The evening times., 1898-12-24
THE RACES..OE.
DARKEST AFRICA
Negroes, Arabs, dFulahs, Desert
Touaregs and .Abyssinians.
THE CAPTURE OF SAM0RY
Accomplished AT er a Long and
Determined Struggle.
SOverefEnties- to Yfeld-An In
terestingi Figure.

Samory, whom the French captured the
other day. is in all ways an interesting
figure, but especially in this that his is
the last of the purely negro sovereignties
to succumb, says the Spectator. Single
handed he withstood France for eighteen
years; but like all the negro chiefs who
have made any considerable stand against
the Europeans, he has fought them with
the arms and methods of Europe The
Zulu "impi' was notfa spontaneous de-
velopment of African warfare; ii was
based upon the model of an English reSt-
ment. But the Zulus borrowed only their
organization, for they were essentially
spear fighters, and their organization
helped to destroy them. Cetewayo was
drilling his troops while he should have
been hampering every step of the white
advance; and Lobengula's warriors
charged in close order, to be mown down
by those machine guns, which have tre-
bled and quadrupled the power of white
armies against sayages. On the West
coast the natives all fight with guns Tex
cept a few tribes who only attack by
nighD and they depend upon Europe for
their weapons. For that reason no West
African power at any considerable dis
tanCe from the coast can resist for long
4 European army. Samory was not only
near the seaboard, but had d fine choice
of trading stations from which to bring
up smuggIed arms; what he could not
get from the French traders he could
| buy from the English, and If not from
| the English then from the Germans.
Where there are traders and natives there
will be ammunition, and Samory in all
| his forced migrations seems to have re
lained his control upon a gold mine, in adj
dition TO the profits of his very extensive
sale of slaves. One way or another he
equipped himself not merely with guns
and powder, but with modern rifles, and
he kidnapped or bribed. soldiers who had
been trained in European forces.
In April of last year ne captured two
7-pounders from an English force at Wa,
and with them some Hausa artillerymen,
who were forced subsequently to serve
the guns against the French. And NJ. Ne
bout who visited Samory.s camp last
autumn as an envoy saw the motley ar
my reviewed. and observed that it ma
neuvered very respectfully to words of
command. nearly all of which were
given in French. For all that, Samory
has gone the way of kofti, Cetewayo,
Lobengula, Behanzin and Prempeh; and
| but for the international scramble for
| territory, he would have been disposed
of some years sooner. Indeed, it would
seem that toward the end he. like Lo-
| bengula was conscious that Europe
was too strong for him, and wanted to
| make terms and settle down; he had
even set his men to tilling the soil, who
| hitherto had gathered only the crops
| of others. But his young warriors were
out of hand. and provoked collision
after collision. though Samory him
| self disowned their attack on the English
| last year, and degraded his son, Sar-
! akeni Mory. who destroyed some French
officers by treachery. The end, how
| ever had TO come, and it has come.
and unless some one of the drilled
| Soudanese in West Africa develops into
a leader, and organizes a following the
negro proper is not likely 10 give Europe
much further trouble-not, at least till
he is drilled and armed. and there is a
chance of an African mutiny.
But though the negro is sudued,
| there are races in Africa with
whom some day or other con-
aict Will surely come. The Arabs are
| everywhere. We have fought their
slave-raiders, and the Germans have
fought them, on the shores of Lake
| Nyassa. The forces of the Kongo Free
State fought a bitter and brutal war
| from 1892 to 1898 against the loosely
| organized but powerful community of
! Arab traders. who formed a state under
the leadership of Tippoo Tib in Nyangwe
| and Kasongo TO Zanzibar And on the
| Nile the Arabs fought us and beat us,
| and we fought them again and beat them
| back from post to post, till the whole
| Arab ascendancy in the Nile Basin was
| Sh "a Yferp6 yyeaEG
But there remains still an offshoot of
| that power which has to come into col
lision with European troops Zobehr. the
| Jaalin Arab, who, from being a slave
raiding marauder, blossomed into gov
ernor of the Bahr-el-Ghazal, had a slave
! named Rabeh. When Zobehr was sum-
| moned TO Cairo and detained as a cap
tive, Rabeh remained with Zobehr's son,
Suleiman, and fought under him against
the Egyptian government. When Sulei-
man surrendered TO Gessi Pasha Rabeh
refused to come in, and fled southwes;
| with his following into Borku, where h.
| won by force of arms permission TO set
tie. Of his movements from that time on.
! wards little is known; but in 1899 leay-
ing the states to the northeast of Lake
Tchad he marched south through
Wadai. devastated Baghirmi. then pass.
ing TO the south of Lake Tchad in
| Naaeu lfie hlHsdon OF bornu. Here he
captured and burnt the very important
town of kuka. and having made him.
self master of the country, fixed his
headquarters at Dikwa to the south nj
| the lake
| The precise limits of his sovereignty are
uncertain. but the account of NJ Gentil's
mission down the Shar makes il clear
that ne is the predominant power in the
basin of Lake Tchad, and there is every
prospect that he may encounter one OF
the French expeditions which from the
north, west and south are pushing toward
the inland sea. Further, there is always
the chance that he may turn upon the
| Fulah Emirs. who are under our protec-
ton, and in that case he would become
like Samory, kind of VOLTS head both
| 70 E,ra,a and Erancla1ad lol, is