In the Sudan conditions have been somewhat different, for there men have been more directly and continuously stimulated by those living by the southern shores of the Mediterranean, who, both before and after the spread of Islam, found their way in small numbers across the desert, and mixing with the negro population introduced ideas of how to save energy in many ways. Here on the wetter park-like lands cotton is cultivated, and dyed with indigo ; here are stone dwellings and walled cities containing thousands of people, and here the half-breed descendants of northern immigrants have founded states which have lasted for centuries at a time. But that is the most that can be said. This type of civilization at its best is less effective than that by which it was stimulated. On the eastern coast, also, Arab influence within historic times has been felt; states have been established; but this in fluence Lhas not been used for the saving of energy, rather the reverse.
Within the borders of the forest, in places where it is dense enough to form a protection against the inroads of pastoral peoples, but where it is not yet so thick as to crush initiative, it is possible that some tribes, origin ally stimulated by the northern civilizations, have found refuge, and have been able to work out their own methods of living well, but these are exceptional; in most cases very little advance has been made.
It is thus fairly evident that little may be expected from the natives of Africa; we have yet to notice why it remained so long unknown to civilized peoples. The control was twofold. On the one hand, there were positive difficulties in the way of exploration and settle ment, and, on the other, there was an absence of induce ments which would appeal to civilized men. The difficulties are obvious ; deserts and forests are met with on the west coasts from Morocco to south of the Congo, except where the Sudan comes to the sea in Senegambia, and here were some of the earliest attempts at settlement. South of the Congo the driest and most desert part of the Kalahari fringes the coast, and on the opposite eastern coast is a forest land. Coming from oversea, explorers travelled in boats and looked for river mouths up which they might sail; but in the deep sea which surrounds Africa tides have little rise and fall, and rivers, where there is enough rainfall to allow water to run off, come to the sea in deltas difficult to traverse. The rivers themselves, except where they pass through regions of constant rain, are mostly unsuited for naviga tion, being alternately rushing torrents and series of water holes, and even where navigable they reach their deltas after descending by waterfalls and rapids from the high plateaus inland. The lands themselves are hot, and in many places fever-stricken ; they are un familiar, unlike home, and white men would not settle in them. Nor was there much inducement to explore ; in Africa there were no tales of stores of hoarded gold, nor of the wealth and spices of the Indies. Men passed by these inhospitable shores, and continued on their journeys to lands where wealth was known.
And yet the geographical conditions have controlled even the white man's advance. In some places rather than in others settlements were made ; in some direc tions rather than in others these settlements expanded. The reasons for the settlements were partly local; partly they were related to other facts in other lands. There were early settlements by the Senegal and Gambia, because these were reached early, and because here, between desert and forest, conditions were somewhat more favourable than elsewhere. A similar position
to the south on the coast of Angola was early occupied by the Portuguese. The Cape apparently possessed no advantages ; there were neither spices nor treasure nor slaves, and little was to be made of it, so that the Portu guese preferred to occupy the coasts farther north, nearer to India, the goal of the voyager, thus leaving the Cape open for the Dutch.
The control passed to Britain in the beginning of the nineteenth century, when all Europe was under the heel of Napoleon, and it was imperative that outlying areas which might be used as French bases should be seized and held. It was found, on the one hand, that the climate of the district round the Cape was not so greatly different from that of Britain, and, on the other, that it was the most convenient calling place on the way to India, by a route unlike that used by the Portuguese, who hugged the coast. Trusting to the permanence of the westerlies and the trade winds, men accustomed to the sea did not waste time beating against the winds, but used them to the best advantage, and took the course shown on the map (p. 265), which brought them close to land only at the south of Africa.
Thus, as always, history and geography combined to control man's choice of settlements. Farther advance was equally controlled by what was and by what had been. The decline of Portugal from its position as a Great Power helped to prevent the growth of Portuguese colonies, while the naturally unhealthy coast of Portu guese East Africa, fringed as we have seen by a damp forest, held out little inducement to extensive settle ment. From the Senegal the French did advance eastwards, and passing over to the Upper Niger held a region which helped to consolidate their dominion in North Africa. But the most effective advance was naturally made northwards from the Cape over the highest part of the comparatively cool, open plateau, the most suitable part of the continent for men accus tomed to such conditions as are found in Europe. At the Cape the Portuguese did not land at all; the Dutch, keen to make money, but not possessed by the colonizing instinct, simply held the Cape as a station on the way to the Indies, where wealth might be obtained; few men could be spared from home, and those who did come always expected to go back. The British did more : from the first, settlements were made and expansion took place ; they met the ancient inhabitants, Bushmen and Hottentots ; they met the more recent arrivals, Zulus and Matabili, and compelled them to live in peace ; and at last they brought under one government the descen dants of the original Dutch, who, unaccustomed to centralized rule, had migrated always farther north. With the control of lands more or less suitable for white occupation, there came the dream of British sovereignty stretching from north to south. Once this claim was challenged when it clashed with French claims to rule a territory stretching across the breadth of the continent ; but at Fashoda, or rather in the English Channel where lay the superior fleet, it was decided that Nile waters, whether reached from Alexandria or from the east coast, should remain under one control. Once again it was Challenged, and Germany made good a claim to the control of a territory also reached from the east coast, which, marching with that now controlled by Belgium, divides the British dominion of the south from that of the north, but does not prevent the possibility of a railway over the plateau from the Cape to Cairo.