318 KHARTOUM CAMPAIGN.

Valley of the Nile have been brought forward. Thus, in particular, the declarations of Sir Edward Grey, to which the British Government has referred, gave rise to an immediate protest by our representative in London, the terms of which he repeated and developed in the further conversations which he had at the Foreign Office on the subject. I myself had occasion, in the sitting of the Senate on April 5, 1895, to make, in the name of the Government, declarations to which I consider that I am a1 the more justified in referring from the fact that they have called forth no reply from the British Government.”

The speech to which M. Hanotaux refers is published at length in an appendix, and, so far from being a reply to Sir Edward Grey, it gives the French position completely away.

‘“‘T now come, gentlemen,” he said, “to the question of the Upper Nile. I will explain the situation to the Senate in a few words ; for I think it will be useful to complete the explanations which M. de Lamarzelle has already given on this subject. Between the country of the lakes and the point of Wady Halfa, on the Nile, extends a vast region, measuring twenty degrees of latitude, or 2000 kilometres, that is, more than the breadth of Western Europe from Gibraltar to Dunkirk. In this region there is at this moment, perhaps, not a single European ; in any case, there does not exist any power derived, by any title, from a European authority. It is the country of the Mahdi! Now, gentlemen, it is the future of this country which fills with an uneasiness, which we may describe as at least premature, the minds of a certain number of persons interested in Africa. The Egyptians who occupied this vast domain for a considerable time have moved to the north. Emin Pasha himself was compelled to withdraw. The rights of the Sultan and the Khedive alone continue to exist over the regions of the Soudan and of Equatorial Africa.”

That is to say, after the Mahdi, who was the ae facto ruler, the authority over the whole basin of the Upper Nile reverted to the Khedive and the Sultan as