ENGLAND AND FRANCE 351 was an Indication of protected territory lying inland from the pink line, and there had been a public declaration of the intention to withdraw from that territory. In the interior there was therefore no bar whatever to the continuous extension of French influence.

When, after the conclusion of the Franco-German war, French policy began to declare itself in West Africa, the movement, co-ordinated with traditional intelligence, and supported by brilliant personal initiative on the part of individuals entrusted with Its execution, would appear to have included a design of steady extension from the north towards the south, accompanied by supplementary expeditions of penetration to be directed inland from all portions of the western coast which were not held by any other foreign power.

The English settlements of the Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, and Lagos, covered certain strips upon the seaboard. Between these were found points of penetration in some instances for official military expeditions, in others for expeditions of trade and exploration. To the south-east of the English colonies, and lying between them and the French colony of the Gaboon, there was situated the very Important highway which British exploration of the early part of the century had shown to exist in the course of the Lower Niger. It will be remembered that Mungo Park lost his life at Boussa in the attempt to follow the course of the river from the Interior in the year 1805, and that Clapperton's servant, Richard Landor, finally established the connection of the Niger with the Atlantic in 1832. From that date onward a certain amount of British trade had existed upon the river, and notwithstanding disastrous experiences of climate, the courses of the Lower Niger and the Benue had been explored, and a small trade settlement maintained at the native town of Lokoja at the confluence of the two rivers.

The Niger, of which the many mouths flowed to the sea through a politically unprotected coast, and of which the upper courses in the back country of Sierra Leone