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6 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY
conceived, and civilisation has profited by the step in human progress that was made. But the actual enjoy-
ment of freedom is still far from the African native.
If we could realise the dream of abolition by carrying freedom to every village, and so direct our administra-
tion that under it the use of liberty would be learned, we should be filling a place that any nation might be proud to hold in the annals of civilisation. It is not a mere unworthy dream of gain which turns our eyes towards the tropics. It is a great opportunity which seems to be presenting itself in national life, one which affords scope for the best qualities and highest talents that we can command. J
It is not, therefore, surprising that interest in tropical questions should of late have become more general, and it is only when we begin to think about them that we realise how very little we know of some of our newer possessions in the tropics. A recognition of this ignor-
ance on my own part in relation to the interior of West Africa has led me to study such authorities as I could
find, and, with a very profound sense of my own incom-
petence in dealing with a subject which demands the care and attention of an accomplished Oriental scholar, I have put together a little account of the general move-
ment of civilisation in the Western Soudan which may perhaps serve rather as a basis for future criticism than for any of the permanent purposes of history. Fresh information comes almost daily to light in the territories occupied by civilised powers, which will doubtless elucidate many points now left obscure, and rectify mistaken con-
clusions. In the meantime, what I have been able to gather, in part from original manuscripts, but chiefly from translations of Arab historians, may interest some of those who, like myself, desire to have a connected idea of the civilisations which have preceded our own in our lately acquired territories in the interior of West Africa.
I am, of course, chiefly concerned with the territories of the protectorate lying on the watershed of the Niger and