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AFRICA

to frontiers in the Lake Kivu region fully justified the attitude of the German Government. It was obvious that the new agreement would effect precisely what Germany had declined to agree to in 1890. Accordingly Germany protested in such vigorous terms that, on the 22nd June 1894, the offending article was withdrawn by an exchange of notes between Great Britain and the Congo Free State. Opinion in France was equally excited by the new agreement. It was obvious that the lease to the Congo Free State was intended to exclude France from the Nile by placing the Congo Free State as a barrier across her path. Pressure was brought to bear on King Leopold, from Paris, to renounce the rights acquired under the agreement. It is not known what communications, if any, passed between the sovereign of the Free State and the British Government, whether King Leopold asked for, or was refused, support against French pressure; but on the 14th August 1894 King Leopold signed an agreement with France by which, in exchange for France’s acknowledgment of the Mbomu river as his northern frontier, His Majesty renounced all occupation and all exercise of political influence west of 30° E. longitude, and north of a line drawn from the intersection of that meridian with the parallel 5° 30' of N. latitude, and along that parallel to the Nile. This left the way still open for France to the Nile, and in June 1896 Captain Marchand left France with secret instructions to lead an expedition into the Nile France and valley. On the 1st of March in the following ei-(fhazal year 11G left Brazzaville, and began a journey which all but plunged Great Britain and France into war. The difficulties which Captain Marchand had to overcome were mainly those connected with transport. In October 1897 the expedition reached the banks of the Sueh, the waters of which eventually flow into the Nile. Here a post was established and the Faidherbe, a steamer which had been carried across the Congo-Nile watershed in sections, was put together and launched. On the 1st May 1898 Marchand started on the final stage of his journey, and reached Fashoda on the 10th July, having established a chain of posts en route. At Fashoda the French flag was at once raised, and a “ treaty ” made with the local chief. Meanwhile other expeditions had been concentrating on Fashoda—a mud-flat situated in a swamp, round which for many months raged the angry passions of two great peoples. French expeditions, with a certain amount of assistance from the Emperor Menelek of Abyssinia, had been striving to reach the Nile from the east, so as to join hands with Marchand and complete the line of posts to the Abyssinian frontier. In this, however, they were unsuccessful. No better success attended the expedition under Colonel Macdonald, B.E., sent by the British Government from Uganda to anticipate the French in the occupation of the Upper Nile. It was from the north that claimants arrived to dispute with the French their right to Fashoda, and all that the occupation of that dismal post implied. In 1897 an Anglo-Egyptian army, under the direction of Sir Herbert (afterwards Lord) Kitchener, had begun to advance southwards for the reconquest of the Egyptian Sudan. On the 2nd September 1898 Khartum was captured, and the Khalifa’s army dispersed. It was then that news reached the Anglo-Egyptian commander, from native sources, that there were white men flying a strange flag at Fashoda. The Sirdar at once proceeded in a steamer up the Nile, and courteously but firmly requested Captain Marchand to remove the French flag. On his refusal the Anglo-Egyptian flag was raised close to the French flag, and the dispute was referred to Europe for adjustment. Diplomatic negotiations followed between the British and French Governments. At length, on 21st

[history

March 1899, a declaration was signed, by the terms of which France withdrew from the Nile valley and accepted a boundary line, between the British and French spheres of influence in Central Africa, which satisfied her earlier ambition by uniting the whole of her territories in North, West and Central Africa into a homogeneous whole, while effectually preventing the realization of her dream of a transcontinental empire from west to east. By this declaration it was agreed that the dividing line between the British and French spheres, north of the Congo Free State, should follow the Congo-Nile water-parting up to its intersection with the 11th parallel of north latitude, from which point it was to be “drawn as far as the loth parallel in such a manner as to separate in principle the kingdom of Wadai from what constituted in 1882 the province of Darfur,” but in no case was it to be drawn west of the 21st degree of east longitude, or east of the 23rd degree. From the 15th parallel the line took a north - westerly direction, until it intersected the Tropic of Cancer, on the southern frontier of the Turkish province of Fezzan to the south of Tripoli. French influence was to prevail west of this line, British influence to the east. Wadai was thus definitely assigned to France. This partition was and still is (1901) merely a paper partition; and it should be added that while it, of course, only binds the parties to it, the Sultan of Turkey entered a protest against the agreement as infringing his prior acquired rights both in the Sahara and in the Central Sudan. Let us now return to the mouth of the Congo and see what was the course of events in the southern half of the continent. It will be remembered that by the portugal agreement in which Portugal recognized the j„ southsovereignty of the Congo Free State, Portugal’s West and claim to the southern bank of the river as far S^^aEast as Nokki had been admitted. Thus Portuguese possessions on the west coast extended from the Congo to the mouth of the Kunene river. In the interior the boundary with the Free State was settled as far as the Kwango river, but disputes arose as to the right to the country of Lunda, otherwise known as the territory of the Muato Yanvo. On the 25th May 1891 a treaty was signed at Lisbon, by which this large territory was divided between Portugal and the Free State, the boundary line leaving the Kwango at the 8th degree of south latitude and reaching the Kasai, one of the main southern affluents of the Congo, at the 7th degree, then passing along the thalweg of that river to its source in Lake Dilolo, and then along the watershed between the Zaire and the Zambezi to its intersection by the 24th meridian east of Greenwich. The interior limits of Portuguese possessions in Africa south of the equator gave rise, however, to much more serious discussions than were involved in the dispute as to the Muato Yanvo’s kingdom. Portugal, as we have seen, claimed all the territories between Angola and Mozambique, and she succeeded in inducing both France and Germany, in 1886, to recognize the King of Portugal’s “right to exercise his sovereign and civilizing influence in the territories which separate the Portuguese possessions of Angola and Mozambique.” The publication of the treaties containing this declaration, together with a map showing Portuguese claims extending over the whole of the Zambezi valley, and over Matabeleland to the south and the greater part of Lake Nyasa to the north, immediately provoked a formal protest from the British Government. On the 13th August 1887, the British Charge d’Affaires at Lisbon transmitted to the Portuguese minister for foreign affairs a memorandum from Lord Salisbury, in which the latter formally protested “against any claims not founded on occupa-