Some of these treaties were not worth the paper they were written on, for the chiefs were vassals of the Sultan of Zanzibar, who was under British protection. Nevertheless, a German fleet was sent to Zanzibar, and the Sultan was forced, at a price of £200,000, to yield up his territory on the mainland from Cape Delgado to a line drawn from the mouth of the Umbe River to the Victoria Nyanza. The British afterwards proclaimed a protectorate over the remainder of the Sultan's African dominions. At the beginning of the present war German East Africa covered an area of 364,000 square miles--that is, it was almost double the size of Germany, and had an estimated population of over 7½ millions, the whites numbering a little over 5,000. From the low-lying coast lands it rises to lofty and irregular mountains, which form the outer buttress of a plateau some 3,000 or 4,000 feet in height. From the middle of this plateau streams are thrown off north to the Victoria Nyanza,[124] west to Lake Tanganyika,[125] and east to the Indian Ocean. Parts of this plateau are mere desert, waterless and scrub-covered, with loose shingle, dried-up water-courses, and bare, fantastic rocks. Other parts are well watered and fertile, and in these favourable regions the Germans have developed agriculture greatly. Prior to the war, rubber, copal, bark, fibre, teak, mahogany, coffee, tobacco, sugar cane, cotton, etc., were largely grown and exported; gold, coal, graphite, iron, salt, and precious stones were mined; and ivory was obtained from the elephants, which still roam the forests in large numbers. When the war began, German East Africa was making good and steady progress. The Germans did not win the colony without considerable fighting with the natives, and one of the risings which took place in 1904 cost East Africa the lives of about 120,000 men, women, and children. The Germans have no genius for dealing with natives; their brutal, blustering methods are certain to provoke strife wherever they obtain a foothold. They have, however, a genius for organizing, and this is seen in the towns which they have built, and the eight fairly good harbours which they have constructed on the coast. The name of the capital, Dar-es-Salaam, means "the harbour of peace;" it is a good port and a delightful place. German East Africa suffered a great shock when the Uganda railway was built by the British and the trade of the lake region was thus captured. The Germans replied by building two lines which gave the quickest access to British Central Africa and to the Southern Congo. [Illustration: British Native Troops preparing to embark at Freetown, Sierra Leone, for the Kamerun. (_Photo Central News._)]