AFRICA: Portuguese Exploration of the Atlantic Coast. The rounding of the Cape. See PORTUGAL: A. D. 1415-1460, and 1463-1498. AFRICA: Dutch and English Colonization. See SOUTH AFRICA. AFRICA: A. D. 1787-1807. Settlement of Sierra Leone. See SIERRA LEONE. AFRICA: A. D. 1820-1822. The founding of Liberia. See SLAVERY, NEGRO: A. D. 1816-1847. AFRICA: A. D. 1884-1891. Partition of the interior between European Powers. "The partition of Africa may be said to date from the Berlin Conference of 1884--85 [see CONGO FREE STATE]. Prior to that Conference the question of inland boundaries was scarcely considered. ... The founding of the Congo Independent State was probably the most important result of the Conference. ... Two months after the Conference had concluded its labours, Great Britain and Germany had a serious dispute in regard to their respective spheres of influence on the Gulf of Guinea. ... The compromise ... arrived at placed the Mission Station of Victoria within the German sphere of influence." The frontier between the two spheres of influence on the Bight of Biafra was subsequently defined by a line drawn, in 1886, from the coast to Yola, on the Benué. The Royal Niger Company, constituted by a royal charter, ... "was given administrative powers over territories covered by its treaties. The regions thereby placed under British protection ... apart from the Oil Rivers District, which is directly administered by the Crown, embrace the coastal lands between Lagos and the northern frontier of Camarons, the Lower Niger (including territories of Sokoto, Gandu and Borgo), and the Benué from Yola to its confluence." By a Protocol signed December 24, 1885, Germany and France "defined their respective spheres of influence and action on the Bight of Biafra, and also on the Slave Coast and in Senegambia." This "fixed the inland extension of the German sphere of influence (Camarons) at 15° East longitude, Greenwich. ... At present it allows the French Congo territories to expand along the western bank of the M'bangi ... provided no other tributary of the M'bangi-Congo is found to the west, in which case, according to the Berlin Treaty of 1884-85, the conventional basin of the Congo would gain an extension." On the 12th of May, 1886, France and Portugal signed a convention by which France "secured the exclusive control of both banks of the Casamanza (in Senegambia), and the Portuguese frontier in the south was advanced approximately to the southern limit of the basin of the Casini. {18} On the Congo, Portugal retained the Massabi district, to which France had laid claim, but both banks of the Loango were left to France." In 1884 three representatives of the Society for German Colonization--Dr. Peters, Dr. Jühlke, and Count Pfeil--quietly concluded treaties with the chiefs of Useguha,