By the time the slave trade was rendered illegal, the wonderful virtues of palm oil had been discovered, chiefly in connection with its value as a lubricant for machinery (especially locomotives) and as a material for making candles and soap. Therefore the development of railways in Britain and other European countries, the new cleanliness, which coincidently was preached as a British gospel, and the spread of education and love of reading made the fortune of the Oil Rivers and those merchants who settled there at imminent risk of death from fever. Already in the forties of the last century British trading interests had become so important in the Niger Delta that a consul was appointed. The first consul, Captain John Beecroft, was a most notable personality, as an explorer and peacemaker. To him Great Britain owes the definite establishment of her influence on the Cross River and at Old Calabar. The British Government, for the purpose of putting down the slave trade, had, with the consent of Spain, occupied during the first half of the 19th century the Spanish island of Fernando Pô; and the administration of this island was for some time connected with the consular post for the Bights of Biafra and Benin[117]. Afterwards, when Spain resumed the possession of Fernando Pô, the British consul for the Bights was also consul for the Spanish island; but little by little his duties obliged him to reside more on the “Oil Rivers” than on the adjoining island. With the exception of the brilliant Richard Burton, who for four years was consul for the Bights of Biafra and Benin, the post was usually held by a gentleman who had been to some extent previously connected with African trade, and whose purview was not much extended politically; but in 1880 Mr E. H. Hewett, formerly Vice-Consul in Angola, and a man of some distinction, was appointed to the post. He took up his residence at Old Calabar, and his reports aroused great interest in the Government of that period, which was disposed to accede to the petitions of the chiefs and to take all the coast under British protection from Lagos to the Gaboon. But the plans of the Ministry were not fully settled until the end of 1883; and when Mr Hewett returned to the coast with full powers he was delayed by ill-health and still more so by the beginning of the Niger Question, and the importance of securing a hold over the lower Niger. Consequently he left the Cameroons region to a later visit; and the German representative at Duala, the celebrated traveller, Dr Nachtigal, taking advantage of this omission, suddenly concluded a treaty with a chief at the mouth of the Cameroons estuary. The British flag was erected over all the remaining territories in South Nigeria, the Cross River district and the north-west Cameroons. But Germany was