FROM FAFA TO SAY 273 us well, and they themselves intended to act as our guides. They begged me, however, not to anchor at the village of Sinder, though I was particularly anxious to visit that important centre, which is the chief mart for the vast quantities of cereals cultivated in the neighbourhood.

Farca is an island completely covered with a tropical forest, and a similar mass of verdure is to be seen on another islet opposite to it. The village, which had been deserted after the fracas with Captain Toute's people, was just beginning to be rebuilt.

This was the furthest point reached by the expedition which had preceded ours, and is situated in N. Lat. 14° 29' and Long, i" 22' 55", thirty kilometres from Sinder, and eight hundred and sixty from Timbuktu.

The connection between the expeditions which had started from the coast of Guinea and those which had come from the French Sudan had at last been achieved, and the Niger had been navigated for its entire course by Frenchmen.

Below Farca, the stream becomes a little less difficult.

* I make a special point of the exact situation of Farca. Captain Toutde says in a note to his book on Dahomey, the Niger, and the Tuaregs, that he beHeved it to be much nearer Timbuktu, but he had not taken any astronomical observations, and he had made a mistake of a day in his journal. This rectification will appear somewhat tardy after the articles published on his return in the newspapers, and in the Bulletin of the ComiU dc UAfrique franqaise which led to its being supposed that Farca is on the outskirts of the last French post in the Sudan. Had this been so, the results of our expedition would have been greatly minimized. Suum cuiqiie.

On the subject of the recognition of the French protectorate by the people of Farca, there must have been, to say the least, a very great error of interpretation. Our readers have been able to discover for themselves that unfortunately French influence does not extend so far.

Indeed, the hostile attitude of the people of Sinder, who are the relations and feudal superiors of those of Farca, and who attacked Captain Toutde, would have been enough to prove it without anything else.

T