Now that most of the great geographical riddles of the
world have been solved, exploration will tend to become exploita- tion, and we may look for minute information on subjects of which at present our knowledge is vague and general. Chief among such subjects is North-Western Africa, whose borders are in the full glare of European occupation, but whose heart is still in the twilight. In the two remarkable books before us the writers have taken different aspects of the one problem. Both aim at showing us the desert on which white civilisation is , slowly encroaching, Lady Lugard dealing with the work of ! Britain from the South, and Mr. March Phillipps with that of France from the North. Lady Lugard, again, labours to show that the present barbarism is the decadence of an old civili- sation, while Mr. Phillipps seeks to prove that no civilisation * (1) A Tropical Dependency : an Outline of the Ancient History of the Western Soudan, with an Account of the Modern Settlement of Northern Nigeria. By Lady Lugard. London : J. Nisbet and Co. [lea. net.]—(2) In the Desert. By L. March rhillippo. London : Edward Arnold. [12a. 6d. net.)
of the desert and the desert peoples could in the nature of things endure. The one work is a new piece of history, a compendium of forgotten incidents ; the other is a study in the psychology of landscape and the soul of a race.
The broad physical features of the land from the Mediter- ranean southwards are a strip of fertile coastland, a wall of mountain, a great expanse of sand ending in the fertile uplands of the Upper Niger, and then forest and swamp extending to the Gulf of Guinea. Lady Lugard's thesis is that originally the lower negroid races held all the land, and were gradually driven further southwards by the pressure of stronger races from the North. In the days of Herodotus the pygmies seem to have lived in the Soudan, whereas now they are found only in the Congo forests. She begins her tale with the conquest of North Africa by the Arabs, and the rise of their power in Spain. The "Kingdom of the Two Shores" extended from the Pyrenees to the Niger, and under the rule of its dynasties the desert attained to a high standard of civilisation. When it passed, there rose on its ruins certain wonderful black Empires of the Sahara. Few men have ever heard the names of the Mellestine or the Songhay Empire, which controlled the Western Soudan, and, moreover, kept open communica- tion with the North by numerous desert routes. Lady Lugard thinks that the ancient civilisation of Egypt may have come from the West, and that through all the successive conquests the tradition lingered, which was finally in the Middle Ages rekindled by the Muslim faith, till it produced Empires. Nor were these States mere barbaric chieftainships. They bad schools of law and universities, arts and sciences, and elaborate constitutions. At last came the Moorish conquest in the sixteenth century, and the curtain goes down on the desert, till in our own day it was lifted by explorers from the South. It is a fascinating and a novel tale, and Lady Lugard tells• it with much charm. She casts the glamour of romance over the task which Britain has undertaken. Instead of a land sunk since the beginning of time in savagery, we are dealing with the wreckage -of old civilisations ; and the Hausa and Fulani peoples have in their blood something which in the past has raised them to a degree of civilisation, and under our tutelage may do so again. It is on this fact that much of our hope for the future of Nigeria must rest. In her later chapters she gives us a clear account of the successive steps in th occu- pation of the country, and of the administrative problems which Sir Frederick Lugard has now to face. We would especially recommend her admirable introductory chapter, in which she pleads for a recognition of the true mean-
ing of tropical administration, and the use of scientific methods in solving its conundrums. The book is con- spicuously free from fine writing, being inspired throughout with an -air of sober scholarship. Our one complaint is that in a work so full of fresh historical matter Lady Lugard does not refer in notes to her authorities.
Mr. March Phillipps is a writer of a different stamp. He is the true "sentimental traveller," always on the watch for a contrast or a sensation. He seeks to discover the soul of a landscape, and to trace the subtle influences of environment upon the desert races. The political and economic problems of North Africa are approached from the point of view, not of the administrator, but of the psychologist, who wishes to get at the first principles of the land and the ethos of its people. It is a delicate and evasive quest, and in less com- petent hands might easily degenerate into vague rhetoric. But Mr. Phillipps is no mere impressionist, and behind his charming pictures there is a wealth of sound and acute political thought, all the more valuable since it is rarely expressed in the conventional language of politics. For English readers the novel feature in his book will be his full and sympathetic account of the work of Trench colonisation. Certainly his description of the process of water-finding in the Sahara, by which large areas are reclaimed from the desert, is the very romance of settlement. He traces the work of France from its unpromising beginnings before the war of 1870; and the history is a lesson in methods of colonisation at the opposite pole from our own, but perfectly efficient in their own sphere. Oars go on the individualistic plan; the French on the collective, the central executive super- vising and planning from the start :—
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"And it succeeds P Amazingly ! It is ridden by officials and London : John Murray. [lOG. 64. net.]
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it goes admirably. It is swathed from top to bottom in red tape and it overflows with strength and vitality. And the reason it succeeds so well is because Government control, being the greatest possible convenience, or rather, an absolute necessity, for a people who wish to do things en masse, the French people not only acquiesce in it, but act in sympathy with it and vigorously second all its attempts at intelligent organisation."
The French Imperial ideal is centred in North Africa, and, as Mr. Phillipps shows, the control of Morocco is an essential factor in it. "It was our scheme which gave us our right in the Nile Valley. Similarly it is the French scheme that gives them their right in Morocco."
But the most striking features in the book are the subtle descriptions of landscapes and the equally subtle analysis of the Arab character. Perhaps Mr. Phillipps is inclined to repeat his formula too often, but there can be no question as to its absorbing interest. His chapters are so steeped in the desert atmosphere that the dullest reader must get a glimpse of its vast dead monotonies, its intoxicating sunlight, its vitality, and its instability. Akin to it is the ram which dwells in it, and Las always drawn from it its strength. In his chapters on Arab poetry, and Arab architecture, and Arab history the writer has the same end in view,—to elucidate the mind of the people which has been created by those immense spaces of sand and sun. The Arab is the eternal individualist, the antithesis of the citizen. He is terrible in his sudden explosions of nervous energy, terrible as the desert, but he cannot endure, and, like the desert, he can destroy but never build. His mind has brilliance and swiftness, but neither profundity nor co- herence. Sometimes in his parallels Mr. Phillipps is far- fetched and fantastic, but in the main his brilliant analysis carries conviction, when he traces throughout the history of Mohammedanism the desert spirit which stops short of all complete achievement and enduring civilisation. It has the force of a destroying angel, but it goes as suddenly as it comes :—
"Orthodox Mohammedanism, reeking as it does of the desert energetic and militant, yet failing in just the qualities which give depth to thought and coherence to society, is, after all, the best clue to the Arab's character and history. It explains both his successes and his failures. It explains the fury of his attacks, the rapidity of his conquests, and his success in destroying and con- suming all that is rotten, effete, and worn out in the world. It explains the lack of definite purpose in all his undertakings, and his failure to build up anything durable and solid of his own. It explains why in the twilight of the middle ages he was so prominent and terrible a figure, and why to-day he is back in the desert once more."
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