Meantime, from the beginning of the seventies onwards Liberia got into financial difficulties. Attempts to open up the interior were costly in a country of dense forests and unnavigable rivers. A loan was contracted in England in 1871, the proceeds of which were vaguely squandered without results. Another loan in 1906 enabled the Liberian Government to pay off some of its German, Dutch and British creditors; but, although this loan brought about the installation of a British official as head of the Liberian customs, and consequently a vast improvement in the revenue, the disorder in the country’s finances continued. France took occasion to press for a settlement of the inland frontier on terms not favourable to Liberia, though as favourable perhaps as the circumstances warranted. Great Britain had greater vested interests in the country than any other foreign nation, but forbore to press them out of regard for American feelings and a wish not to seem to impinge too much on the French sphere. Germany had trading interests in the country scarcely inferior to those of Great Britain, and but for the American factor would probably have pressed for a German protectorate, an intervention which might have been displeasing to Britain and France, the two _limitrophe_ Powers. In these circumstances the Liberians were encouraged to appeal to their mother-country, the United States; and, after considerable deliberation, an American proposal was made for taking over the control of Liberian finances and a general supervision of Liberian affairs on somewhat the same lines as have been followed by American intervention in Santo Domingo. This was accomplished in the year 1912. What the results will be it is difficult to say. But for international jealousies, the preferable solution of the Liberian problem would have been fusion with the adjoining colony of Sierra Leone, the coast settlements of which had an origin very similar to that of Liberia, while the use of the English language, laws, forms of Christianity, were common to both. Not a few among the Sierra Leone citizens have attained local eminence in administrative capacities; one or two even have become “world-citizens”; and several have received marks of distinction from British sovereigns. Liberia has produced her noteworthy personalities, men like Dr Edward Wilmot Blyden (a great writer on Africa), and Arthur Barclay, President of Liberia from 1904 to 1911; but they have been men of a European culture and class of mind, and have contributed little to the solution of African problems. ----- Footnote 99: Sudan means in Arabic “Black men” or the “Land of the Blacks.” Footnote 100: As for example, Janjira in Konkan, which has an area of 325 sq. m., and Jafarabad in Kathiawar, 42 sq. m. in extent. Footnote 101: