THE ROYAL NIGER COMPANY 359 was of great importance to British trade that both banks of the river should be British, and the Niger Company had not neglected to affirm the position assigned to it under the agreement by negotiating treaties of commerce and protection with the trans-riverine potentates. French diplomacy denied the British contention, and French officers on the spot, gallantly acting upon, or exceeding, their instructions, endeavoured to create an argument of the fait accompli by the negotiation of treaties with native chiefs, whose powers they asserted to be greater than those of the chiefs with whom the British treaties had been signed.

The Borgu chief, with whom the Niger Company negotiated the principal treaty on the western side of the river, had his headquarters at Boussa. French authorities asserted that he was the vassal of another and more important chief, who had his residence at Nikki, a town lying in the back country of Dahomey, farther west. By the middle of 1894 it came to be generally understood that the possession of the provinces lying on the western bank of the river was to be determined by the negotiation of a treaty with Nikki. On the 24th of July a strong French expedition under Captain Decoeur suddenly left France for Dahomey. Dahomey was favourably situated for penetrating into the territory in dispute. M. Ballot, the Governor, had already pushed a friendly reconnaissance to the borders of Borgu, only fifty miles from Nikki. The Niger Company could not mistake the intention of Captain Decoeur's mission. Four days later, on July 28, Captain Lugard, fresh from a long struggle to assert British supremacy in East Africa, left London, having accepted a mission on behalf of the Company to reach Nikki, if possible, before Captain Decoeur, and to negotiate a treaty.

Throughout the progress of these discussions, Germany, who held the territory of Togoland, adjoining the French colony of Dahomey upon the coast, had not