759 VIEW ON THE NIGER.

RECENT CAMPAIGNS IN WEST AFRICA-CHAPTER I THE FRENCH ON THE UPPEK NIGER AND ON THE WEST COAST.

THE first settlements of the European Powers in Africa were a number of stations or "factories" along the West Coast from the Senegal and the Gambia to the Cameroons and the Congo. They were originally depots for the slave trade, and when in the first part of the nineteenth century this infamous traffic was happily abolished, these coast settlements were for the most part allowed to sink into a condition of neglected decay. For many years no attempt was made to use them as starting-points for the extension of civilised rule into the interior. The doctrine ofHinterlands,and the partitionof savageAfrica, had not yet begun. England had, it is true, sent more than one exploring expedition inland from the West Coast, with a view of opening up trade with the peoples of the interior. The Niger, once supposed to be a tributary of the Nile,had been tracedfrom its great central bend to its delta in the swampycreeks of the coast, aridit had been ascertained that Timbuctoo was a great centre of commerce for the Fulah and Negrokingdoms southof the Sahara. But little came of these explorations, and the European traders were content to carry on their traffic in oil and ivory and other local products through theagency of the tribalchiefs andpettykings of thecoast districts.

Disputes with these dusky potentates led at times to a native war. In 1874 the invasion of theGold Coast territory by the Ashantis led to Lord Wolseley's march on Coomassie, but so little idea was there then of empire making in West Africa that the Ashanti capital was evacuated within a week of its occupation, and the country wasleft to be ruled by its native kings.

The French had,however, already taken the first steps in the new policy that eventually developedinto a great scheme of conquest,and finally brought England into the field as her rival for dominion in the countries along the Niger and on the West Coast. There had been numerous French projects for reaching Timbuctoo and the middle Niger from Algeria by the caravan routes 01 the Sahara. General Faidherbe, who very successfully governed the colony of Senegambia under the Second Empire, pointed out an easier method of reaching the same points. The Senegal is navigable to the village of Kayes, near which Faidherbe had established the fort of Medina. From Kayes to