November i, 1901.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



39 



DEVELOPED 



lirBUER DISTRICTS 



OF WEST AFRICA 



Dotted lines denote Boundaries. 



Unbroken lines, Telegraph routes. 



Lines outside the Coast, Submarine Cables. 



]5"| E E.F.Fhk EnTT. Now T«k| 



FRENCH SOUDAN AS A SOURCE OF RUBBER. 



THE widening of the French sphere ol influence in Africa 

 promises to have an important bearing upon the ques- 

 tion of rubber supplies during the next few years. 

 Within a recent period colonial administrations have 

 been developed in Senegal, French Congo, and French Guiana 

 — not to mention Madagascar — to a degree that has fostered 

 the investment of French capital in commercial and industrial 

 enterprises in those regions, and led to the establishment of 

 direct lines of shipping to French ports, and the creation of 

 markets in those ports for colonial produce. As in the case of 

 the English, Belgian, and German possessions in the middle 

 third of Africa, the exploitation of India-rubber has appealed 

 to the French administrators and traders as affording the readi- 

 est means of developing commerce in their new colonies, since 

 the high values of this commodity permit it to be transported 

 over long distances at a heavy cost. 



All reports are to the effect that the French colonies re- 

 ferred to, so far as they have been explored, are as rich in rub- 

 ber as any other section of Africa, the Congo Free State not 

 excepted. The latest development in this connection has been 

 in the region known as the French Soudan, embraced in the 

 colony ol Senegal, and lying west and north ol the river Niger. 

 This region adjoins the British Niger territories, which for 

 several years have yielded considerable rubber. The colony of 

 Senegal has exported rubber for a dozen years or more, from 

 its capital and chief port, Saint Louis, at the mouth of the 

 Senegal river. To this port, by the way, and to other French 

 ports on the West African coast, has been diverted, since the 

 growth of French enterprise on that coast, no small amount 

 of the rubber business which formerly centered at the British 



port of Sierra Leone, this being one explanation of the de- 

 cline in the amount of so-called " Sierra Leone " rubber com- 

 ing into the markets. 



The headquarters of the rubber trade in the French Soudan 

 is the town of Kayes, at the head of navigation on the river 

 Senegal, and which is the official residence of the military com- 

 mandant of that district. Under the auspices of the military 

 rubber has been gathered, both for the discharge of the taxes 

 due from the natives, and also for the instruction of the natives 

 in a profitable employment. The authorities have gone so 

 far as to establish at Kouroussa, in the same district, a school 

 to which natives from various parts of the country are brought 

 for instruction in the proper extraction and coagulation of the 

 rubber laiex. Two reports of value have been made on the 

 French Soudan rubber. One is by Monsieur Chevalier, a bot- 

 anist, to the military commandant, on the character and distri- 

 bution of the rubber plant found in the district — a creeper 

 known locally as the "gohine." The other report is from 

 Monsieur H. Hamet, the head of a scientific commission ap- 

 pointed by the governor of the colony to report on the rubber 

 situation from a practical standpoint. The information thus 

 collected is of a most promising character. 



The rubber creeper here is that designated by the botanists 

 as the Landolphia Heudelotii (it has been described also as L. 

 SenegaUnsis), and it appears thus far to be confined to the 

 region in question, though the rubber produced doubtless has 

 the same general character as that yielded by other species of 

 Landolphia, elsewhere in Africa. M. Hamet reports, however : 

 " The Soudan rubbers compare favorably with those from the 

 Belgian Congo, having all their purity, resistance, and nerve. 



