Rock Island Argus. (Rock Island, Ill.) 1893-1920, 1900-08-02
I'm DARKEST AFRICA.
Few Market. Opened by the Moalem

Few Markets Opened by the Moalem
For Cheap American Cottons-
cit is pleasing TO turn from the re-
voting spectacle of some of the west
African tribes who had been bestial-
lied by their devotion to trade gin to
the picture which travellers draw OK
the great Hausa states of the Sudan,
under Mohammedan dominion, fo1 g.
century, where such thing as bottle
OF spirits is never seen For hundred
years the MohammedanS of north At
RIGA have been pushing across the
Sahara and the Sudan, bringing all the
barbarous peoples they have met under
the influence of Islam. Thus NOLAN
mechanism has far more profoundly
affected the lives of many millions OF
black Africans than the Christian in
huences, which are only just begin
ming to make. large Roadway, says
Cyrus C. Adams in Ainslee's Magazine
for July. These Moslem proselytes
have made the natives better than they
found them and have stimulated for
eign trade with darkest Africa to a
remarkable extent. When Stanley and
other explorers began to penetrate
equatorial regions, they said:
"'These tribes around the lakes, who
dress in long garments made of fiber,
are beginning to discard their tiimsy
native cloth and are swathing their
bodies with fold after fold of white
cottons from England and America.
The Arabs among them dress In these
cloths and have convinced the natives
of their advantage over the homemade
cloth. A great future is coming for
the cloth trade in inner Africa
1.-The trade is growing every year.
Scores of tribes in central Africa are
eager to buy 'Mericani,' as they call the
cottons made in America, which trad
ers now bring to their villages. About
October in every year the great cara
van that crosses the Sahara from Mo-
rocco to Timbuktu starts on its way.
The caravan always numbers about
10000 camels, and a fifth of them are
laden with white American and Brit
ish cottons and blue and other colors.
The greatest imports Of Tripoli, which
is the other great center of the desert
caravan trade, are cotton cloths, and
most of them are sent to the desert
OdSeS anu Tue
White cottons are among the largest
imports of Zanzibar, and many of them
are sent inland to the natives, who
never saw these manufactures till the
Arabs appeared among them in their
white garments. England has the lar
gest share in this trade, but 100000
| worth of our cheap, uncolored cottons
were sent into the wilds of Africa last
year, and it is the Moslem who has
opened these new markets for the
textiles of the 'infideP nations.
But the Mohammedans have done
more than to open these new markets.
They have stimulated textile manufac-
lures in the very heart of Africa to
such an extent that cloth made In the
Sudan is now for sale in Mediterra-
mean cities. Fanatical followers of Is
lam cannot keep out of touch with the
rest of the world, though they may
for years wall cities like Timbuktu and
Harrar and seal up great regions like
the Egyptian Sudan against every
white race. They may proclaim war
on the infidel while at the same time
sheir very tastes and aptitudes are
opening ways through which foreign
| commerce enters as water inyades q
leaking ship"