n Asia. We do not
know enough of what then went on between the German and Russian
Chancellors to assert that they formed a definite agreement to harry
British interests in those continents; but, judging from the general
drift of Bismarck's diplomacy and from the "nagging" to which England
was thenceforth subjected for two years, it seems highly probable that
the policy ratified at Skiernevice aimed at marking time in European
affairs and striding onwards in other continents at the expense of the
Island Power.

The Anglophobes of the German press at once fell foul of everything
British; and that well-known paper the _Koelnische Zeitung_ in an article
of April 22, 1884, used the following words:--"Africa is a large pudding
which the English have prepared for themselves at other people's
expense, and the crust of which is already fit for eating. Let us hope
that our sailors will put a few pepper-corns into it on the Guinea
coast, so that our friends on the Thames may not digest it too rapidly."
The sequel will show whether the simile correctly describes either the
state of John Bull's appetite or the easy aloofness of the
Teutonic onlooker.

It will be convenient to treat this great and complex subject on a
topographical basis, and to begin with a survey of the affairs of East
Africa, especially the districts on the mainland north and south of the
island of Zanzibar. At that important trade centre, the natural starting
point then for the vast district of the Great Lakes, the influence of
British and Indian traders had been paramount; and for many years the
Sultan of Zanzibar had been "under the direct influence of the United
Kingdom and of the Government of India[426]." Nevertheless, in and after
1880 German merchants, especially those of Hamburg, pressed in with
great energy and formed plans for annexing the neighbouring territories
on the mainland.

[Footnote 426: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. 1 (1886), p. 2.]

Their energy was in strange contrast to the lethargy shown by the
British Government in the protection of Anglo-Indian trade interests. In
the year 1878 the Sultan of Zanzibar, who held a large territory on the
mainland, had offered the control of all the commerce of his dominions
to Sir W. Mackinnon, Chairman of the British-India Steam Navigation
Company; but, for some unexplained reason, the Beaconsfield Cabinet
declined to be a party to this arrangement, which, therefore, fell
through[427]. Despite the fact th