FROM TIMBUKTU TO TOSAYE thus attain an importance which but for this would be altogether wanting. In the partition of Africa European governments began by imagining a Itind of rule of the game, which consisted in giving to so-called treaties with native chiefs a certain fictitious value. We fell in with this idea, and it would be difficult now to go back to the old belief, that in a game of chance the ace is more powerful than the king. To follow the fashion therefore when we appear on the boards before international conferences, we have to be provided with plenty of trumps, and to produce treaties with people, shady folk enough sometimes, whom we dub for the nonce kings or princes. Our treaties are as valid as those made by Germans, Spaniards, or Italians, and all of them added together, if truth and good faith were considered, would amount simply to zero, as I shall presently have occasion to prove.