372 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY history of this part of the Soudan had any civilising influence come from the south.

Two new and interesting chapters of history were therefore initiated on the same day. For the first time in the history of the Mohammedan states a superior and civilising influence was established in an administrative capacity upon their southern borders, and by its mere presence began the process of drawing as a magnet towards the south all the thoughts, the activities, the fears and hopes, which the tradition of intelligence had directed, through their entire previous existence, towards the north.

On the other hand, for the first time in British history colonial government was established in the interior of West Africa. In determining to extend our influence to the relatively healthy uplands bordering upon the desert, to enter into friendly relations with the fine races which inhabit them, and to open new fields to commercial enterprise in regions famous through all antiquity for their wealth, a wholly new departure was made from the traditions which had limited us for three hundred years to a coast occupation of the malarial regions fringing the Gulf of Guinea, and had confined our relations to the type of negro who inhabits its shores. The history of British West Africa entered upon a new phase, and if, as we may venture to hope, British influence upon the races of the interior may be of such a nature as to revive in them the old traditions associated with the civilisation of Europe in their best days, the influence of the Mohammedan races upon British West African policy may be not less important. They offer us a field for the foundation of a West African Empire, of which neither they nor we need be ashamed.