s of which the tropics are profuse;
and the repeating rifle multiplied the power of the white man in his
conflicts with savage peoples. When all the advantages of the present
generation are weighed in the balance against the meagre equipment of
the earlier discoverers, the nineteenth century has scant claim for
boasting over the fifteenth. In truth, its great achievements in this
sphere have been practical and political. It has only fulfilled the rich
promise of the age of the great navigators. Where they could but
wonderingly skirt the fringes of a new world, the moderns have won their
way to the heart of things and found many an Eldorado potentially richer
than that which tempted the cupidity of Cortes and Pizarro.

In one respect the European statesmen of the recent past tower above
their predecessors of the centuries before. In the eighteenth century
the "mercantilist" craze for seizing new markets and shutting out all
possible rivals brought about most of the wars that desolated Europe. In
the years 1880-1890 the great Powers put forth sustained and successful
efforts to avert the like calamity, and to cloak with the mantle of
diplomacy the eager scrambles for the unclaimed lands of the world.

For various reasons the attention of statesmen turned almost solely on
Africa. Central and South America were divided among States that were
nominally civilised and enjoyed the protection of the Monroe Doctrine
put forward by the United States. Australia was wholly British. In Asia
the weakness of China was but dimly surmised; and Siam and Cochin China
alone offered any field for settlement or conquest by European peoples
from the sea. In Polynesia several groups of islands were still
unclaimed; but these could not appease the land-hunger of Europe. Africa
alone provided void spaces proportionate to the needs and ambitions of
the white man. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 served to bring the
east coast of that continent within easy reach of Europe; and the
discoveries on the Upper Nile, Congo, and Niger opened a way into other
large parts. Thus, by the year 1880, everything favoured the "partition
of Africa."

Rumour, in the guise of hints given by communicative young attaches or
"well-informed" correspondents, ascribes the first beginnings of the
plans for the partition of Africa to the informal conversations of
statesmen at the time of the Congress of Berlin (1878). Just as an
architect safeguards his creation by p