbuktu, and was followed (1832-1833) by the partial ascent of the Benue affluent of the Niger by Macgregor Laird. In 1841 a disastrous attempt was made to plant a white colony on the lower Niger, an expedition (largely philanthropic and antislavery in its inception) which ended in utter failure. Nevertheless from that time British traders remained on the lower Niger, their continued presence leading ultimately to the acquisition of political rights over the delta and the Hausa states by Great Britain. 7 Another endeavour by the British government to open up commercial relations with the Niger countries resulted in the addition of a vast amount of information concerning the countries between Timbuktu and Lake Chad, owing to the labours of Heinrich Barth (1850-1855), originally a subordinate, but the only surviving member of the expedition sent out. Meantime considerable changes had been made in other parts of the continent, the most notable being—the occupation of Algiers by France in 1830, an end being thereby put to the piratical proceedings of the Barbary states; the continued expansion southward of Egyptian authority with the consequent additions to the knowledge of the Nile; and the establishment of independent states ((Orange Free State and the Transvaal) by Dutch farmers (Boers) dissatisfied with British rule in Cape Colony. Natal, so named by Vasco da Gama, had been made a British colony (1843), the attempt of the Boers to acquire it being frustrated. The city of Zanzibar, on the island of that name, founded in 1832 by Seyyid Said of Muscat, rapidly attained importance, and Arabs began to penetrate to the great lakes of East Africa, 8 concerning which little more was known (and less believed) than in the time of Ptolemy. Accounts of a vast inland sea, and the discovery in 1848-1840, by the missionaries Ludwig Krapf and J. Rebmann, of the snow-clad mountains of Kilimanjaro and Kenya, stimulated in Europe the desire for further knowledge.

At this period, the middle of the 19th century, Protestant missions were carrying on active propaganda on the Guinea coast, in South Africa and in the Zanzibar dominions. Their work, largely beneficent, was being conducted in regions and among peoples little known, and in many instances missionaries turned explorers and became pioneers of trade and empire. One of the first to attempt to fill up the remaining blank spaces in the map was David Livings tone, who had been engaged since 1840 in missionary work north of the Orange. In 1849 Livingstone crossed the Kalahari Desert from south to north and reached Lake Ngami, and between 1851 and 1856 he traversed the continent from west to east, making known the great waterways of the upper Zambezi. During these journeyings Livingstone discovered, November 1855, the famous Victoria Falls, so named after the queen of England. In 1858-1864 the lower Zambezi, the Shire and Lake Nyasa were explored by Livingstone, Nyasa having been first reached by the confidential slave of Antonio da Silva Porto, a Portuguese trader established at Bihe in Angola, who crossed Africa during 1853-1856 from Benguella to the mouth of the Rovuma. While Livingstone circumnavigated Nyasa, the more northerly lake, Tanganyika, had been visited (1858) by Richard Burton and J. H. Speke, and the last named had sighted Victoria Nyanza. Returning to East Africa with J. A. Grant, Speke reached, in 1862, the river which flowed from Victoria Nyanza, and following it (in the main) down to Egypt, had the distinction of being the first man to read the riddle of the Nile. In 1864 another Nile explorer, Samuel Baker, discovered the Albert Nyanza, the chief western reservoir of the river. In 1866 Livingstone began his last great journey, in which he made known Lakes Mweru and Bangweulu and discovered the Lualaba (the upper part of the Congo), but died (1873) before he had been able to demonstrate its ultimate course, believing indeed that the Lualaba belonged to the Nile system. Livingstone's lonely death in the heart of Africa evoked a keener desire than ever to complete the work he left undone. H. M. Stanley, who had in 1871 succeeded in finding and succouring Livingstone, started again for Zanzibar in 1874, and in the most memorable of all exploring expeditions in Africa circumnavigated Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyika, and, striking farther inland to the Lualaba, followed that river down to the Atlantic Ocean—reached in August 1877—and proved it to be the Congo. Stanley had been preceded, in 1874, at Nyangwe, Livingstone's farthest point on the Lualaba, by Lovett Cameron, who was, however, unable farther to explore its course, making his way to the west coast by a route south of the Congo.

While the great mystery of Central Africa was being solved explorers were also active in other parts of the continent. Southern Morocco, the Sahara and the Sudan were traversed in many directions between 1860 and 1875 by Gerhard Rohlfs, Georg Schweinfurth and Gustav Nachtigal. These travellers not only added considerably to geographical knowledge, but obtained invaluable information concerning the people, languages and natural history of the countries in which they sojourned. 9 Among the discoveries of Schweinfurth was one that confirmed the Greek legends of the existence beyond Egypt of a pygmy race. But the first discoverer of the dwarf races of Central Africa was Paul du Chaillu, who found them in the Ogowe district of the west coast in 1865, five years before Schweinfurth's first meeting with the Pygmies; du Chaillu having previously, as the result of journeys in the Gabun country between 1855 and 1859, made popular in Europe the knowledge of the existence of the gorilla, perhaps the gigantic ape seen by Hanno the Carthaginian, and whose existence, up to the middle of the 19th century, was thought to be as legendary as that of the Pygmies of Aristotle.

In South Africa the filling up of the map also proceeded apace. The finding, in 1869, of rich diamond fields in the valley of the Vaal river, near its confluence with the Orange, caused a rush of emigrants to that district, and led to conflicts between the Dutch and British authorities and the extension of British authority northward. In 1871 the ruins of the great Zimbabwe in Mashonaland, the chief fortress and distributing centre of the race which in medieval times worked the goldfields of South-East Africa, were explored by Karl Mauch. In the following year F. C. Selous began his journeys over South Central Africa, which continued for more than twenty years and extended over every part of Mashonaland and Matabeleland. (F. R. C. )

    V. PARTITION AMONG EUROPEAN POWERS

In the last quarter of the 19th century the map of Africa was transformed. After the discovery of the Congo the story of exploration takes second place; the continent becomes the theatre of European expansion. Lines of partition, drawn often through trackless wildernesses, marked out the possessions of Germany, France, Great Britain and other powers. Railways penetrated the interior, vast areas were opened up to civilized occupation, and from ancient Egypt to the Zambezi the continent was startled into new life. Before 1875 the only powers with any considerable interest in Africa were Britain, Portugal and France. Between 1815 and 1850, as has been shown above, the British government devoted much energy, not always informed by knowledge, to western and southern Africa. In both directions Great Britain had met with much discouragement; on the west coast, disease, death, decaying trade and useless conflicts with savage foes had been the normal experience; in the south recalcitrant Boers and hostile Kaffirs caused almost endless trouble. The visions once entertained of vigorous negro communities at once civilized and Christian faded away; to the hot fit of philanthropy succeeded the cold fit of indifference and a disinclination to bear the burden of empire. The low-water mark of British interest in South Africa was reached in 1854 when independence was forced on the Orange River Boers, while in 1865 the mind of the nation was fairly reflected by the unanimous resolution of a representative House of Commons committee: 10 ``that all further extension of territory or assumption of government, or new treaty offering any protection to native tribes, would be inexpedient. '' For nearly twenty years the spirit of that resolution paralysed British action in Africa, although many circumstances—the absence of any serious European rival, the inevitable border disputes with uncivilized races, and the activity of missionary and trader—conspired to make British influence dominant in large areas of the continent over which the government exercised no definite authority. The freedom with which blood and treasure were spent to enforce respect for the British flag or to succour British subjects in distress, as in the Abyssinian campaign of 1867-68 and the Ashanti war of 1873, tended further to enhance the reputation of Great Britain among African races, while, as an inevitable result of the possession of India, British officials exercised considerable power at the court of Zanzibar, which indeed owed its separate existence to a decision of Lord Canning, the governor-general of India, in 1861 recognizing the division of the Arabian and African dominions of the imam of Muscat. It has been said that Great Britain was without serious rival. On the Gold Coast she had bought the Danish forts in 1850 and acquired the Dutch, 1871-1872, in exchange for establishments in Sumatra. But Portugal still held, both in the east and west of Africa, considerable stretches of the tropical coast-lands, and it was in 1875 that she obtained, as a result of the arbitration of Marshal MacMahon, possession of the whole of Delagoa Bay, to the southern part of which England also laid claim by virtue of a treaty of cession concluded with native chiefs in 1823. The only other European power which at the period under consideration had considerable possessions in Africa was France. Besides Algeria, France had settlements on the Senegal, where in 1854 the appointment of General Faidherbe as governor marked the beginning of a policy of expansion; she had also various posts on the upper Guinea coast, had taken the estuary of the Gabun as a station for her navy, and had acquired (1862) Obok at the southern entrance to the Red Sea.

In North Africa the Turks had (in 1835) assumed direct control of Tripoli, while Morocco had fallen into a state of decay though retaining its independence. The most remarkable change was in Egypt, where the Khedive Ismail had introduced a somewhat fantastic imitation of European civilization. In addition Ismail had conquered Darfur, annexed Harrar and the Somali ports on the Gulf of Aden, was extending his power southward to the equatorial lakes, and even contemplated reaching the Indian Ocean. The Suez Canal, opened in 1869, had a great influence on the future of Africa, as it again made Egypt the highway to the East, to the detriment of the Cape route.

Any estimate of the area of African territory held by European nations in 1875 is necessarily but approximate, and varies chiefly as the compiler of statistics rejects or accepts the vague claims of Portugal to sovereignty over the hinterland of her coast possessions. At that period other European nations—with the occasional exception of Great Britain—were indifferent to Portugal's pretensions, and her estimate of her African empire as covering over 700, 000 sq. m. was not challenged. 11 But the area under effective control of Portugal at that time did not exceed 40, 000 sq. m. Great Britain then held some 250, 000 sq. m. , France about 170, 000 sq. m. and Spain 1000 sq. m. The area of the independent Dutch republics (the Transvaal and Orange Free State) was some 150, 000 sq. m. , so that the total area of Africa ruled by Europeans did not exceed 1, 271, 000 sq. m. ; roughly one-tenth of the continent. This estimate, as it admits the full extent of Portuguese claims and does not include Madagascar, in reality considerably overstates the case. Egypt and the Egyptian Sudan, Tunisia and Tripoli were subject in differing ways to the overlordship of the sultan of Turkey, and with these may be ranked, in the scale of organized governments, the three principal independent states, Morocco, Abyssinia and Zanzibar, as also the negro republic of Liberia. There remained, apart from the Sahara, roughly one half of Africa, lying mostly within the tropics, inhabited by a multitude of tribes and peoples living under various forms of government and subject to frequent changes in respect of political organization. In this region were the negro states of Ashanti, Dahomey and Benin on the west coast, the Mahommedan sultanates of the central Sudan, and a number of negro kingdoms in the east central and south central regions. Of these Uganda on the north-west shores of Victoria Nyanza, Cazembe and Muata Hianvo (or Yanvo) may be mentioned. The two last-named kingdoms occupied respectively the south-eastern and south-western parts of the Congo basin. In all this vast region the Negro and Negro-Bantu races predominated, for the most part untouched by Mahommedanism or Christian influences. They lacked political cohesion, and possessed neither the means nor the inclination to extend their influence beyond their own borders. The exploitation of Africa continued to be entirely the work of alien races.

The causes which led to the partition of Africa may now be considered. They are to be found in the economic and political state of western Europe at the time. Germany, strong and united as the result of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, was seeking new outlets for her energies—new markets for her growing industries, and with the markets, colonies. Yet the idea of colonial expansion was of slow growth in Germany, and when Prince Bismarck at length acted Africa was the only field left to exploit, South America being protected from interference by the known determination of the United States to enforce the Monroe Doctrine, while Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain already held most of the other regions of the world where colonization was possible. For different reasons the war of 1870 was also the starting-point for France in the building up of a new colonial empire. In her endeavour to regain the position lost in that war France had to look beyond Europe. To the two causes mentioned must be added others. Great Britain and Portugal, when they found their interests threatened, bestirred themselves, while Italy also conceived it necessary to become an African power. Great Britain awoke to the need for action too late to secure predominance in all the regions where formerly hers was the only European influence. She had to contend not only with the economic forces which urged her rivals to action, but had also to combat the jealous opposition of almost every European nation to the further growth of British power. Italy alone acted throughout in cordial co-operation with Great Britain.

It was not, however, the action of any of the great powers of Europe which precipitated the struggle. This was brought about by the ambitious projects of Leopold II, king of the Belgians. The discoveries of Livingstone, Stanley and others had aroused especial interest among two classes of men in western Europe, one the manufacturing and trading class, which saw in Central Africa possibilities of commercial development, the other the philanthropic and missionary class, which beheld in the newly discovered lands millions of savages to Christianize and civilize. The possibility of utilizing both these classes in the creation of a vast state, of which he should be the chief, formed itself in the mind of Leopold II. even before Stanley had navigated the Congo. The king's action was immediate; it proved successful; but no sooner was the nature of his project understood in Europe than it provoked the rivalry of France and Germany, and thus the international struggle was begun. At this point it is expedient, in the light of subsequent events, to set forth the designs then entertained by the European powers that participated in the struggle for Africa. Portugal was striving to retain as large a share as possible of her shadowy empire, and particularly to establish her claims to the Zambezi region, so as to secure a belt of territory across Africa from Mozambique to Angola. Great Britain, once aroused to the imminence of danger, put forth vigorous efforts in East Africa and on the Niger, but her most ambitious dream was the establishment of an unbroken line of British possessions and spheres of influence from south to north of the continent, from Cape Colony to Egypt. Germany's ambition can be easily described. It was to secure as much as possible, so as to make up for lost opportunities. Italy coveted Tripoli, but that province could not be seized without risking war. For the rest Italy's territorial ambitions were confined to North-East Africa, where she hoped to acquire a dominating, influence over Abyssinia. French ambitions, apart from Madagascar, were confined to the northern and central portions of the continent. To extend her possessions on the Mediterranean littoral, and to connect them with her colonies in West Africa, the western Sudan, and on the Congo, by establishing her influence over the vast intermediate regions, was France's first ambition. But the defeat of the Italians in Abyssinia and the impending downfall of the khalifa's power in the valley of the upper Nile suggested a still more daring project to the French government—none other than the establishment of French influence over a broad belt of territory stretching across the continent from west to east, from Senegal on the Atlantic coast to the Gulf of Aden. The fact that France possessed a small part of the Red Sea coast gave point to this design. But these conflicting ambitions could not all be realized and Germany succeeded in preventing Great Britain obtaining a continuous band of British territory from south to north, while Great Britain, by excluding France from the upper Nile valley, dispelled the French dream of an empire from west to east. King Leopold's ambitions have already been indicated. The part of the continent to which from the first he directed his energies was the equatorial region. In September 1876 he took what may be described as the first definite step in the modern partition of the continent. He summoned to a conference at Brussels representatives of Great Britain, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy and Russia, to deliberate on the best methods to be adopted for the exploration and civilization of Africa, and the opening up of the interior of the continent to commerce and industry. The conference was entirely unofficial. The delegates who attended neither represented nor pledged their respective governments. Their deliberations lasted three days and resulted in the foundation of ``The International African Association, '' with its headquarters at Brussels. It was further resolved to establish national committees in the various countries represented, which should collect funds and appoint delegates to the International Association. The central idea appears to have been to put the exploration and development of Africa upon an international footing. But it quickly became apparent that this was an unattainable ideal. The national committees were soon working independently of the International Association, and the Association itself passed through a succession of stages until it became purely Belgian in character, and at last developed into the Congo Free State, under the personal sovereignty of King Leopold. At first the Association devoted itself to sending expeditions to the great central lakes from the east coast; but failure, more or less complete attended its efforts in this direction, and it was not until the return of Stanley, in January 1878, from his great journey down the Congo, that its ruling spirit, King Leopold, definitely turned his thoughts towards the Congo. In June of that year, Stanley visited the king at Brussels, and in the following November a private conference was held, and a committee was appointed for the investigation of the upper Congo.

Stanley's remarkable discovery had stirred ambition in other capitals than Brussels. France had always taken a keen interest in West Africa, and in the years 1875 to 1878 Savorgnan de Brazza had carried out a successful exploration of the Ogowe river to the south of the Gabun. De Brazza determined that the Ogowe did not offer that great waterway into the interior of which he was in search, and he returned to Europe without having heard of the discoveries of Stanley farther south. Naturally, however, Stanley's discoveries were keenly followed in France. In Portugal, too, the discovery of the Congo, with its magnificent unbroken waterway of more than a thousand miles into the heart of the continent served to revive the languid energies of the Portuguese, who promptly began to furbish up claims whose age was in inverse ratio to their validity.

Claims, annexations and occupations were in the air, and when in January 1879 Stanley left Europe as the accredited agent of King Leopold and the Congo committee, the strictest secrecy was observed as to his real aims and intentions. The expedition was, it was alleged, proceeding up the Congo to assist the Belgian expedition which had entered from the east coast, and Stanley himself went first to Zanzibar. But in August 1879 Stanley found himself again at Banana Point, at the mouth of the Congo, with, as he himself has written, ``the novel mission of sowing along its banks civilized settlements to peacefully conquer and subdue it, to remould it in harmony with modern ideas into national states, within whose limits the European merchant shall go hand in hand with the dark African trader, and justice and law and order shall prevail, and murder and lawlessness and the cruel barter of slaves shall be overcome. '' The irony of human aspirations was never perhaps more plainly demonstrated than in the contrast between the ideal thus set before themselves by those who employed Stanley, and the actual results of their intervention in Africa. Stanley founded his first station at Vivi, between the mouth of the Congo and the rapids that obstruct its course where it breaks over the western edge of the central continental plateau. Above the rapids he established a station on Stanley Pool and named it Leopoldville, founding other stations on the main stream in the direction of the falls that bear his name. Meanwhile de Brazza was far from idle. He had returned to Africa at the beginning of 1880, and while the agents of King Leopold were making treaties and founding stations along the southern bank of the river, de Brazza and other French agents were equally busy on the northern bank. De Brazza was sent out to Africa by the French committee of the International African Association, which provided him with the funds for the expedition. His avowed object was to explore the region between the Gabun and Lake Chad. But his real object was to anticipate Stanley on the Congo. The international character of the association founded by King Leopold was never more than a polite fiction, and the rivalry between the French and the Belgians on the Congo was soon open, if not avowed. In October 1880 de Brazza made a solemn treaty with a chief on the north bank of the Congo, who claimed that his authority extended over a large area, including territory on the southern bank of the river. As soon as this chief had accepted French protection, de Brazza crossed over to the south of the river, and founded a station close to the present site of Leopoldville. The discovery by Stanley of the French station annoyed King Leopold's agent, and he promptly challenged the rights of the chief who purported to have placed the country under French protection, and himself founded a Belgian station close to the site selected by de Brazza. In the result, the French station was withdrawn to the northern side of Stanley Pool, where it is now known as Brazzaville. The activity of French and Belgian agents on the Congo had not passed unnoticed in Lisbon, and the Portuguese government saw that no time was to be lost if the claims it had never ceased to put forward on the west coast were not to go by default. At varying periods during the 19th century Portugal had put forward claims to the whole of the West African coast, between 5 deg. 12' and 8 deg. south. North of the Congo mouth she claimed the territories of Kabinda and Molemba, alleging that they had been in her possession since 1484. Great Britain had never, however, admitted this claim, and south of the Congo had declined to recognize Portuguese possessions as extending north of Ambriz. In 1856 orders were given to British cruisers to prevent by force any attempt to extend Portuguese dominion north of that place. But the Portuguese had been persistent in urging their claims, and in 1882 negotiations were again opened with the British government for recognition of Portuguese rights over both banks of the Congo on the coast, and for some distance inland. Into the details of the negotiations, which were conducted for Great Britain by the 2nd Earl Granville, who was then secretary for foreign affairs, it is unnecessary to enter; they resulted in the signing on the 26th of February 1884 of a treaty, by which Great Britain recognized the sovereignty of the king of Portugal ``over that part of the west coast of Africa, situated between 8 deg. and 5 deg. 12' south latitude, '' and inland as far as Noki, on the south bank of the Congo, below Vivi. The navigation of the Congo was to be controlled by an Anglo-Portuguese commission. The publication of this treaty evoked immediate protests, not only on the continent but in Great Britain. In face of the disapproval aroused by the treaty, Lord Granville found himself unable to ratify it. The protests had not been confined to France and the king of the Belgians. Germany had not yet acquired formal footing in Africa, but she was crouching for the spring prior to taking her part in the scramble, and Prince Bismarck had expressed, in vigorous language, the objections entertained by Germany to the Anglo-Portuguese treaty.

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