COMMUNICATIONS AND TRADE.—The Uganda Railway, which runs from Mombasa to Port Florence, is the chief means of com munication in the Protectorate. From Mombasa it ascends, often by steep gradients, to a height of nearly 8,000 feet on the eastern escarpment of the rift valley. After descending about 2,000 feet into the valley, it rises again to over 8,000 feet on the western escarpment, from which there is a rapid descent to Port Florence. The principal exports are copra, grain, hides and skins, ivory and rubber ; while the imports consist of cotton goods, provisions, and agricultural implements.
German East Africa has an area of 384,000 square miles. Its population is estimated at 10,000,000, of whom about 2,000 are Europeans.
The physical geography of the country is briefly as follows : The 600 miles of coast are bordered by a hot, moist, and frequently unhealthy lowland of varying breadth, beyond which lie various mountain ranges, of which the Usambara and the Usagara are the most important. The coastal plain and the mountain slopes which face the sea have a mean annual rainfall of at least 30, and in places of over 60 inches. Beyond the mountains, but at a lower elevation, lies a plateau with a height of 3,500 to 4,000 feet above sea-level. The rainfall on this plateau, sheltered by the mountains, is naturally low ; in the east it probably does not exceed 30 inches, but it increases in the west as the land rises towards the hills which border the plains round Lake Tanganyika.
The coastal plain, and the seaward slopes of the mountains which border it, are generally forested, but, further inland, the vegetation is of the savanna type, and in the regions of low rain fall tends to pass into semi-desert. There are, therefore, two
fertile areas—an eastern and a western—separated by a wide stretch of sparsely populated country. German authorities have estimated that not much more than one-fifteenth of the whole region is capable of development.
Agriculture is mainly in the hands of the natives, but European plantations have been established in some of the healthier eastern districts, the more favoured localities being round Mochi (at the foot of the Kilimanjaro and Meru mountains), and on the slopes of the Usambara and Usagara. On these plantations, coffee, wattle, tobacco, cotton, and tea are cultivated ; while, nearer the coast, sisal-hemp and rubber are grown on an extensive scale. The native crops include cotton, rice, sesame, and coconuts in the eastern districts, and coffee, ground-nuts, cotton, and palm-oil in the western. Wax, rubber, and copal are collected in various places. The eastern and western districts have not yet been brought into communication with one another, and at present, there are only two railway lines in the country. One runs from Tanga, by Mombo, to the plantations on the Usambara, and has recently been connected with those round Mochi ; the other starts at Dar-es-Salaam, and has been carried to Tabora, so that it has opened up, not only the plantations on the Usagara, but a cattle raising region on the plateau behind. Many of the exports of the western districts leave the country by way of the ports on Victoria Nyanza and the Uganda railway.