Almost the whole of the ivory-trade is now in the hands of the Americans.
Large quantities of beef are salted down on the west coast of Madagascar, and taken to America; hides, horns, hoofs, and tallow find a ready market there, while the French take the oils and oil-seeds. One Hamburg house sends annually fourteen vessels to Zanzibar, ordered to call at Mozambique since a British consul is established there, for cargoes of cowries, with which they proceed to the rivers on the west coast of Africa, and purchase cargoes of palm-oil.
Few British vessels are seen in these parts—as, in the first place, the trade is unknown in England, and, secondly, British merchants consider that, at present, there is a degree of risk and uncertainty attending any ventures in a portion of the world where our commerce is wholly unprotected, and where, hitherto, vessels have been seized, and redress has been sought but not obtained.
In the proper quarter I have already suggested that, for the development of the resources of Eastern Africa, and the opening up of a highly remunerative trade for Great Britain, a consular officer should be appointed from Natal to Suez, including Madagascar and the other islands on that coast; that he should be furnished with a small steamer, which would be entirely for the consular service—by which means the whole coast could be constantly visited, our trade encouraged, new markets for our manufactures made known, and our acquaintance with Eastern Africa become more intimate in a few years than it would be in a century by any other mode of procedure.
At first sight the expense attending a vessel for that service may apparently cause an objection; but when we reflect upon the great results to which such an appointment must lead, and its obviating the necessity of a cordon of consular agents on such a coast, with the accompanying expenses and sacrifice of valuable lives, I feel assured that the country will cheerfully respond to the call which it is hoped the merchants of Great Britain will make upon the legislature.
The young Prince Madji, who has inherited the rich Sumali possessions of the late Imâm of Muskat, has declared his intentions resolutely to follow in the steps of his great father, by discouraging and eventually abolishing the traffic in our fellow-beings.
The facts stated in the foregoing pages of this work having been brought under the notice of Napoleon III., by the circumstances attending the seizure of the celebrated “Charles et Georges,” the Emperor addressed the following loyal letter to his cousin:—