As already related, France, or rather—the State being then but the king—Louis XIV, had become interested in the affairs of Abyssinia early in the 18th century. This interest was reawakened in the middle of the next century by the remarkable researches of the brothers Antoine and Arnaud d’Abbadie, who though of partly Irish origin were French subjects. The elder brother had explored Brazil, the younger, Algeria; but both were attracted by the little-known civilization of Ethiopia and started together in 1838 for Abyssinia. Between 1838 and 1853 their researches were carried on from Masawa in the north to the little-known country of Kaffa in the far south; and, though the results were not entirely published until 1890 (the publication began in 1860), they gave to France a legitimate claim (together with the subsidized travels of Borelli in 1890) to an interest in the affairs and the future of Abyssinia. In 1857, jealous of the British establishment at Aden, France had intended to seize the island of Perim, at the mouth of the Red Sea, but was forestalled by the British. She therefore turned her attention to the coast opposite Aden, and there purchased from a native chief (in 1862) the Bay of Obok. This place was not effectively occupied till 1883, after the break-up of the Egyptian Sudan empire. France then rapidly pushed her possessions southward to curtail as much as possible similar British operations in Somaliland. She thus secured the important bay of Tajurra, French territory now stretches inland to the vicinity of Harrar. On the north it is bounded by the Italian colony of Eritrea and in the interior by Abyssinia and British Somaliland. French Somaliland, as this possession is called, is about 5,790 sq. miles in extent and is chiefly important for the comparatively good harbour of Jibuti and for the fact that it controls the easiest access to Abyssinia. Indeed the only existing railway which enters Abyssinia and connects that country with the sea coast starts from Jibuti and is constructed to the Abyssinian capital, Adis Ababa (275 miles), with a branch to the old Semitic city of Harrar (altogether about 192 miles of rail on French territory). It was an unfulfilled aspiration of France in the last decade of the 19th century that a French Empire should extend across broadest Africa from Senegal to Abyssinia and the Red Sea or the Gulf of Aden. This project was to be essayed in a tentative manner by an expedition organized in the French Congo in 1894-5 (despite warnings from Great Britain that such action would be regarded as unfriendly) and led by an officer who had been very successful in the wars of Upper Nigeria, the brave Major J. B. Marchand, who advanced (mainly along the course of the Djur River) with a force of about 150 Senegalese and nine French