Page:The empire and the century.djvu/891

 three centuries has been (as might have been expected) a thankless task. Forest products have been, it is true, exported in considerable quantities, bought chiefly in times past with noxious crude spirits and firearms; but the secret societies which permeate these negroid tribes, and the fetishism and superstition in which they are steeped, have rendered any general progress difficult to achieve. Though in the case of individuals high standards of education have been attained, there is a tendency among the partially educated to parody the manners and dress of Europe, while the non-educated masses relinquish with reluctance, or do not relinquish at all, the cannibalism and the horrible fetish rites of thenancestors.

In 1900 the British Government came for the first time into contact with the traditions of the ancient civilization of the Sudan, and with races whose rulers professed a monotheistic religion, and were descended from a type of humanity greatly superior in intellectual ability to the coast population. In the early years of the nineteenth century Othman dan Fodio in the west, and El Kanem in the east of Nigeria, founded respectively the Sokoto Empire and the present dynasty of Bornu. Both were Mohammedan propagandists, and the vital force which enabled them to lead their followers to victory was the watchword of Islam, though, as a matter of fact, there were arrayed against them many followers of the prophet, and their religious zeal was but the cloak for secular conquest. The two dynasties exist to the present day, but differ profoundly in their system. Dan Fodio gave to each of his Fulani chiefs a flag of conquest, and setting out with this sacred symbol, each founded a separate emirate in which the ruling race was alien to the native population, and Moslem and pagan were alike subjected to it El Kanem came, on the other hand, from the east of Chad as a deliverer from a foreign yoke—namely, the Fulani, who had recently conquered the old Bornu dynasty. The Kanembu, as his followers were called, were closely allied in race to