The significance of the events just described will be apparent when it is remembered that British East Africa, inclusive of Uganda and the Upper Nile basin, comprises altogether 670,000 square miles, to a large extent fertile, and capable of settlement by white men in the more elevated tracts of the interior.  German East Africa contains 385,000 square miles, and is also destined to have a future that will dwarf that of many of the secondary States of to-day.

The prosperity of British East Africa was greatly enhanced by the opening of a railway, 580 miles long, from Mombasa to Victoria Nyanza in 1902.  Among other benefits, it has cut the ground from under the slave-trade, which used to depend on the human beast of burden for the carriage of all heavy loads[437].

[Footnote 437:  For the progress and prospects of this important colony, see Sir G. Portal, The British Mission to Uganda in 1893; Sir Charles Elliot, British East Africa (1905); also Lugard, Our East African Empire; Sir H. Johnston, The Uganda Protectorate.]

The Anglo-German agreement of 1890 also cleared up certain questions between Britain and Germany relating to South-West Africa which had made bad blood between the two countries.  In and after the year 1882 the attention of the colonial party in Germany was turned to the district north of the Orange River, and in the spring of the year 1883 Herr Luederitz founded a factory and hoisted the German flag at Angra Pequena.  There are grounds for thinking that that district was coveted, not so much for its intrinsic value, which is slight, as because it promised to open up communications with the Boer Republics.  Lord Granville ventured to express his doubts on that subject to Count Herbert Bismarck, whom the Chancellor had sent to London in the summer of 1884 in order to take matters out of the hands of the too Anglophil ambassador, Count Muenster.  Anxious to show his mettle, young Bismarck fired up, and informed Lord Granville that his question was one of mere curiosity; later on he informed him that it was a matter which did not concern him[438].

[Footnote 438:  Bismarck:  Some Secret Pages of his History, vol. iii. p. 120.]

It must be admitted, however, that the British Government had acted in a dilatory and ineffective manner.  Sir Donald Currie had introduced a deputation to Lord Derby, Colonial Minister in the Gladstone Cabinet, which warned him seriously as to German aims on the coast of Damaraland; in reply to which that phlegmatic Minister stated that Germany was not a colonising Power, and that the annexation of those districts would be resented by Great Britain as an “unfriendly act[439].”  In November 1883 the German ambassador inquired whether British protection would be accorded to a few German settlers on the coast of Damaraland.  No decisive answer was given, though the existence of British interests there was affirmed.  Then, when Germany claimed the right