The Mohammedans soon conquered North Africa sweeping away the early Christianity, and then crossed into Spain from which they were finally driven. For a long time the great desert served as an impenetrable barrier to further advance in Africa, but presently they crossed the desert, and when Christian missionaries arrived on the west coast, they found that Islam had preceded them. Forbidding none of the old practices of heathendom, imposing only a few new rules which are easily followed, the Mohammedan faith has had an enormous following. Between the Crescent and the Cross West Africa must make her choice and upon the Christian Church depends the decision. In meeting Islam and its active missionaries the Christian cannot but be sadly aware that the evil of drink was and is condemned by the prophet and his followers and that to a true Mohammedan all forms of alcohol are taboo, a fact with which the Mohammedan has not failed to taunt his rival. Dr. Zwemer and Dr. Westerman estimate the total population of the Moslem world to be two hundred million of whom forty-two million are in Africa. To them as well as to the pagan should the Gospel message go. A missionary book or a missionary address to which I am not able to give credit describes the parting of an English trader from the African woman with whom he had lived during a long residence in Africa, who had served him and truly loved him. Having accumulated riches, he was about to return to England without even bidding her farewell, but she had heard of his departure and followed him to the shore, where throwing herself at his feet, she besought him not to cast her aside. Indifferent to her grief, annoyed by her importunity, he angrily thrust her from him and embarked. Such have been the dealings of the white race with Africa. [Sidenote: Africa Under European Flags.] Except for a few almost negligible sections the continent is under European flags. France owns a colony twenty times the size of France itself; Great Britain a colony as large as the United States, which extends almost without interruption from the coast to Cairo, a distance of six thousand miles; Germany, a colony one and one-half times as large as the German Empire in Europe; Belgium, a territory equal to that of Germany; and Portugal, Spain and Italy a twelfth of the continent between them.