In order to perpetuate a scarcely less important branch of the movement initiated by Livingstone,--a department specially sanctioned, as the above extract shows, by the English Government--the African Lakes Company was formed in 1878. Its object was to open up and develop the regions of East Central Africa from the Zambesi to Tanganyika; to make employments for the native peoples, to trade with them honestly, to keep out rum, and, so far as possible, gunpowder and firearms, and to co-operate and strengthen the hands of the missionary. It has already established twelve trading stations, manned by a staff of twenty-five Europeans and many native agents. The _Ilala_ on Lake Nyassa belongs to it; and it has just placed a new steamer to supersede the _Lady Nyassa_ on the river Shiré. It has succeeded in starting a flourishing coffee plantation in the interior, and new sources of wealth are being gradually introduced. For the first time, on the large scale, it has taught the natives the meaning and the blessings of work. It has acted, to some extent, as a check upon the slave-trade; it has prevented inter-tribal strife, and helped to protect the missionaries in time of war. The African Lakes Company, in short, modest as is the scale on which it works, and, necessarily limited as are its opportunities, has been for years the sole administering hand in this part of Africa. This Company does not exist for gain;--or exists for gain only in the sense that commercial soundness is the only solid basis on which to build up an institution which can permanently benefit others. A large amount of private capital has been expended by this Company; yet, during all the years it has carried on its noble enterprise, it has re-invested in Africa all that it has taken from it. All this British capital, all the capital of the Missions, all these various and not inconsiderable agencies, have been tempted into Africa largely in the hope that the old policy of England would not only be continued but extended. England has never in theory departed from the position she assumed in the days of the Zambesi Expedition. On the contrary, she has distinctly recognized the relation between her Government and Africa. She has continued to send out British Consuls to be the successors of Livingstone in the Nyassa region. When the first of these, Captain Foote, R.N., died in the Shiré Highlands in 1884, the English Government immediately sent another to take his place. But this is the last thing that has been done. The Consul is there as a protest that England has still her eye on Africa. But Africa needs more than an eye. And when, as happened the other day, one of Her Majesty's representatives was under Arab fire for five days and nights on the shores of Lake Nyassa, this was brought home to us in such practical fashion as to lead to the hope that some practical measures will now be taken.