The Royal Senegal Company sent out in 1697 a very able man to attend to its affairs—André de Brüe—who made his head-quarters at Fort St Louis, which had been founded by De Rochefort’s party. This remarkable person, Brüe, combined the qualities of a man of science and a far-sighted trader, and may be said to have really laid the foundations of the French empire in West Africa. Brüe made two important journeys up the Senegal and into the interior. He remained eighteen years on the coast of Senegal, and visited the Gambia in 1700, finding English, Portuguese, and Spanish there, the first-named trading at the mouth of the river, and the two last settled some distance up its course as flourishing slave-traders. According to Brüe, the Portuguese slave-trading settlements exhibited some degree of civilization, but also of rowdiness among the European element, not unlike the proceedings of the “Mohocks” in the streets of London. In his writings Brüe expresses his amazement at the enormous number of bees inhabiting the mangrove swamps and coast-lands of Guinea. In 1716 Brüe sent out agents to extend French influence up the Senegal and towards the “Gold” country of Bambuk, the mountainous region on the upper Senegal. Brüe finally returned to France in 1715 and lived quietly for a long time afterwards on the large fortune he had accumulated. His is a name to be well remembered in the annals of the French Empire. He was a far-sighted, cultivated man, who had also the gift of choosing and employing good associates. Among these may be mentioned the Sieur Campagnon, the _beau-idéal_ of a good-tempered, good-looking, supple, kind-hearted, valorous Frenchman. Only the charm of Campagnon’s winning ways enabled him to penetrate the recesses of Bambuk, whose secrets as a gold-bearing country were jealously guarded by the natives. One little incident of Campagnon’s life on the Senegal depicts his disposition. Walking round the outskirts of St Louis he came across an unfortunate lioness that had belonged to an inhabitant of the town, but had been thrown out on the rubbish heaps to die. The unfortunate beast had been suffering from some malady of the jaw which would not permit mastication, and was therefore nearly dead from hunger. When Campagnon saw the lioness, her eyes were glazing and her mouth was full of ants and dirt. He took pity on the unfortunate creature, washed her mouth and throat clean, and fed her with milk. This saved her life, and the grateful animal conceived a warm affection for him, and would afterwards follow him about like a dog and take food from no one else. Dr Robert Brown, who unearthed this charming anecdote, further informs us that after his romantic career in Africa Campagnon returned to France, and died, after a