itary or quasi-scientific missions from the west and east
African coasts to obtain treaties and pre-emption claims to territory
in the interior. That the French flag should wave from sea to sea was
their confessed desire. Their incentive was to forestall and annoy
Great Britain and render worthless the blood and treasure our country
might spend in smashing the dervishes. Major Marchand set out from the
west coast or French Congo in 1896, with a small body of Europeans and
about 500 Senegalese troops. With indomitable zeal and courage he
pushed east, reaching the vast basin lands of the Bahr el Ghazal after
sore hardships and the loss of many of his men, chiefly from sickness.
The spirit that animated the leader and his followers may be gathered
from the following lines which were written some time ago by a
non-commissioned officer of Senegalese Rifles to his relatives.

"We have no rest, not even for a single day, as a moment's delay
might render all our exertions useless. All that we shall have
done will be wasted if the English or others occupy our route when
we want to pass. When you read this letter we shall either be on
the Nile or our bones will be slowly whitening in the Egyptian
brushwood under a torrid sun. I verily believe that if we are
destroyed I shall retain regret for our failure in another world."

Fashoda is 444 miles by river south of Omdurman. It is situated upon
the west bank, on a low headland which at high Nile becomes an island.
Before the Mahdist rising, Fashoda was a fortified Egyptian station
with a garrison of 1000 men, and a native population of nearly 4000.
The place was enclosed within a ditch and a sun-dried brick wall. From
its position it commanded the passage of the Nile, which was less than
half a mile in width. The dervishes allowed the place to fall into
ruins, only maintaining a very small garrison--less than 100 men--to
raid for grain to supply Omdurman with, and to collect revenue from
the native boats. Like the rest of the Soudan, the Shilluk country, in
which Fashoda is situated, had suffered terribly and been sadly
depopulated. The country of the Shilluk negroes used to extend for
several hundred miles northward down the left bank of the Nile from
the Bahr el Ghazal. It was but a strip, ten miles or so in width,
their nearest neighbours, with whom they were usually at war, being
the Baggara Arabs. Like so many other riverain tracts susceptible of
cu