Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 4.djvu/84





DAMARA AND NAMAQUA LANDS.

HE section of the African seaboard stretching from Angola with considerable uniformity for 900 miles southwards to the Orange river was declared Germain territory in the year 1884, when it received the official designation of "South-west Africa." The vast region taus peaceably annexed had previously been known as Lüderitzland, from the German trader who acquired it by means of contracts made with the chiefs of the few coast tribes and with those of the inland populations, who had been brought under the influence of the Rhenish missionaries.

Before this epoch, when as by a stroke of the magician's wand the country found itself placed under the protection of the German Empire, Great Britain supposed herself to be the virtual suzerain of the land as fur north as Cape Frio, although in actual possession only of a single station on the shores of Walvisch Bay. At the time of the first negotiations opened by the German diplomatists regarding the posts established by subjects of the empire, the British minister declared that any settlements made by a foreign power in the region in question would be an encroachment on the rights of Great Brit:in. The Cape Government even passed a vote to take formal possession of the territory in litigation, but it was already too late. After an exchange of dispatches, which had begun to assume a threatening tone on the part of Germany, the whole of Lüderitzland, with the exception of the Walvisch Bay enclave, was recognised as a Germanic possession. The German diplomatists, moreover, concluded a treaty with Portugal, securing for their Government the protectorate of the territory which stretches from Cape Frio northwards to the mouth of the Cunene.

The region of "South-west Africa," which reaches inland as far as the twentieth degree east longitude, and which is as extensive as the German Empire itself, is the first in chronological order of all the lands which in Africa and Polynesia constitute the vast colonial dominion acquired by the Germans in the course of about four years. But Herr Lüderitz, to whose energy and foresight the mother country was indebted for the acquisition, soon after mysteriously