navy, in
co-operation with that of England, extirpated the Riff piracies by
bombarding the Moslem ports. The vaunted civilizations of the North
African states would have been supported by wholesale marauding to this
day, had not their piratical fleets been thus summarily swept from the
seas by other powers.

If Egypt has shown a higher degree of advancement it has been due to her
peculiar geographical position, to the inexhaustible fertility of the
Delta, and, most of all, to the infusion of foreign life and energy into
the management of her affairs. Ambitious adventurers, like the Albanian
Mehamet Ali, have risen to power and have made Egypt what she is, or
rather what she was before the more recent intervention of the European
powers. Even Canon Taylor admits that for centuries it has been
necessary to import more vigorous foreign blood for the administration
of Egyptian affairs.[115]

It will be admitted that Mohammedan conquests have been made in mediaeval
times, and down to our own age, in Central Africa, and that along the
southern borders of Sahara a cordon of more or less prosperous states
has been established; also, that the civilization of those states
contrasts favorably with the savagery of the cannibal tribes with which
they have come in contact. Probably the best--that is to say, the least
objectionable--exemplifications of Islam now to be found in the world
are seen in some of the older states of Western Soudan. The Mandingo of
the central uplands furnished a better material than the "unspeakable
Turk," and it would not be quite fair to ascribe all his present virtues
to the Moslem rule.

But _how_ have these conquests in Central Africa been made? The
contention of the apologists for Islam is that recently, at least, and
probably more or less in the past, a quiet missionary work has greatly
extended monotheism, temperance, education, and general comfort, and
that it has done more than all other influences for the permanent
extinction of the slave trade! Dr. E.W. Blyden, in answer to the charge
that Mohammedan Arabs are now, and long have been, chiefly responsible
for the horrors of that trade, and that even when Americans bought
slaves for their plantations, Moslem raiders in the interior instigated
the tribal quarrels which supplied the markets on the coast, contends
that the Moslem conquests do most effectually destroy the trade, since
tribes which have become Moslem can no longer be enslaved by
Mo