less
to perfect that right by occupation. The Colony had always declined or
omitted to vote money for the purpose, and the home government had not
cared to spend any. When the colonists knew that Germany was really
establishing herself as their neighbour on the north, they were much
annoyed; but it was now too late to resist, and in 1884, after a long
correspondence, not creditable to the foresight or promptitude of the
late Lord Derby, who was then Colonial Secretary, the protectorate of
Germany was formally recognized, while in 1890 the boundaries of the
German and British "spheres of influence" farther north were defined by
a formal agreement--the same agreement which settled the respective
"spheres of influence" of the two powers in Eastern Africa, between the
Zambesi and the upper Nile. Although the people of Cape Colony continue
to express their regret at having a great European power conterminous
with them on the north, there has been really little or no practical
contact between the Germans and the colonists, for while the northern
part of the Colony, lying along the lower course of the Orange River, is
so arid as to be very thinly peopled, the southern part of the German
territory, called Great Namaqualand, is a wilderness inhabited only by
wandering Hottentots (though parts of it are good pasture land), while,
to the east, Namaqualand is separated from the habitable parts of
British Bechuanaland by the great Kalahari Desert.

The new impulse for colonial expansion which had prompted the Germans to
occupy Damaraland and the Cameroons on the western, and the Zanzibar
coasts on the eastern, side of Africa was now telling on other European
powers, and made them all join in the scramble for Africa, a continent
which a few years before had been deemed worthless. Italy and France
entered the field in the north-east, France in the north-west; and
Britain, which had in earlier days moved with such slow and wavering
steps in the far south, was roused by the competition to a swifter
advance. Within nine years from the assumption of the protectorate over
British Bechuanaland, which the action of the Boers had brought about in
1885, the whole unappropriated country up to the Zambesi came under
British control.

In 1888 a treaty made with Lo Bengula extended the range of British
influence and claim not only over Matabililand proper, but over
Mashonaland and an undefined territory to the eastward, whereof Lo
Bengula claim