On the north side there is a good anchorage, plenty of water and fuel, fish in abundance, turtle, and also land-turtle; and the island has also orchella weed on it. From its insular position there is an entire absence of miasmata.
Reference has already been made to the Comoro Islands, Seychelles, and Madagascar, called the Great Britain of Africa.
Having thus briefly pointed out the resources of Eastern Africa, let us consider the best means for the development of them.
At present the mail, by way of the Atlantic Ocean, reaches the Cape of Good Hope in thirty-five days, and Natal in forty days.
When at Mozambique in 1857, I wrote to Sir Roderick Murchison, the President of the Royal Geographical Society, proposing that the mail should be carried to those two British colonies by way of Aden, touching, on the way down the east coast of Africa, at Zanzibar and Mozambique. By this route a letter would reach Natal in twenty-five days, and the Cape of Good Hope in thirty days. A line of light would be thrown along the whole east coast of Africa, now darkened by the mist of ages, and polluted by the traffic in human beings; an inter-colonial trade would be established between the British colonies in South Africa, the Portuguese settlements, and the rich Sumali possessions of the Imâm of Muskat, and the slave-trade would be entirely superseded by legitimate commerce. In the presidential address of Sir Roderick Murchison, delivered before the Royal Geographical Society this year, mention is made of this route, and I am in hopes that it may soon be adopted for the carriage of the mail; more especially as the electric telegraph is now working at Aden, from which place a steamer might convey a message to Cape Town in fourteen days.[8]
This route once established, the merchants of the Cape and Natal could visit Mozambique and Zanzibar, and establish houses at those places, where they would have a good climate during seven months of the year, which is the healthy as well as the trading season, viz., from the end of April to the month of November. By the establishment of this route there is nothing in the climate to prevent merchants from Europe annually visiting their establishments, and personally supervising the prosperity of their factories for trade.
In the accompanying chart of Eastern Africa I have laid down a series of electric cables, as proposed by me for connecting Great Britain with the South and East African British colonies by way of Aden. This is by no means in advance of the requirements of the times; for, at this moment, we are completing the telegraphic communication with London and Bombay; and the enterprising colonists of Natal have, for more than two years, resolved upon connecting themselves, by means of a cable, with the neighbouring wealthy colony of Mauritius. Telegraphic communication is fully contemplated between Graham’s Town and Petermaritzburg, the capital of Natal, and there is nothing in the intervening space between Mauritius and Aden, by way of the Seychelles and Abd-el-Kuri, or Cape Guardafui, either as to distance or depth of water, to render this proposed electric route to the Cape Colony either impracticable, doubtful, or hazardous.
The advantages, both politically and commercially, which such a communication will afford to the mother country, by uniting it with its rich African colonies, through our own possessions of Aden, Seychelles, and Mauritius, are too apparent to be dwelt upon, and of too vital importance to British interests in the Indian Ocean to be neglected.
Along the whole of the east coast of Africa, and the island of Madagascar, we are outstripped by the Americans, Germans, and French.