BORNU. BORNU, that is, Bar-noa, or “the Land of Noah," is a lovely and fruitful country, to the west and south of Lake Chad. It has an area of perhaps 50,000 square miles and a population of about 5 millions, chiefly Kanuri Negroes. The greater part of Bornu lies within the British Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, of which it forms two provinces-Bornu East and Bornu West. The Kanuri Negroes of Bornu are a mixed race of Negroes and Tibbus, and are regarded as the most cultured people in Central Africa, and their woven fabrics, pottery, and metal ware are highly prized throughout the Sudan." Like the Maba Negroes, or rather Negroids of Wadai, the Kanuris hold the Arab immigrants and other races in subjection. Both these Mohammedan Sultanates are indeed remarkable examples of indigenous Negro civilization, each possessing a well-organized administration, a Court and a Government, with all their dignities and offices. Unhappily, however, the whole policy of these States is based on slavery, and slave caravans still enter Bornu from Adamawa. Slavery throughout Nigeria is being effectively dealt with, slavedealing being subject to severe penalties, and a proclamation having been issued, in 1900, whereby all children born after April, 1901, are declared free, though domestic slavery has not yet been abolished. There are several towns with over 10,000 inhabitants in Bornu Proper and the larger tributary States. Kuka, or Kukawa, the former capital of the Sultanate, but now in ruins, on the western shore of Lake Chad, had a population of from 50,000 to 60,000, and was one of the greatest markets in the Central Sudan. Rohlfs and Nachtigal, the explorers of the Central Sudan, saw immense slave caravans depart hence for Tripoli and Egypt, and European goods still reach Bornu by the caravan route from Tripoli and Fezzan, although the route by the Benue River is much shorter, the direct distance from Yola on the Benue to Kuka being only about 250 miles. DIKOA is the present chief town. THE EMPIRE OF SOKOTO. The Fulah Empire of Sokoto, which now forms part of the British Protectorate of NORTHERN NIGERIA, is the largest and most populous of all the States of the Central Sudan, and includes all the former Haussa States between Lake Chad and the Niger, together with the tributary States of Adamawa, Gando, Borgu, Nupe, and other smaller "kingdoms " in the Niger-Benue region." The agricultural resources of this fertile and well-watered region are considerable-rice and other cereals, dates and honey, are largely exported, and much cotton is grown, for the Haussa people are skilful in manufacturing it into durable material (which is coloured with indigo and other native dyes), and they also make excellent leather goods (shoes, sandals, harness, &c.), The Emil U SOKOLO is a direct descendant of the founder of the Fulah dynasty, and, as "Lord of the Mussulmans," conferred on the Royal Niger Company full sovereign power thoughout a large part of his dominions, and complete jurisdiction-civil, criminal, and fiscal-over non-natives throughout the remainder. Sokoto was occupied by the British in 1903, and effective stips have been taken for the administrative control of this region. The armies and police forces of British West Africa are recruited from the Negroid Haussas of the Sokoto region, and render good service, being brave, faithful, and amenable to discipline. Kano (100), the old Hausa capital, and still the commercial metropolis of the Central Sudan, which was occupied by the British in 1903, lies about midway between Kuka, the ruined capital of Bornu, and Sokoto, the former chief town of the Fulah conquerors of Haussaland. Kano has long been famous for its cottons and fine kinds of leather. Sokoto was the former capital of the Empire, but its 100,000 inhabitants have dwindled to 10,000scarcely half the population of the more modern Wurno. Both towns are on the Sokoto River, an affluent of the Niger. Katsena is the chief seat of learning in Sokoto. Gandu, another large centre of population, is on the same river, about 90 miles south of Sokoto. It was the capital of the kingdom of GANDU, which extended on both sides of the Middle Niger Valley, partly within French and partly within British territory. Niki (which has been assigned by treaty to France), on the Oli River, a western affluent of the Niger, is the capital of BORGU, a former vassal State of Sokoto. Borgu lies entirely to the west of the Niger, and to the south of Gandu, and only the eastern portion lies within the British sphere. The Oli River divides Borgu from the kingdom of NUPE, also a native State tributary to Sokoto, on the Middle Niger. The greater part of Nupe lies between the British territories of Yoruba and Benin, and the great bend of the Niger. The are numerous smaller vassal States between the Niger and its great tributary, the Benue. Yakoba, the capital of one of these, is a town of between 50,000 and 100,000 inhabitants, beautifully situated on a fertile plateau, at an altitude of 3,000 feet above the sea. The basin of the Upper Benue is within the kingdom of ADAMAWA, the last conquest of the Fulahs to the south-east. This magnificent country is bounded on the north by Bornu, and on the north-east by Bagirmi. Towards the south and south-cast its limits are undefined. The capital, Yola, is a busy trading centre on the Upper Benue, and is regularly visited by the Niger Company's steamers, which ascend the river to Garua, 70 miles above Yola. The line of demarcation between the British sphere in the Niger-Benue region and the German Protectorate of the Kameruns passes from the Rio del Rey on the coast to the neighbourhood of Yola and thence north-east to the south of Lake Chad, and thus leaves almost the whole of Adamawa within the German sphere. Besides the Atlantic Coast Colonies and States, the Western Sudan includes the vast region which stretches north to the Sahara and east to the Middle Niger. Since the decree of 1899, the whole of the French West African possessions have, more than once, been re-arranged on a new organization. In 1902, French West Africa was partitioned into the Colony of Senegal, French Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Dahomé, and the Territories of the Senegambia and the Niger. In 1904, a portion of the Senegambia-Niger Territories was formed into a fifth colony, called the Upper Senegal Niger, with its capital at Bamako on the Niger, and the remainder was restored to the Colony of Senegal, while a new civil territory called Mauritania, lying north of the lower River Senegal, was formed, and is administered by a Commissioner. Futa Jallon, and Samory's Kingdom, and the Kingdoms of Segu and Massina now disappear as political names, and have henceforth merely an historical interest. French gunboats (conveyed in sections from the Senegal, now patrol the Upper Niger even beyond Kabara, the port of the famous city of Timbuktu, the chief emporium of traffic across the Sahara between the Sudan and the Barbary States. Timbuktu stands in a sandy plain about 9 miles north of the Niger, and is the converging point of several important caravan routes, and is also the objective point of the proposed Trans-Saharan Railway from Algeria. Sansandig, also on the Niger a few miles north of Segu, is a much larger and more important trading town, with an industrious and wealthy population (30,000 to 40,000) carrying on an extensive trade in gold, salt, indigo-dyed native cloth, and slaves. In the great island, or rather dooat, of Massina (or Massina Proper), formed by the Niger and its branch, the Ba-ule River, is another prosperous trading town-Jenne-with a large trade in salt and gold. Segu was the capital of the formerly powerful Kingdom of Bambarra. Between Segu and Massina and the northern borders of Ashanti and Dahomey are several other negro States, such as those of Mossi, Gurma, Dafina, Tieba, and Dagomba and Kong, further south. Little is known of these countries, but all of them are within the French sphere of influence, which thus covers the whole of the Western Sudan with the exception of the British, Portuguese, and German Colonies and Settlements on the Senegambian and Guinea Coast, and the Republic of Liberia. When, therefore, the French power is as firmly established on the Upper Niger as it is on the Senegal, the French Sudan will inevitably expand and ultimately absorb all these kingdoms and empires now under the protection or within the 'sphere' of France. This future empire of France in Western Africa is already provided with four distinct and uncontested bases on the coast, namely, the Senegal Coast, that of French Guinea, the Ivory Coast, and a part of the Slave Coast. • We have now noticed all the principal inland countries of Negrolandthe maritime region of the Sudan is included in the following section, which deals with the littoral divisions of Western Africa. WESTERN AFRICA. The western coasts of Africa, within the Tropics, are a distinct natural region, extending through a range of between three and four thousand miles along the Atlantic sea-board, from the borders of the Great Desert on the north, to Cape Frio, to the south of the Equator. This extended range of coast exhibits a succession of low plains, backed by uplands and plateaux of moderate elevation at some distance inland. In some places, as at Sierra Leone, the high grounds advance to the coast and meet the waters of the Atlantic. 1. Sansandig, Jenne, and Segu are now included in Senegal All the great rivers that are found on the western side of the African continent belong to this region, with the exception of the Orange. The chief of them are the Senegal, the Gambia, the Rio Grande, and the Niger, all to the north of the Equator; the Congo is partly, and the Coanza and the Cunene are entirely, to the south of that line. But a vast number of smaller streams, with numerous creeks and salt-water estuaries, occur throughout the entire range of coast. Owing to its position and to its numerous rivers and streams, Western Africa is characterized by a most redundant vegetation and an unhealthy climate. The intense heat of a tropical sun, acting on the mass of vegetable matter, occasions the malaria and deadly fevers, which are so commonly fatal to Europeans in this part of the world. The commercial productions of Western Africa include--besides the charac teristic gold-dust, ivory, and ostrich feathers—palm-oil, bees'-wax, india-rubber, and various gums. It is from the regions of the Senegal and the Gambia, and the line of the Guinea Coast, that these latter products are chiefly obtained, and the trade in them (which is carried on by European traders-chiefly English, French, and German) has been largely extended within recent years. The native inhabitants of Western Africa are almost exclusively pure Negroes. Many Europeans are settled among them, at various points, as traders and missionaries. The Negro population is divided, as in the interior of the Sudan, into numerous petty kingdoms, formerly, and even yet, at frequent war with one another. This, together with the slave-trade, has been the great bar to the material progress and social improvement of the negro, who, after all, does possess undoubted capabilities for improvement. The light-hearted gaiety of manner, which is one of his most striking attributes, is accompanied by depth of feeling, tenderness, and strength of will which give good promise that the race may, in the course of time, attain to a degree of civilization and refinement now exhibited only by individual negroes under exceptionally favourable circumstances. DIVISIONS: The great geographical divisions of Western Africa are Senegambia, Upper Guinea, and Lower Guinea. Senegambia is the name given to the maritime region of the Western Sudan from the Senegal to the promontory of Sierra Leone. Upper Guinea includes the coast countries from Sierra Leone to the Bight of Biafra. By Lower Guinea is generally understood the coastlands extending from the head of the Bight of Biafra to Cape Frio. The political divisions of Western Africa include the numerous colonies, settlements, and protectorates belonging to Great Britain, France, Portugal, Germany, and Spain, and two independent States -the Republic of Liberia and the Congo Free State. BRITISH WEST AFRICA includes the colonies of Sierra Leone, the Gold Ccast, Lagos, and Northern Nigeria and Nigeria-all in Upper Guinea. FRENCH WEST AFRICA: the colony of Senegal, French Guinea, the Ivory Coast, Dalomé, and the French Congo Protectorates in Lower Guinea. PORTUGUEse westerN AFRICA embraces two distinct territories, the one-Portuguese Guinea-in Upper Guinea, and the other-Portuguese West Africa or Angola-in Lower Guinea, together with the islands of St. Thomas and Prince's in the Gulf of Guinea. GERMAN WEST AFRICA also includes two separate territories, Togo, on the Slave Coast in Upper Guinea, and the Kamerun Protectorate in Lower Guinea. SPANISH WEST AFRICA is limited to a few settlements in Corisco Bay in Lower Guinea, together with the islands of Fernando Po and Annobon in the Gulf of Guinea. The REPUBLIC OF LIBERIA, on the Grain Coast in Upper Guinea, is absolutely independent, and The CONGO FREE STATE, of which the King of Belgium is sovereign, is nominally so. ... German South-West Africa, between the Cunene and the Orange, geographically forms part of, and is therefore described under, "Southern Africa." ... The Saharan Coast, between Cape Blanco and Cape Nun, is claimed by Spain, to which the adjacent Canary Islands also belong. The Cape Verde Islands and Madeira, in the North Atlantic, belong to Portugal. The islands of St. Helena, Ascension, and Tristan d'Acunha, in the South Atlantic, belong to Great Britain. We now proceed to describe briefly the various divisions of Western Africa in their geographical order, from north to south. The student should, first of all, trace the limits and note the position of these divisions on a good map, so that a clear idea may be gained at the outset of their absolute and relative position and extent. ... The following is a complete list of the political divisions of West Africa, named in order, from north to south: 1. The French Colony of the Senegal. 2. The British Colony of the Gambia, divided by a strip of French territory from 3. Portuguese Guinea, which is separated by 4 The French Territory of the French Guinea from 5. The British Colony Sierra Leone, which extends to the borders of the independent 6. Republic of Liberia. Then follow 7. The French Settlements and Protectorate of the Ivory Coast, 8. The British Colony of the Gold Coast, 9. The German Colony of Togo, 10. II. 12. 13. The French Protectorate of Dahomé, on the Slave Coast, adjoins British Northern Nigeria and Southern Nigeria, comprising the South Nigeria Protectorate and the The German Protectorate of the Kameruns, 14 The French Congo, with the Spanish Settlements on Corisco Bay and the Portuguese dis rict of Cabinda, 15. 16. The Congo Free State, and, lastly, 1 |