ex-minister to England and afterwards principal of the college. He had
travelled with Winwood Reade, and I looked forward to hearing the opinions
of an African Arabic scholar touching the progress and future of El-Islam
in the Dark Continent. That it advances with giant steps may be proved by
these figures. Between 1861 and 1862 I found at most a dozen Moslems at
Lagos; in 1865 the number had risen to 1,200, and in 1880, according to my
old friend M. Colonna, Agent Consulaire de France, it passes 10,000,
requiring twenty-seven mosques.

The latest charts of Liberia show no less than twenty-six parallelograms
stretching inland, at various angles with the shore, and stated to have
been acquired by 'conquest or purchase' between 1822 and 1827; but the
natives, especially the Krumen, complain that after allowing the
foreigners to dwell, amongst them they have been despoiled of their
possessions, and that, once lords of the soil, they have sunk to mere
serfs. Hence the frequent wars and chronic bad blood. Every African
traveller knows the meaning of land-purchase in these regions. There are
two ideas peculiar to the negro brain, but apparently inadmissible into
European heads. The first is the non-alienation of land. Niger never parts
with his ground in perpetuity; he has always the mental reservation, while
selling it to a stranger, that the soil and its improvements return to him
by right after the death or the departure of the purchaser. Should the
settler's heirs or assignees desire to remain _in loco_, they are expected
to pay a fresh gratification; the lessor will raise his terms as high as
possible, but public opinion will oblige him to remain content with a
'dash,' or present, equivalent to that paid by the original lessee.

The second idea is even more repugnant to European feelings. In Africa a
born chattel is a chattel for ever: the native phrase is, ''Pose man once
come up slave, he be slave all time.' There is no such thing as absolute