The extension of Senegal under General Faidherbe, and the occupation by the French of oases in the Sahara, such as Wargla and Golea, early suggested an overland connection between the two French possessions, and the “Chemin de fer Trans-Saharien” was hinted at, half in joke, during the sixties and became a subject of serious consideration in the seventies. But in 1881 the massacre of the Flatters expedition in the Sahara Desert, and the obvious hostility of the Tawareq to any further advance of the French across the desert temporarily discouraged the idea; though the main discouragement no doubt arose from the thought of the enormous cost of such a railway, and the unfruitful character of the country it would traverse. Still France, when the word “hinterland” was creeping into political terminology, began to feel anxious that no other European Power should intervene between her North African possessions and her empire on the Niger; and in 1890 she secured from the British Government a recognition of this important point, the British recognition carrying the French sphere of influence to the north-western coast of Lake Chad as well as to the Niger. In 1898 it was resolved to take effective possession of all this portion of the north-central Sudan, and three great expeditions converged on it; one from Algeria under Commandant Lamy with Mons. F. Foureau as political officer, one from French Congo (as to which more will be written when that region is considered), and the third from Senegal, under Captains Voulet and Chanoine. Unfortunately these last-named officers belonged to a type which in the closing years of the 19th century came into prominent notice in the French and Belgian operations in Central Africa, while it was not entirely unknown in the British and German records of that period, as colonial and “Congo Atrocity” scandals testified—a type which became recklessly cruel and immoral through the possession of unlimited power and the belief that its doings would never be heard of in Europe. But the mistreatment of the natives in the Niger Bend did come to the knowledge of the French authorities in Senegal, and Lieut.-Colonel Klobb was sent eastward to catch up with the Voulet-Chanoine column and take command. Klobb overtook these officers in the Sokoto country. Voulet ordered his men to fire on the officer sent to supersede him. Klobb fell dead. Then Voulet and Chanoine marched away with most of their troops to found an independent state in the heart of Africa, leaving their junior officers and the remnant of the negro soldiers to do as they pleased. But their own Senegalese troops, on reflection, objected to outlawry and permanent banishment from their homes. They held a rough court martial, sentenced Voulet and Chanoine to die, shot