I

INTRODUCTION

On more than one ground the country which embraces the districts of the once mighty Central African Sultanate of Bornu, deserves our quite particular interest. Enclosed in the centre of the Sudan and lying on the shores of an inland sea, this highly fruitful and thickly populated district was the first of all the great African water-basins to be known in Europe. For centuries, over the central plateau, two important articles of trade, ivory and human flesh, were up to the middle of the nineteenth century almost the exclusive aim of all expeditions which concerned themselves with the exploration of the dark continent. It was German travellers above all, and amongst them the most scientifically important and authoritative of all African explorers, Heinrich Barth,[5] who brought news to Europe of these remarkable countries, first reported the unheard-of atrocities of the slave-trade in the heart of Africa, and thus gave a fresh impetus to the anti-slavery movement. Scarcely were the main avenues of exploration closed at the end of the nineteenth century than events happened such as these parts of Africa had never seen hitherto—events which the Great Powers of Europe made necessary by their policy of annexation, and the land of Bornu was pushed once more into the foreground of public interest. The end of these events was the present political understanding, which brought large potential empires under the protection of the three chief European Powers. Thus Germany at the present day again claims a share in those lands in which the self-denying and indefatigable activity of her great sons, the explorers Barth, Overweg, Vogel, von Beurmann, Rohlfs, and Nachtigal, had been so valiantly displayed of old, and in the great scientific and economic problems that have still to be solved in the Sudan.