long and prosperous life, a master-mason and undertaker in Paris. The French continued to develop their Senegal settlements with some prosperity until 1758, when they were captured by the British, who held them until 1778, and acquired them again for a time by the peace of 1783; after this they were in British hands a few years longer, but were French again by 1790. In 1800 the British took the island of Goree, which the French had acquired from the Dutch in 1677. By the peace of 1783 the English had secured from the French the exclusive right to trade with the Arabs or Moors of Portendik for gum. Portendik was a place on the Sahara coast about 120 miles north of St Louis. All the French possessions in Senegal which were held by the British from time to time during the Napoleonic wars were given back to France two years after the peace of 1815, though at that time the British hold over the Gambia was more clearly defined, the French only retaining one post on that river, given up in 1857 in return for the British trade monopoly with Portendik. The French had already resumed their explorations of Senegambia at the end of the 18th century; and after the final recovery of the Senegal river in 1817 these researches were pushed with some degree of ardour. In 1818 Mollien discovered the sources of the Gambia, and De Beaufort explored the country of Kaarta. In 1827 René Caillié started from the river Nunez with help derived from the colony of Sierra Leone (for which he was subsequently ungrateful) and descended the Niger to Timbuktu, thence making his way across the desert to Morocco. His journey, however, did not do much to lure the French Nigerwards at that time, especially as a great Fula conqueror had arisen, Al Hajji ’Omaru, whose conquests not only blocked the way to the Niger, but later on threatened the very existence of the French settlements on the Senegal. But after a long period of inaction and lack of interest, the French colony of the Senegal was to receive great extension. General Faidherbe, who for political reasons was rather distrusted by the newly-formed Second Empire, was exiled to Senegal in 1854 in the guise of an appointment as Governor-General. He was a man of great enterprise and intelligence, and immediately began to study the resources and extension of the Senegal colony. He first punished severely the Moorish tribes to the north of the river Senegal, who had again and again raided the settled country. Before he had been a year in Senegambia, Faidherbe had annexed the Wuli country, and had built the fort of Medina to oppose the progress of Al Hajji ’Omaru. ’Omaru sent an army of 20,000 men against Medina, but they were repulsed by the officer in command, and finally had to retreat before Faidherbe’s advance.