The development of Senegal since the commencement of the 20th century has not been limited to the making of Dakar (now the residence of the Governor-General and the metropolis of French West Africa) a first-class port, but a great advance has also been made in railway construction. Landing at Dakar, which is only eight days’ steam from Bordeaux or Marseilles, the traveller journeys 165 miles by rail to St Louis (the old capital), there embarks in a river steamer on the Senegal and journeys to Kayès, enters the train again at Kayès and travels on 344 miles to Kulikoro on the Niger, whence he can proceed by river steamer to Timbuktu, the whole journey from Timbuktu to Paris being reduced to a possible nineteen days. Timbuktu the inaccessible, twenty to thirty years ago, is now only a ten days’ journey from an Atlantic seaport. Timbuktu is connected with Algeria (as well as with Dakar) by overland telegraph. Dahomé and the Ivory Coast Colony have both shared in the development of French Africa. Dahomé is contented, peaceful, and prosperous under French rule. A railway due north from Kotonu to the Niger, beyond Borgu, is under construction, about half the line (200 miles) having been finished in 1910. On the Ivory Coast there has been a certain amount of financial depression owing to the failure to discover gold or other minerals in profitable quantities. A number of companies, mostly British, had been formed for developing the mineral resources of the Ivory Coast; but, in spite of the vigorous work of the French in opening up communications with the interior, no great degree of commercial prosperity has as yet come to that portion of French Africa. A serious native rising had to be suppressed in 1910. In 1910-11 the contiguous frontiers of Liberia and the French possessions in Guinea and on the Ivory Coast were settled, greatly to the advantage of the French possessions. The total area of French West Africa to-day (1912) is approximately 1,952,000 square miles, with a negro and negroid population of about 12,000,000, and some 8000 whites. It does an annual trade of about £16,000,000, mainly with France; for France in her colonial policy still pursues the selfish policy of protection. But unlike what has happened in French Congo, the territories of Senegal, Guinea, Nigeria, the Sahara and Dahomé have enormously benefited from the imposition of French rule at the close of the 19th century. For the first time in their long, blood-stained history the industrious negro and Fula agriculturists and herdsmen of these tropical regions, and the semi-nomads of the Great Desert, know what it is to experience continual tranquillity, safety and commercial prosperity.