terrain, our lack of co-ordination with the Italians and Abyssinians,
but above all to our parsimonious method of cadging and scraping a
little money together for an expedition and stopping when the funds gave
out, like a small boy with fireworks. Somaliland, with its insignificant
caravan trade, its wide, waterless tracts and its sparse population of
shiftless, unproductive semi-nomads, is a bad business proposition, and
no Government can be blamed for hesitating to spend money on it; but if
half the expenditure had been concentrated on one scheme at one time
instead of being frittered away on several divergent schemes over a
lengthy period the Mullah would have been brought to book and the
resources of the country developed considerably.

South of Somaliland in British, and what was once German, East Africa
the missionary has comparative freedom of movement, whereas in
Somaliland no white man has ever been allowed to travel without the
sanction of the local authorities. He, however, complains that he is not
encouraged by the Administration in either colony, and certainly makes
no headway against Islam, which has a very strong hold, especially in
British East Africa, with the Swahilis. Still, he can point to the
inland kingdom of Uganda as one of his successes, and it would be more
so if the various Christian sects would refrain from wrangling among
themselves.

We have now reached the southern limit of Moslem activity in Africa, for
we are getting among native races who do not take kindly to asceticism
in any form, and beyond them are the sturdy white Christians of South
Africa. Curiously enough, there is a flourishing little colony of
Moslems at Salt River, the railway suburb of Cape Town, where imported
East Indian and Arab mechanics have settled. They muster about 7,000
souls and have founded a school to educate their children. An unbiassed
English resident states that they are far better citizens than native
Christians of the same class, owing to their temperate habits. Drink is
the undoubted curse of the non-Moslem African. In South Africa no native
in white employ can get alcoholic drink without the written authority of
his employer, but there are many illicit sources of supply. South
African colonists insist that the native Christians are the worst--this
should not be set down to Christianity, but to the civilisation which
goes with it, and, in place of Kaffir beer and such like home-fermented
brews of compar