CHAPTER XV.

THe FasHoopa AFFAIR.—A Rep Britisu LINE | THROUGH AFRICA.

France is following in the footsteps of Spain. A fatality dogs her schemes of empire and colonisation.

In truth she has no colonies—they are but military possessions. She has set her face, alone and in conjunction with others, in America, Asia, and Africa to hoop our enterprises in with bands of iron. Failure attended her policy across the Atlantic, in India, in Burmah, and but the other day at Fashoda. Her object in that last instance was to connect her possessions in West and East Africa, so that the red British lines which are steadily extending from North and South Africa should never be joined. France is the largest holder of . territory upon the Dark Continent, and she probably regarded that fact as the best justification for her subtle move, through the Marchand and Abyssinian Missions, to add still more to her dominions. She had been permitted to hoop us about at Bathurst and Sierra Leone upon the West Coast and has all but completed the same process round Ashantee and the Niger countries, not to speak of elsewhere. Madagascar she