392 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1942 



to France. Six tried again, on what they hoped was more favorable 

 terrain at Bel Air, but they died of fever/^ 



MODERN EUROPEAN OCCUPANCE 



THE ESTABLISHMENT OF DAKAR 



At the beginning of 1857 a letter from the colonial minister author- 

 ized the Chief of the Naval Division at Goree to set up a military 

 post at Dakar and to build a commercial city there." The French 

 authorities landed a force of marines and took formal possession on 

 the feast of Ramadan. Each local headman was given a French flag 

 to fly over his hut, thus to identify the occupation with the current 

 atmosphere of rejoicing. All payments for water, wood, and building 

 materials were thenceforth abrogated. 



A fort was built on Dakar Point. Several inhabitants of Goree 

 moved there to build houses under its protection and to cultivate 

 small gardens. The Messageries Mari times (then Messageries Im- 

 perials ) agreed with the French Government to have its ships stop on 

 a monthly service between Bordeaux and Rio de Janeiro, the Cape 

 being about halfway. The next year the company bought land under 

 the point for a coal park and demanded that the government construct 

 a breakwater, necessary during the rainy season to complete the pro- 

 tection afforded by the cove. A curate took up residence. The barracks 

 were manned by a detachment of troops under sentence for infractions 

 of discipline. Besides overawing the indigenes, these soldier-prisoners 

 maintained a garden and orchard at Hann. A street plan for the 

 prospective city was adopted. 



For a quarter of a century after these beginnings Dakar made little 

 progress. In the 1870's Goree felt a new wave of prosperity, after a 

 decline tliat had resulted from the abolition of its slave trade. Its 

 population numbered more than 3,000. The headquarters of the com- 

 mercial houses remained there, and the island continued to administer 

 the Petite Cote. Dakar, in contrast, had only a dozen or fifteen small 

 merchants, whose principal business was that of dramshops. The few 

 Europeans and a somewhat larger number of Europeanized Africans 

 lived in nondescript dwellings, generally of wood, scattered among 

 the huts and compounds of the aboriginal villagers. 



Wliatever commercial business migrated to the peninsula settled 

 at Rufisque. A decade before the founding of Dakar the first peanuts 

 had been raised behind Rufisque in calcareous sand moistened from a 

 line of dunes. The crop proved admirably suited to the soil and 



1' Faure, op. cit., p. 21 ; Gafflot, op. cit., pp. 133-13.5. Accounts do not agree, even as to 

 site of settlement ; but the picture is essentially true for the time and place. 

 " Quoted in F'aure, op. cit., p. 118. 



