those provisions for access to
the sea necessarily lapsed. The British government promptly availed
itself of the freedom its rivals had thus tendered to it, and with the
consent of the three chiefs (of Tonga race) who rule in the region
referred to, proclaimed a protectorate over the strip of land which lies
between Swaziland and the sea, as far north as the frontiers of
Portuguese territory. Thus the door has been finally closed on the
schemes which the Boers have so often sought to carry out for the
acquisition of a railway communication with the coast entirely under
their own control. It was an object unfavourable to the interests of the
paramount power, for it would not only have disturbed the commercial
relations of the interior with the British coast ports, but would also
have favoured the wish of the Boer government to establish political
ties with other European powers. The accomplishment of that design was
no doubt subjected by the London Convention of 1884 to the veto of
Britain. But in diplomacy facts as well as treaties have their force,
and a Power which has a seaport, and can fly a flag on the ocean, is in
a very different position from one cut off by intervening territories
from those whose support it is supposed to seek. Thus the establishment
of the protectorate over these petty Tonga chiefs may be justly deemed
one of the most important events in recent South African history.

Down to 1884 Great Britain and Portugal had been the only European
powers established in South Africa. For some time before that year there
had been German mission stations in parts of the region which lies
between the Orange River and the West African possessions of Portugal,
and in 1883 a Bremen merchant named Luederitz established a trading
factory at the bay of Angra Pequena, which lies on the Atlantic coast
about one hundred and fifty miles north of the mouth of that river, and
obtained from a neighbouring chief a cession of a piece of territory
there, which the German government a few months later recognized as a
German Colony. Five years earlier, in 1878, Walfish Bay, which lies
farther north, and is the best haven (or rather roadstead) on the coast,
had been annexed to Cape Colony; but though it was generally understood
both in the Colony and in England, that the whole of the west coast up
to the Portuguese boundary was in some vague way subject to British
influence, nothing had been done to claim any distinct right, much