24 THE EXPLORATION OK THE NIGER

heroes, who made us regret that it was impossible to win them over to our side.

The successive governors of Senegambia struggled in

vain against the resistance of Cayor to their authority, and the constant insubordination of the natives. But what

Faidherbe, Vinet-Laprade, and Briere de ITsle, to name but the most celebrated, failed to achieve was ac-

complished peacefully by the railway in a very few

years. Nor is that all, for many tracts, previously barren and uncultivated, now yield large crops of the Aracfiis

hypogea, or ix;a-nut, which are taken away by the trains in the trading season.

Does not this prove how true it is that peace and commerce advance side by side ; that the best, indeed the

only way to pacify a countrj-, and to conciliate the inhabit-

ants, is to give them prosperity by opening up outlets for their commerce?