354 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY in the interior chiefs of more importance commanded the submission of wide areas of territory, and the value of obtaining treaties of amity and trade with these potentates was obvious. But if obvious to the British company, it was of course equally obvious to French and German competitors; and from 1884 onward the influence of Germany, which in that year established itself in the Cameroon territory, to the east of the British Protectorate, became no less active in the back country than that of France. The position of the British company, in presence of this double rivalry, is described in -a speech made by the Governor at a much later date.

'We knew," he said, ''that the Haussa States were by far the most valuable region of equatorial Africa. We were aware that Germany was organising an expedition to deprive us of them, and we knew that the acquisition by any other European Power of political influence over this empire would before long entail our complete retirement from our position on the Middle Niger and the river Benu6 to the district south of Lokoja, and probably even to Asaba, only 150 miles from the sea." It was constantly pointed out by the Governor of the Company, in his speeches to his shareholders, that the prosperity and success of trading operations upon the coast depended on the maintenance of British influence, with its accompaniments of peace and security, in the interior. Animated by this view of their own higher interest, the Company adopted and maintained, in the first instance at their private cost, the policy of sending missions into the interior to negotiate treaties with distant Mohammedan states. But it had early become evident that British interests could not be maintained unless the commercial position of the British company were strengthened by some sort of political sanction. So long as their treaties were made only by a private company, they were of the nature of private and individual agreements, which carried no weight as against the official treaties of foreign Powers.