THE ARAB DOMINION IN AFRICA.

Te Aroha News, Volume VII, Issue 445, 12 February 1890, Page 3

THE ARAB DOMINION IN AFRICA.

But the problem of Arab dominion is not on the coast at all, but in the interior of Africa. On the coast the European States can make their influence felt, but it extends no further than a narrow strip of land, beyond which barbarism reigns supreme. And here we arrive at one of the most remarkable phenomena of the age in which we live and the planet we inhabit. The aboriginal inhabitants of Central Africa arc savages, sunk in heathenism, afflicted by the evils and the weaknesses of savage life, and perhaps inferior in mental and physical vigour to the strongestracesof mankind. Over them has passed, like a tempest from the east, a horde of men of another and a stronger race, which marks them out for slavery and destruction. The Arab invasion of Africa is characterised in every part to which Europeaus have penetrated by desperate valour in arms, by an utter indifference to human life, and, above all, by an enthusiastic and fanatical belief in the faith of Islam. They remind us of those ardent followers of the Prophet who, in the first ages of Mohammedanism, bore his blood-stained standard and bis intolerant creed from Spain to the confines of China, and well-nigh 'overthew the faith and civilisation of the ancient world. Indeed, if we are not mistaken, they are the same men—the living inheritors of the passions, the valour and the faith of the soldiers of Mohammed. Before the strength of the Christian States they are now compelled reluctantly to bow ; but over the unarmed and untutored native races of Africa they are supreme. Accordingly, what we are now witnessing in Africa, since it has been partially opened to our view, is an amazing recrudescence and fermentation of Mohammedan power. On the Congo it is not the native population, but the blood - thirsty Arab slave - dealers, who oppose the progress of civilisation; the natives ask protection from these formidable tyrants. On the Nile the fierce chiefs of this new warfare have made Khartoum a seat of power and authority over the neighbouring tribes, for since the overthrow of the Egyptian Government in the south they are masters of the Soudan. The capture of that important position and the defeat and death of the heroic champion of civilisation who perished there, were much greater events than they even seemed to be at the time they occurred; for they established a power, whether it was that of the Mahdi.or any other name, which commands the interior' and the river.— ‘ Edinburgh Review.’