scientific expeditions were the product of this organization, and stations were opened from Zanzibar to Tanganyika. In 1879 Stanley was sent into the Congo country, supported by funds furnished chiefly by Leopold, and worked for five years in that region in the name of the association. Several thousand treaties were made with native chiefs, by which territorial rights of more or less value were acquired, and permanent posts, with regular routes of trade and travel, were established along the course of the river. The purpose was to found a State which should be a civilizing centre, in the heart of Africa. For a time there was some international interest in the project; but for several years those European powers which had been active in African exploration had been looking forward to possible political results, and the institution of such a State, with a territory comprising about one-eleventh of the whole continent, seems to have been the signal for the rise of territorial claims on all sides. Interest in the international enterprise died out, and the King of the Belgians was left free to develop the Congo State into a Belgian dependency. The English hoped to make it an English possession, and the attempt of Great Britain to come to an agreement with Portugal, whose territory in the southwest touched that of the Congo State, led to the assembling in 1884 of the Berlin Conference, called to bring about an international agreement in African affairs. The results of this conference are described in a subsequent paragraph.
Of the long list of African explorers up to this time only those have been mentioned whose work marked a distinct advance in the knowledge of the continent. There may be added to the number, prior to 1885, the Portuguese Serpa Pinto (1877-79), and Capello and Ivens (1884-85), who made valuable explorations in South Africa; Junker (1880-83), a traveler, whose examination of the western watershed of the Nile was of great value; Joseph Thomson (1883-84), who made thorough studies of the mountainous country between Mombasa and the lakes, and likewise in West Africa and the Atlas Mountains; Wissmann (1881-82), who crossed the continent and returned through the southern side of the Congo basin; Oscar Lenz, who, in 1879-87, went from Morocco to Senegambia by the way of Timbuktu, ascended the Congo, and traveled to the Zambezi by the way of Tanganyika; Brazza, who explored the country between the Ogowe and Congo; and Emil Holub, who added greatly to the knowledge of the natural history of South Africa.
Much has been done in the way of exploration since 1885, the object generally being to perfect geographical and scientific knowledge of the different regions. Of such expeditions, the best known and one of the most noteworthy was Stanley's mission, undertaken in 1887, in search of Gordon's lieutenant, the German Schnitzer, better known as Emin Pasha, who had retreated into the interior after the fall of Khartum. Stanley went up the Congo and crossed to Zanzibar. On the journey he traversed the dense and vast forest inhabited by diminutive savages, and thus confirmed ancient accounts of African Pygmies. The predominance of the British in Egypt and in South Africa, and the fact that the territory under British influence stretches with but one break (German East Africa) from the month of the Nile to Cape Town, has given rise to the project of a trunk line railway “from the Cape to Cairo,” a project which is likely to be carried out at no distant day, with far-reaching consequences in the development of the continent. This plan led to the crossing of the continent from south to north by Ewart S. Grogan and Arthur Sharp in 1899. Their journey was an adventurous and dangerous one, but the change in African conditions at the end of the nineteenth century is indicated by the fact that there was a choice of routes in buying first-class railway tickets from the Cape to Karonga at the head of Lake Nyassa, and the journey from Sobat, a considerable distance south of Kashoda, is described as “a fortnight of wild hospitality” at the hands of English friends. This journey was productive of much valuable information regarding the country which the transcontinental line is expected to traverse in the volcanic region around Lake Kivu and on the eastern shores of Lake Albert Edward and the Upper Nile. A host of scientific investigators and explorers have in the last twenty years done useful work in various African fields. Among such, special reference should be made to Donaldson Smith in connection with explorations in Somaliland. The two most notable expeditions of recent years have been those of Marchand (the “Marchand Mission to Fashoda”) and Foureau, the latter, in his trans-Saharan journey to the Congo, making an epoch in African exploration. One of the most extraordinary among African explorers for his success as traveler, organizer, administrator, and historian of Africa is Sir Harry H. Johnston.
The Partition of Africa. The Berlin Conference is important in the history of Africa as marking the transition from a period of explorations undertaken in a spirit of scientific curiosity or gain to a period in which the play of international politics is the most prominent feature. The crucial question before the conference was that of the Congo Free State (q.v.) and its relations with neighboring territories. Ultimately it was recognized as an independent, neutral State, under the personal sovereignty of the King of Belgium. The title of France to the territory of the French Congo and the Upper Ubanghi was acknowledged, with a right of preëmption in case of the transfer of the Congo State from Belgium to another power. The conference also determined the spheres of the several interested powers in Africa, so that the numerous boundary treaties and agreements that have been arranged since 1885 have virtually been executory provisions added to the Berlin convention. Three such treaties were concluded by Great Britain in 1890. The Anglo-German agreement, signed at Berlin July 1, gave Germany the island of Heligoland in the North Sea in return for certain concessions which harmonized the relations of the two powers in Eastern Africa; the Anglo-French agreement, signed at London, August 5, recognized an English protectorate over Zanzibar and Pemba and a French protectorate over Madagascar, and determined the French sphere of influence as extending from Algeria southward to a line from Say on the Niger to Lake Chad; the Anglo-Portuguese agreement, August 20 and November 14, established the respective territorial rights of Portugal and the British South Africa Company. Subsequent agreements between England, France, and Germany (1899) defined their respective territories and protectorates in West Africa. The question of the control of the Nile region and of South Africa gave rise to numerous attempts to
