DARKEST AFRICA.

Otago Witness, Issue 2905, 17 November 1909, Page 39

DARKEST AFRICA.

A MISSIONARY'S IMPRESSIONS. ' I Interviewed by a representative of the 1 Times, the Very Rev. D. J. O'Suilivan, missionary from Egypt, gave for publication the following information, which will be read with interest in view of recent cablegrams respecting African affairs. He said: — "I am a member of and represent the Society of African Missions and its work in British West Africa and in Egypt. Although the central house of the society is at Lyons, many of the missionaries are. like myself. British subjects. The« 3 are mainly supplied from three houses which we possess in Ireland — two an Cork and one at Ballinafod, County Mayo. A membership of 26 years in the Society « of African Missions and a connection of 24 years with our Egyptian missions have enabled me to speak on the* subject of Africa with intimate knowledge and from a source "of information perfectly authentic. Alhough a native "of Ireland, Egypt has been from my youth the land of my adoption. I am perfectly familiar with the 1 working of the British Protectorate along the Nile Valley almost since its inception. "As an instance of the British administration of Egyptian affairs, I may point to the vastly increased value of agricultural land, which has, in some cases, actually , trebled, its former worth during the past 19 years of the existence of the Protectorate. This increase in value is due to the ' greater security of property afforded through the offices" of British statesmen and the more abundant supply of irrigation water from the Nile, procured through British. and Irish engineers. Such a huge • undertaking as the great Assouan dam, a mighty mountain wall of gigantic masonry, constructed right across the Nile bed, where the river is more than a mile in width, and measuring more than 100 ft in height — such a colossal feat of engineering could never have been attempted by any ' native administration unless we go back to the days of the pyramid-builders. It was accomplished by British engineers in a few years, has reclaimed hundreds of thousands of acres from barren desert to fertile land* and enriched the country by millions. Tho , conditions which called for its existence are ! peculiar to the Nile Valley. In Egypt there is no rainfall. Month after month and sometimes an entire year will pass without a single drop of rain. Day after day there is the same cloudless, sunlit sky, and night after night the same star-be- ; spangled heavens, without a solitary speck to mar_ their peerless beauty. Henos it is that every plant and animal and every ; blade of grass and tree and flower in Egypt have to depend for their existence on the waters of the Nile. " Were those waters to "•"» Egypt would return to the desert of the Sahara, £rpm which the Nile reclaimed . it. The all-important function of the great ! « to store up these waters when abundant against their scarcity when the Nile is« ?ow. This explains why' a little spot of 'oasis and desert like Faehoda could have occasioned, a few yeaijs ago, a war between France and England. The French, envious as they werd of the success of the British Protectorate ;n Egypt, and holding possession of Foshoda, situated more than 1500 miles up the Nile from Cairo, could have constructed there a dam similar to that of Assouan, and tunned the entire volume of the Nile into the sands of the Lybian Desert. This done, Egypt in 18 months would have returned to the desert too, and the French engineers from their strategic position at J Fashoda would have put an end to the J British protectorate in the Nile Valley. ' tj^ l^ SUOC ? S ? which has attended the j British administration of the irrigation de- | partment in Egypt Is only a fraction of its j entire success in the general management of t the affairs of the country. The army, the police, the post and telegraph service, the tram service in Cairo, and the judicial de- . partment, have been In great part purged I of the corruption wjiioh infested them . under native rule and raised to a state of efficiency never before known in the Orient. The weakly steamer from Marseilles reaches Alexandria ounctuaily about 7 o'clock on Tuesday morning. The traveller by that steamer can conveniently catcb the express train for the south at 9 o'clock, and in ' three hours he reaches Cairo, 135 miles distant. He passes on the way nearly all the principal population centres of" the Delta, and notes that the remaining towns of any importance are accessible by branch lines. In the typically Oriental city of , Cairo he notes that one of the most efficient tram services in the world embraces all the principal streets, and whirls th 9 traveller far beyond the city to the great ■ pyramids of Ghisch, on the borders of the . western desert, eight miles distant, and to ; the newly-erected suburb of Heliopolis, a new Palmyra in the wilderness, distant eight miles to the north-east. He will not 3 that the northern section of Cairo is provided with splendid hotels, theatres, palaces, and boulevards — nearly all of recent origin. The magnificent railway terminus — also a new building — is scarcely surpassed by any similar construction in Europe. Every morning at 8 o'clock a beautifullyequipped train starts for Upper Egypt, tnd . every evening another express, provided with sleeping carriages, leaves for the same destination. In 11 hours it reaches the world-famed Louxour, nearly 500 miles south- , ward. Here, ifter an inspection of some of the mightiest and some of the most i ancient monsters of architecture the world ! has ever seen, the traveller again boards , the train for the farther south, and in 6even ! hours arrives at Assouan. Here, as at 1 Louxour, the hotel accommodation, as well . as the tourist arrangements, are everything ! that could be desired. All along this route t and for a thousand mi!<?3 farther southward 1 along- the Nile, almost into the heart of Africa, the police 6ystem organised and officered by the British Administration, affords the traveller the most absolute security and protection — advantages which are never to be- had, at least so far inlanß, in any other country in the Orient. From ! A-ssouan the railway extends away oayond Khartoum — altogether nearly 1500 miles_ along the Nile inland fiom Alcx- ' andria; while from the southern extremity of the great continent, the British railways are gradually creeping northward, and will . continue to do so until the Cape-to-Cairo ! line, completed in the near future, will offer to Homeward-bound" travellers from New Zealand 3000 miles of the most picturesque scenery in the world — through Rhodesia, Uganda, and the Valley of the Nile, with which to break the monotony I of the old sea voyage of 40 days.

The efficiency of the Egyptian army today in contract with its miserable condition 17 years ago, whe<n Arabi Pasha, at the battle of Tel-el-Kebir, was obliged to chain the Fellaheen artillery men to their gums to prevent their running away, speaks magnificent testimony to what British military training- has accomplished in this department. Had it not been for the strong baind of the Protectorate the hatf-savage and fanatical hordes of the Soudan, would iong since have overrun the Nile Valley from Khartoum to Alexandria, and yet it , was an army mainly composed of Egyptian troops, but trained an-dl officered by Brifishers, and commanded by an Irishman, that completely smashed the power of the I Matfcdiste at the memorable battle of Omdurm,Mi in 1898. "In the management of the financial affairs of the country the British administration has been eminently successful. The last independent native ruler, Ismael Pasha, had plunged the country iwlo a state of indebtedness a.nd financial difficulty that seemed • utterly hopekss. The native rising which ensued, under Arabi Pasha — the Egyptian national movement of 1882, — had as one of the items of its programme th© repmliatioii of that inxJsk>b«c*ie=s&. Today, as a result of British aci.ninistration, the financial condition of Egypt is one of in© most satisfactory in the world. j " And now, in the face of these facts, a meeting of young Egyptian students attend- j ing European universities recently assembled at Geneva, and, allegedly representative of the Egyptian national movement, call upon the world to join them in their demand that Britain should immediately withdraw from the Nile Valley and hand over the management of Egyptian affairs to them. These are the veteran statesmen who woujd* manage those affairs better than Britain has been managing • them — noisy youths of 20 or 25. flattered! and encouraged in, the aniti-Englisft talons of Paris. In the first place, are these students - really representative of that section of tha populatioJi of Egypt which is capable of _ judging what is bo-it for the country? T think I can furnish a proof that they »re not. " From a large> • number of colleges in Egypt there are presensted at the Government examinations everyi year several hundred candidates for ■ the B.A. degree. Of more than 600 examined this year, while I »vas still in Egypt, more than 75" per cent, of those Egyptian students were presented for the English B.A. degree. Those students un- ( doubtedly represent the better classes of ; the entire population, and if they, or the ; r , families or friends, desired or expected the ,' termnation of the British Protectorate in j Egypt, they certainly would not have gone to the expense, and' trouble of an English • education. j " No, the withdrawal of the protecting hand of Britain from Egypt at the present • time, or at any time now in view, would be disastrous to the country. The great. i mass of 'the people are no more capable of governing themselves or of protecting , themselves " than mere children. ' "An independent Native, Government, even in the hands of Egypt's best cititzens, 1 would infallibly degenerate into what tbe j British Protectorate found it some 20 years j aigo — a Government of bribery, corruption, 1 and backsheesh. lam a firm believer in the general law of Nature that one country . should never manage the internal and do- : mestic affairs of another country, the ar1 rangement of Providence /supplying to , every country all that is necessary to govern itself. But as it is in the case of ! the individual, so it is in the case of thp i nation, there are exceptions to that general rule. The" child or the sick man is incapable of managing his own domestic ; affairs, awoi, for analogous reasons, so is ! Egypt."