ENGLAND AND FRANCE 349 presented by the findings of the Committee of 1865, there is to be traced, even in the evidence which was taken before the Committee, a faint indication of the coming change which was soon to reverse the direction of public opinion. In the examination of an important witness, Colonel Ord, the Special Commissioner employed by the Government to visit the four settlements and to prepare a report from information collected on the spot, a question was put as to the probable reasons for the maintenance by France of the large military garrisons which he reported as existing at Senegal and Goree. In reply, Colonel Ord said that the only surmise which he had heard expressed upon the subject was that **they" (the French) ** desire eventually to connect their Algerian and their African possessions, and to become possessors of the whole of the north of Africa."

Thus, in 1865, outside the circles of philanthropy and philosophic Radicalism which still retained a predominating influence over British colonial policy, the first notes had been already sounded of that international conflict of diplomacy which was soon to be known under the name of the ** Scramble for Africa."

The Franco-German war of 1870 intervened, and delayed for a few years the development of ideas which were already germinating in 1865, but, the war once over, its effect was, perhaps, rather to stimulate than to crush the ambitions of France and Germany to sustain their position as colonial powers. Among non-political influences which also tended to give an impetus to continental exploration, no single element was perhaps more potent than the application of steam to land and river transport. The development of railways, which took place during the middle of the century, had for the first time in history rendered possible the commercial exploitation of the centres of great continents. The discoveries of gold which had been made in America and Australia, and of diamonds and gold at a somewhat later period in South Africa, revolutionised trading operations and raised ex-