evil is being abated as fast as the influence of the European governments is extended over new regions.  The practice of the arts of fetichism, a kind of chicanery, most injurious in its effects upon the superstitious natives, is now punishable throughout the Congo Free State and British Rhodesia.  Arab slave-dealers no longer raid the Congo plains and forests for slaves, killing seven persons for every one they lead into captivity.  Slave-raiding has been utterly wiped out in all parts of Africa, except in portions of the Sudan and other districts over which white rule has not yet been asserted.  The Arabs of the Congo, who went there from East Africa solely that they might grow rich in the slave trade, are now settled quietly on their rice and banana plantations.  The sale of strong drink has been restricted by international agreement to the coast regions, where the traffic has long existed, and its evils are somewhat mitigated there by the regulations now enforced.  Fifty thousand Congo natives who would not carry a pound of freight for Stanley in 1880, are now in the service of the white enterprises, many of them working, not for barter goods, but for coin.  Many of the missionary fields are thriving, and wonderful results have been achieved in some of them.  In Uganda, where Stanley in 1875 saw King Mtesa impaling his victims, there are now ninety thousand natives professing Christianity, three hundred and twenty churches, and many thousands of children in the schools.  Fifty thousand of the people can read.  Between 1880 and 1882 Stanley carried three little steamboats around 235 miles of rapids to the Upper Congo.  Eighty steamers are now afloat there, plying on nearly 8,000 miles of rivers, and connected with the sea by a railroad that has paid dividends from the day it was opened.  At the end of 1890 there were only 5,813 miles of railroad in Africa.  About 15,000 miles are now in operation, and the end of this decade is certain to see 25,000 miles of railroads.  Trains are running from Cairo to Khartum, the seat of the Mahdist tyranny, in the centre of a vast region which, until recently, had been closed for many years to all the world.

These wonderful results are the fruits of the partition of Africa among the European states.  With the exception of some waste regions in the Libyan desert, which no one has claimed, Morocco, Abyssinia, and Liberia, every square mile of African territory has been divided among European powers, either as colonies or as spheres of influence.  The scramble of twenty years for African lands is at an end, there now being no valuable areas that are not covered by the existing agreements.  It is no mere love of humanity that has impelled the European countries to divide these regions among themselves.  We can scarcely realize the intensity of the struggle for existence in many of the overcrowded parts of Europe.  Their factories are enormously productive, but their people will suffer for food unless they can export manufactures.  The crying need for new markets, for new sources of raw material, drove these states into Africa.  And we should be glad, for Africa’s sake, that they have gone there, even though the desire to make money is one of the most powerful incentives.