Geographical Notes

Abstract

THE Mittheilungen of the Vienna Geographical Society for June has a paper by Dr. Hans Meyer on the German East African possessions which is likely to attract some attention at the present juncture. No attempt is made to give either the area or the population of this ill-defined region, which, however, is stated to comprise the central section of the East African coastlands, terraces, and plateaux for a distance north and south of about 550 geographical miles, and 150 east and west between the Swaheli coast and the water-parting towards the Congo basin. It is conterminous towards the north with the new British East African protectorate, from which it is separated by a conventional line passing from Lake Victoria Nyanza in an oblique direction along the north foot of Mount Kilima-Njaro to the coast at about 5° S. lat. below Mombasa. Southwards the frontier is marked by the Rovuma River, and another conventional line running thence west to Lake Nyassa, while on the east side it is made to reach the Indian Ocean, thus apparently absorbing the ten mile zone of coastlands reserved to the Sultan of Zanzibar by the Anglo-German Convention of October 29, 1886. It is described as orographically and hydrographically the most diversified region in the whole of Africa, including within its limits the highest summit (Kilima-Njaro) as well as the head-waters of streams flowing north to the Nile, west to the Congo, and south to the Zambesi basin. Hence it presents a great variety of climate and vegetation, but nevertheless, except in a few favoured spots, it is not to be compared in productiveness with the rich tropical lands of the Eastern Archipelago. Its prospects as a future field of German colonial enterprise are spoken of in depressing terms. Both servile and free labour in the interior are stated to be alike impracticable, and for the present at least it will be impossible to develop any great commercial activity except on the fertile and more thickly-peopled, but also mostly fever-stricken coastlands. Hence a foundation for the future development of the colony is stated to have been laid by the recently-accomplished transfer of the administration of the seaboard from the Sultan of Zanzibar to the German East African Company's agents. But it is added that even here, without State aid, it will be difficult successfully to compete with their English rivals, who have been longer in possession of the field, and who have at their disposal more capital and resources of all kinds.