1907.] on Across Widest Africa. 745 



1,500,000 pounds in weight, were exported in 1906. The French 

 government has wisely established several schools where practical 

 demonstrations are given to the natives, in order to teach them how 

 to extract the latex without injury to the plants, and fresh plantations 

 are being constantly made with considerable success in appropriate 

 districts. The indigenous LaiidoJphia Hendelotii is of course the most 

 suited quaUty for the locality, but experiments with such excellent 

 latex-giving plants as the Ficus eJastica have been successful. The 

 Agave rigida var. sisahma (sisal), and the Fmrroga, also imported, pro- 

 duce in those clunates textile fibres much sought after in commerce, 

 and seem exceptionally remarkable for their vigorous growth. The 

 Bagana (Bambara name) a variety of Acacia arahica, more correctly 

 the Acacia adamsonii, may also prove a profitable plant for tanning 

 purposes. 



Experiments are constantly made at the Kulikoro station with 

 all kinds of fruit trees and seeds, which are sent over from the 

 Jardin de Xogent in France. Undoubtedly we shall hear in the 

 future that the country has much benefited by the devoted work and 

 intelligence of the practical and self-sacrificing scientists whom 

 Fi-ance has sent to study the agricultural possibihties of the Niger 

 and the high Senegal. 



My trans-continental journey ended on the last rock of Cape 

 Verde, the most westerly point of the African continent. 



I cannot leave the French Central African Colonies without 

 saying a word about French officers and officials. "Wherever I met 

 them their hospitability had no bounds, and it would be difficult to 

 imagine more nolile-minded and good-hearted fellows than these 

 men of the French colonial infantry, who go and spend the best 

 years of their life in solitude in Central Africa. It is seldom that 

 you meet more than one officer with a few black Senegalese soldiers 

 at any of their military posts : and the posts are generally several 

 hundred miles apart. 



The training of the French officers was marvellously up-to-date. 

 They could turn their hand almost to anything, from surveying to 

 building houses and fortresses, making irrigation works, administering 

 justice, doctoring the sick, teaching the natives all sorts of useful 

 things, and drilling their Senegalese soldiers in a practical manner. 

 It is amazing what the French officers have been able to accomplish 

 with these magnificent fellows — perhaps the best black soldiers of all 

 the central zone of tropical Africa. 



In the way of colonial wars, we all know what the French have 

 done in Africa, and what they are still doing with few officers and 

 not many men. I happen to know their work on the Wadaian 

 frontier, in the Bornu and in the Tuareg country, and it is only 

 when one takes the trouble to find what these men have done — and 

 with what little resources they have done it — that one remains fiUed 

 with admiration for the great work they have accomplished. 



