RECENT CAMPAIGNS IN WEST AFRICA. 776 hadlong been neglected. The impulse towards greater activity in this region came from the traders, not from the officials. Finding the French trying to obtain a commercialfootingon the Lower Niger, agroup of British traders, of whom Mr. (afterwards Sir) George Taubmann-Goldie was the centre, organised an association for mutual aid in the defence of their interests, and out of this grew the RoyalNiger Company, thefirst of the Chartered Companies in Africa.

With French officers carrying their flag year by year further along the Niger, and pushing their posts towards the coastsouth of the river, had been fixed as thepoint on the Niger where the French sphere ended and the Britishbegan and that, according to the generally accepted method of mapping out spheres of influence in Africa by lines of latitude and longitude where there was no well-defined natural feature to determine them, the country east of Say between its meridian and the river fell to the English sphere. It was so markedon the maps published in France in 1890,notably in a map thatappeared in the Paris Temps, which was in close relations with the French Foreign Office, and some of the oppositionjournals in France it wasimportant forFrance and England to come to some understanding as to the limits of their respective spheres of influence in West Africa. By an agreement signed on August 5th, 1890, the boundaries of the two spheres in the country of the Lower Niger and east of the great river had been defined by a clause which ran as follows:— ■ "The Government of her Britannic Majestyrecognises the sphereof influence of France to the south of the Mediterranean possessionsup toa line from Say on theNiger to Barrua onLake Chad, drawn in such a manner as to comprise in the sphereof action of the Niger Company all that fairly belongs to the bitterly attacked the Government for having, as they put it, abandoned to England the country east of the Say line.

The conquest of Dahomey in 1894 and the advance of theFrenchfrom the Middle towards the Lower Niger led to what had at first been the theory only of the advancedColonial party inFrance being adopted by the Government. It was granted that the English sphere extended from the mouth of the Niger and the coast of the colony of Lagos up to the ninth parallel, because so far the boundaries betweenLagos and Dahomey* had been fixed by an SIR GEORGE GOLDIE. (Photo:Elliott &■>Fry, Bakei Street, W.)

kingdom of Sokoto, the line to be determined by the Commission to be appointed."

The Commissioners of the two countries were to meet in Paris to fix the details of the line thus defined,but for one reason or another the meeting was put off from year to year. The Commission which met in Paris in 1895 settled the frontier line between our Gold Coast territory and the French Ivory Coast protectorate from the sea northward to the ninthparallel of latitude. The boundary of the northernpart of Sierra Leone was settled at the same time, but nothing was done to completethe settlement of the Lower Niger region, and the frontier west of the Niger was still drawn rather differently on French and English maps, and another point was left open that was soon a fruitful source of disagreements between the two countries. In England it was generally understood that Say Anglo-French agreement as long ago as 1889. It was also granted that the east bank of the Niger from the ninth parallel to Say was in the British sphere,but it was now argued that the country on the west of the Niger between Say and the ninth parallel was a debatable land, open to whoever might be the first to occupy it. Near Boussa,which lies well to the southof Say, there is a series of cataracts interrupting the navigation of the great river, and the French urged that unless the)- were allowed to occupy some point below these cataracts they could not make use of the river as a trade route,and plans were formedfor sendingexpeditionsfrom Dahomeyto reach the Niger at Boussa and hoist the French flag on the lowerriverin what England claimed to beBritish sphere.

Towards the end of 1894, M. Ballot, the