FROM SAY TO BUSSA 413 Yet once again our geographical incapacit>', our interference in African affairs, has permitted our rivals to mock us with assertions which a little less ignorance on our part would have enabled us to refute.

Sir Edward Malet spoke of the Falls of Burrum ; it would have been quite enough to open Barth's narrative to answer that these Falls were non-existent. Reading the narrative of the German traveller might also have taught us that when he passed through, a desundant of tlu ancient chiefs of the country was maintaining an independent position in Argtmgti, and the account of his perilous journey from Sokoto to the banks of the Niger would have shown how very precarious was the influence exercised by the Emir of Sokoto on the countries through which he passed. Since 1890, when the Anglo-Franco treaty was signed, that authority has continued to decrease. Kebbi, Mauri, Djerma, and Dendi would very soon have got the better of their oppressors if they had always worked together. However that may be, they have at least now regained independence, and we French are the only European people who have made any conventions with them. Strickly speaking, the treaty signed by Monteil with Kebbi would be enough.

It is therefore no longer at Say, as the English pretend, that the limit of French influence is reached. The line of demarcation, according to the spirit as well as the letter of the treaty of 1890, ought to leave us the four provinces I have just named. We are again about to abandon our rights won at the price of so much trouble and fatigue. Better still, are we going to leave Sokoto (strong through the weapons supplied by the English), after spreading fire and destruction everywhere, to reduce to captivity and slavery the peaceful but courageous swarms of population, capable as those populations are