500 THE EXPLORATION OF THE NIGER we may perhaps call it, this inland trading lake? A unique solution to the problem presents itself : we must finish the line of railway uniting Kayes to Kolikoro.

The first workers at the task of penetrating into Africa were right. The project of Mungo Park, and Faidherbe, taken up and continued by the Desbordes, the Gallieni, the Archinards, etc., should be continued, pushed on and completed without delay.

All has already been explored. We are no longer discussing a castle in the air, with no firm foundations. We know what that railway will cost, its whole course has been decided on and surveyed ; only one thing is still needed, and that is money. It is for the French Government to ask for it, and for the French Parliament to grant it. Certain there be who deliberately oppose French colonial expansion ; with them discussion is impossible. I do not try to convince them, for they are already proved to be in the wrong.

There are, however, others, noble and loyal Frenchmen, who stigmatize as sterile all the efforts we make beyond seas to add to the possessions of our native country.

" What," they urge, " you talk of wholesale emigration, when the population of France is by no means increasing ! " This is, after all, only a specious argument. Who speaks of advising expatriation en masse to Frenchmen for the sake of peopling distant countries } All the colonies suitable ior peopling hdiWQ already been appropriated by our English rivals. Australia was the last of them.

With regard, however, to colonies for exploration it is quite a different matter. And with the fullest conviction of my soul, I say France ought to acquire such colonies. Through them alone will she recover her commercial ascendency, which has been so seriously jeopardized ; through them alone will her social position become assured.