the people generally are a sober people, who are able to drink in moderation without falling into excess."

Sir J. P. Rodger, in completing his five years' term as Governor, presented to the Legislative Council of the Gold Coast a report which showed the estimated revenue for 1910 to be 789,7701., an increase of over 40 per cent. since 1903. Excellent relations existed between the administration and the native peoples of Ashanti and the northern territories beyond, and Ashantiland is undergoing steady economic development, especially in cocoa cultivation. Messrs. Cadbury have started a plantation at Mangoase, and will introduce the latest methods of curing. In the northern territories cotton-growing is extending with satisfactory results under the auspices of the Cotton-Growing Association of Great Britain, to whom the Gold Coast Government grants a subsidy of 1,000l. for three years. Labour is now available from the north for agriculture and mining. Better health conditions have prevailed in the past year. A railway is now under construction from Accra to Mangoase, which will be reached in 1920, and thereafter the line will be continued to Kumasi, to which there is already a railway from Sekondi on the coast. A main metalled road is being cut from Kumasi to Temale, the capital of the northern territories, a distance of 200 miles, and roads for motor traffic, with permanent bridges, have been made in various directions. The gold

returns

744,6661.

the end of September reached the value of

A Government inquiry into health conditions in West Africa was conducted by Professor W. J. Simpson, formerly medical officer of health at Calcutta, after the outbreak of plague at Accra in 1908. He describes Gold Coast conditions as being fraught with danger to the community. The conditions are so primitive and insanitary that the climatic risks are aggravated. He advises the establishment of a special department of health with an expert sanitary service. There was issued simultaneously a Government report on the conditions of the West African Medical Service. It remains to be seen whether these documents will be followed by action in the Colonies concerned. The underlying principle of them is that sanitation is a condition precedent to West African advancement, and that with efficient sanitary services these Colonies ought not to be more unhealthy than other tropical regions.

In pursuance of these reports Lord Crewe appointed an Advisory Committee on medical and sanitary questions in British tropical Africa, with Mr. H. J. Read, of the Colonial Office, as chairman. Sir Patrick Manson, Sir Rubert Boyce and Professor Simpson were among the members.

Liberia has been quiescent and unprogressive. The chief event of the year has been an abnormal flood. President Barclay is still at the head of affairs. A diplomatic incident was an apology to Germany for the firing by Custom House officers on

a German steamer. Correspondence was issued in May showing that the United States Government had sought British co-operation in pressing on Liberia judicial and administrative reforms.

During 1908 the Government cancelled the prohibition against foreigners trading in the interior, by an Act throwing open the trade of the country. The text of this measure will be found in Captain C. Braithwaite Wallis's Report for 1908, presented to Parliament in June, 1909.

In the French West African Colonies the year has seen a notable extension of French authority in the Soudan region. Abeshr, the capital of Wadai, was taken by storm on June 2 by a French column under Lieutenant Bourreau with slight loss. Major Brisset was appointed Resident. This important achievement means that French influence is now established in the great Province of Wadai, one of the three Provinces-Borku and Tibesti being the others-assigned to France under the Agreement of 1899. On November 7 Captain Prévot achieved a military success over a large body of Arabs at Bilma, the farthest north-east post on the Tripoli-Lake Chad-Guinea Gulf caravan route. The Arabs came from the Tripolitaine, and were driven out of the oasis to the east. There was also sharp fighting in the region between the Algerian and the Niger outposts, due to an Arab raid from Southern Algeria towards the Niger. On the Ivory Coast there was also much military activity, the cause being the refusal of certain tribes to pay taxes. Some 11,000 rifles were surrendered to the French under disarmament proceedings enforced by the troops. M. Merland-Ponty, the Governor-General, was in Paris in October to urge the completion of the railway system in Senegal in order to give an outlet for the Soudan to the coast. A further 500 kilometres have to be built to carry the Kayes-Niger line to the sea. It appeared from an interview which he granted to the Temps that there is some risk of "Mussulman clericalism" becoming a political danger, and that he is therefore opposed to the amalgamation of the tribes into a great black empire, and desires to maintain the separate tribal system with a responsible chief at the head of each tribe. The estimates for 1909 for the Regency of Tunis were: Revenue, 1,683,9027.; expenditure, 1,683,617. Following on the bad agricultural year of 1907 the trade of the Regency in 1908 increased only by 438,4771., and much of the increase was due to the necessity of importing foodstuffs owing to bad crops. But the mineral industry continues to advance, and much work is being done in railway construction. There are now 900 miles of railway in the Regency.

A Royal Decree of July 29 suspended for three months the recruiting of natives in the Province of Angola for the cocoa and other plantations of S. Thomé and Principe, and revoked all legislation on the subject. New regulations for the labour traffic were to be devised. In July Sir Edward Grey gave an outline of these regulations, from which it seemed that the abuses of

the old system were unlikely to recur. Owing to the decision of English cocoa firms not to use slave-grown cocoa the output of Portuguese West Africa was diverted to the American market. A letter from Colonel J. A. Wyllie in the Times of September 28 offered a qualified defence of the system of recruiting and of the white planters, the facts being gleaned by personal inquiry on the coast. No labour under the age of fifteen is to be recruited; transport is to be made in Portuguese vessels, and there were provisions to facilitate repatriation.

During the year the survey of the Cameroon boundary with Southern Nigeria has been concluded and a provisional line agreed upon by the German and British Commissioners. Early in the year the Mission was attacked in the hinterland of Calabar, and Lieutenant von Stephani, the German Commissioner, was among the wounded.

In German South West Africa the Hottentot risings have ceased. A company was formed to take over certain areas in the diamondiferous districts of Luderitz Bay. In April stones to the value of 25,000l. were exported to Germany. With a return of peace in the Southern Colony prospects have much improved. In the opinion of Herr Dernburg, the German Imperial Secretary for the Colonies, the conditions in Damaraland are not essentially different from those in the adjoining Cape Colony, and it is probable that an important wool export will be developed. It appeared on the authority of the Governor, that diamonds had also been freely found east of Fish River, and that twelve hundred fields had been occupied there by the end of July. From mid-March to mid-August diamonds to the weight of 31,034 grammes were exported, yielding to the Government a revenue of 92,000l. The Ōtavi and Otavi-Grootfontein railways, a British concern, were acquired by Germany during 1909 for 1,116,500l., payable in five annual instalments ending April, 1914. The State has leased the line to the Company for thirty years, subject to termination after the first ten years. The Company has the monopoly of mining rights in the land transferred to the Colony and also receives 7,500l. for certain irrigation works at Usako.

The year in the Belgian Colony of the Congo has seen the death of King Leopold, the accession of King Albert after a visit to the Congo-undertaken for the purpose of studying its conditions and the announcement of a scheme of reforms by the Colonial Minister, M. Renkin, who accompanied the then heir to the Throne (p. 350); but it has closed without recognition of the Belgian annexation by the Governments of Great Britain and the United States. (For the debates in Parliament and the agitation in England, see pp. 26, 127, 257.) News from the Congo itself has been of the usual fragmentary character, and there has been an absence of conspicuous events. A white paper issued in February, on taxation in the Congo, contained a despatch from Colonel Thesiger, British Consul at Boma, de

scribing the whole system of taxation as fraudulent: so long as it was continued the natives would be overtaxed. He charged the Kasai Company with habitual disregard of the regulations against waste of rubber resources and with systematic violations of the laws of the Congo-a violation impossible but for wilful blindness, if not actual connivance of the State officials. Orders were given in February prohibiting the collection of rubber in the Abir and Mongalla districts and modifying the rigour of the collection of revenue. A report from the Rev. John Whitehead to the Congo Reform Association gave a vivid account of native hardships in the Lukolela district in the provision of food taxes enforced by the Government stations. Complaints were made that the Comité Spécial de Katanga had subjected the Katanga province to a monopoly, putting every obstacle in the way of a prospecting and trading party from Buluwayo. The party was compelled to abandon its enterprise and return to Rhodesia. British Consular representation in Katanga was requested as a means of enforcing the international right of entry and trade. Sir Edward Grey in a despatch of August said this case-known as the case of King and Woestwas under his consideration, and promised to take up every other specific instance in which British subjects had suffered from infringement of their treaty rights. In reply to a question in Parliament in September he said he had brought the facts to the notice of the Belgian Government, but was awaiting further particulars before deciding on the amount of compensation to be claimed. In October an appeal was published from the Chiefs of the Nyombe Lutete district to the Belgian Colonial Minister, praying for relief from the taxation. The appeal claimed that the people there now had no places from which to obtain that in which the taxes had to be paid and that they received no return for the taxes. Two American missionariesMessrs. Morrison and Sheppard-of the Presbyterian Mission at Luebo, were tried and acquitted at Leopoldville on a charge of calumniating the Kasai Company. They were defended by M. Vandervelde, the Socialist leader in the Belgian Parliament, who made a special journey to the Congo for the purpose. On his return to Brussels M. Vandervelde brought to notice complaints lodged at Coquilhatville against the Société Anonyme Belge du Haut Congo. They comprised arbitrary arrest of natives, killing, cruelty, and the use of armed sentries over rubber collectors. M. Renkin, Minister for the Colonies, replied that the information collected officially permitted the hope that the charges were exaggerated. On October 28, M. Renkin submitted the Budget for 1910, from which it appeared that extraordinary credits were needed to the amount of 1,320,000l., of which 80,000l. would be spent in starting new agricultural and stock-raising centres and 160,000l. in colonising the Katanga province, which would be furnished with a Vice-GovernorGeneral and an administration. A sum of 800,000l. would be

allotted for various works to be spread over several years. He also outlined a scheme of reforms (p. 350). Great Britain, Germany and Belgium have agreed to negotiate certain questions regarding the eastern frontier of the Congo.

At the end of October it was reported that the German and British authorities had stationed detachments of troops with machine-guns to watch developments on the Congolese frontier. The Belgian army contingent for service in the Congo for 1910 was fixed at 3,375 men. M. Renkin's reform scheme was under discussion at the close of the year, and its adoption seemed to be assured.

Malta. The new Constitution which admits two elected members to the Executive Council, came into force in December. Each member is to have a salary of 300l. The Report for 1908-9 shows a revenue of 457,520l. and expenditure of 445,014. The civil population is still increasing and is now 212,888; and the condition of the people is still unsatisfactory owing to the lack of opportunity for employment. The number of unemployed is a source of anxiety to the Government. Emigration is apparently the only remedy. Changes in the disposition of the Fleet and reductions in the garrison have affected the prosperity of the island, much less pay being spent there than formerly. The Duke of Connaught resigned his position as Commissioner of the Mediterranean Command on a question of policy which was left in some obscurity by statements made in Parliament. The new Governor is Sir Leslie Rundle.

CHAPTER VIII.

AMERICA.

I. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. THE year 1909 witnessed a change in the head of the State, but no change in political power. On March 4 Mr. William Howard Taft, of Ohio, was inaugurated as President, succeeding Mr. Theodore Roosevelt. Mr. James Schoolcraft Sherman, of New York, succeeded Mr. Charles Warren Fairbanks as VicePresident. (See post, Chronicle, p. 7.)

After taking the oath the President made the customary inaugural address. He announced that certain reforms were necessary in the laws governing the railways and the trusts, but the matter of the most pressing importance was the revision of the tariff, for which Congress would be summoned into extra session on March 15. This revision should secure an adequate revenue and adjust the duties in such a manner as to afford to labour and to all industries in this country, whether of the farm, mine or factory, protection by tariff equal to the difference between the cost of production abroad and the cost of produc