Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/377

 ZANZIBAR. 803 by a conventional line running south-eastwards from Kavirondoland on the east side of Victoria Nyanza to the Indian Ocean. This line passes to the north of the snowy Kilima-Njaro, monarch of African mountains, while on the south the future German domain is bounded by the coursa of the Rovuma, separating it from the Portuguese Mozambique lands. Beyond a narrow strip of coastlands recognised by a sort of "diplomatic fiction " us still belonging to the Sultan of Zanzibar, the region figuring on the maps as forming the future German East African domain covers a superficial area of 120,000 square miles, with a total population approximately estimated at not more than three million souls. To this domain may already be added what remains of the Zanzibar state, to which the new Sultan, Said Khalif, succeeded in March, 1888, as the officially acknowledged vassal of Germany. Thus consolidated on a sure political footing, the financial society by which the first treaties were concluded has been able to develop into a more powerful company disposing of a considerable capital. The association also commands the services of a body of skilled and learned explorers, who are now studying the mineral, agricultural, and commercial resources of the country, indicating the points to be occupied, and tracing the routes destined soon to connect the inland stations with the ports on the east coast. Numerous stations have already been founded in the Kingani, AVarai, and Rufu river valleys, and the ground in the neighbourhood of all these places has been cleared by the planters for the culti- vation of cofPee, cotton, tobacco, European and African vegetables. Protestant and Catholic German missionaries have also established themselves in these new settlements, where chapels and schools are to be opened. Through the interven- tion of the Pope the French missionaries, who had long been labouring in this field, have now been replaced by Germans. But however active and enterprising may be the " protectors " of the popu- lations dwelling in the region comprised between Zanzibar and Tanganyika, a large extent of the territory claimed by them still remains to be explored. The best-known district, one of those that have been most frequently described by travellers, is the zone of the caravan routes, whose intersecting tracks wind through Ugogo and Unyamezi from the Indian Ocean to the shores of Tanganjaka. This is the region first traversed by Burton and Spekc, by Livingstone, Stanley, and Cameron, and since the time of these pioneers of geographical discovery, by nume- rous other European explorers, traders, missionaries, or soldiers. A portion of the territory has even already been carefully surveyed by means of astronomical observations, while a first map of the neighbourhood of Kondoa, in the AVami Valley, is based on a scientific triangulation. But vast spaces stretching to the north and south along both sides of the commercial highways are still known only through the vague reports supplied by the natives, and the geographical features of these districts are figured differently on the different maps of travellers and explorers.