though there are many kings and chiefs ruling their people peaceably and humanely under the eyes of French resident officers. There has been no serious breach of the peace in the Senegambian and Nigerian territories since 1900, with the exception of the fighting in the region to the north of the Senegal which is rather ineptly styled “Mauretania.” Here France had concluded treaties of protection with the chiefs of the Moorish and Arab tribes in 1903-5; but in 1905 the French Commissioner, Coppolani, was murdered in the far interior. Between 1908 and 1909 a force under Colonel Gouraud conquered all Mauretania and especially the hilly country of Adrar Temmur. The oasis of Air and Asben (which contains the old Songhai town of Agades) came under French control in 1905-6, and Bilma—farther east, in the Tibu country—at the same time. In 1902-4 an administrative reorganisation of French West Africa took place, in which (and in the additional acts of 1909) the following divisions were recognised: _Mauretania_ (344,967 sq. miles), bounded on the north by the Spanish protectorate of Rio de Oro and the 22° N. latitude and on the south by the river Senegal; _Senegal_ colony and protectorate (74,000 sq. miles), bounded by the Senegal and Faleme rivers and Portuguese Guinea; _French Guinea_ (95,000 sq. miles), bounded by Portuguese Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia; the _Ivory Coast_ (130,000 sq. miles), between Liberia and the British Gold Coast; _Dahomé_ (about 40,000 sq. miles), a narrow strip between Borgu, the Niger, and the Gulf of Guinea; and lastly the enormous “_Colony of Upper Senegal and Niger_,” which, with its military territories, has an area of something like 1,268,400 sq. miles. It is bounded on the west and south by the other divisions and by foreign possessions, and on the north by the Algerian and Moroccan protectorates. This last division of French West Africa stretches eastwards from the Faleme branch of the Senegal River to Lake Chad. In Senegal and French Guinea, the ports of Dakar and Konakri have received a remarkable development, and are admitted to be the most splendid and civilized towns on the West Coast of Africa, far superior in sanitary arrangements and outward aspect to anything which as yet exists in the somewhat sluggish British West African possessions. From Konakri a railway has been constructed on to the healthy uplands of Futa Jallon and to the Upper Niger at Kankan. Nearly in front of Konakri is the little archipelago of the Isles de Los[123]. These islands until the beginning of 1904 belonged to Great Britain, but under the Anglo-French Convention of 1904 they were very properly ceded to France, as they no longer commanded a coast which could become British.