Africa Protectorate, and which have become known only in the last five or six years. Uganda was visited by Stanley, and the reports of the large and intelligent native population anxious to accept Christianity and European civilization speedily inspired active sympathy among all the friends of missions. In virtue of the Anglo-German agreement of 1890, the British East Africa Company occupied Uganda, but finding that the administration was a heavier drain on then* resources than had been anticipated, soon became anxious to hand over their new acquisition to the Government. Meanwhile, Christianity had made extraordinary progress, not unmarred by bickerings between the various sects, and there was a strong feeling that for religious and philanthropic motives the country ought not to be abandoned. This sentiment was supported by an estimate of its wealth, which was, perhaps, somewhat exaggerated, and our Protectorate was proclaimed in 1894. As it was difficult to hold the interior without communication with the coast, it was decided to construct the Uganda Railway, which was begun in 1895. It was only during the construction of this railway that people became alive to the fact that the road to Uganda was more valuable than Uganda itself.
The peculiarity of the East Africa Protectorate is that, though it is equatorial, large parts of it possess a temperate climate which has been shown, by an experience now amounting to about fifteen years, to be suitable to Europeans. Not only can they reside continuously in the country, but they can rear children there. This surprising fact seems most improbable to those who are not acquainted with the Protectorate, but it must be remembered that temperature and climate depend on elevation as much as on geographical position. The best-known equatorial countries—such as West Africa, Brazil, and the Malay Archipelago—are comparatively low and flat. It is only rarely, as in Bolivia and East Africa, that we find the much rarer combination of equatorial position and considerable altitude.
