Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/420





KILIMA-NJARO, KENIA, MOMBAZ, AND MALINDI COAST.

HE maritime region which stretches-north of the territory facing Zanzibar, and which is bounded on one side by the Pangani, on the other by the Tana, holds a political position analogous to that of the southern lands. Here also the narrow zone of coastlands was recently placed under the authority, or at least the suzerainty, of the Sultan of Zanzibar, while the seaports are drawn henceforth within the sphere of foreign trade. The inland tribes also, although really independent, have in the same way been assigned by international treaty to European influences. The Germans are the future masters in the Pangani basin, while the northern area of drainage has become a British possession.

At the other end of the continent the question of connecting the two great French dependencies of Algeria and Senegal by means of a trans-Sabarian railway has already been more than once seriously discussed. In the same way British politicians foresee the day when it nay be possible to traverse north-east Africa, from Alexandria to Mombaz, without ever quitting territory directly or indirectly subject to the Anglo-Saxon race. But the two regions which have thus to be brought under the respective dominion of France and England in the west and east of Africa present the greatest contrast in their physical and ethnical conditions. From the Mauritanian plateaux to the banks of the Senegal, there stretches the unknown und almost inaccessible wilderness of the Sahara, whereas from Egypt to the Usambara uplands there follows an alternating succession of unfertile and productive, of desert and populous lands, already traversed if not yet thoroughly explored by the white man. The most famous historic river of the continent, its largest lake, and one of the two loftiest mountain masses in Africa, are all comprised within the limits of this vast domain, the two extremities of which have already been brought under the control of England. The central region can scarcely fail to be assigned to the same power as protector of Egypt, should the expedition under Stanley succeed in again bringing the whole of the Upper Nile basin within the sphere of European influence.