mission under Lieutenant Maistre continued the work of Dybowski, and was in turn followed by a well-equipped expedition under the command of the explorer Emile Gentil; which last succeeded in placing a small armed steamer on the river Shari, and thence reached the waters of Lake Chad. By an agreement with Germany in 1892, France secured German recognition of her sphere of influence over the river Shari, over the Bagirmi country, and the southern shores of Lake Chad; while, by a treaty made with the King of the Belgians in 1894, the Belgian boundary line was drawn at the Mubangi, the Mbomu, and the Nile watershed. Lastly, by the Anglo-French convention of June 1898, Great Britain recognized the French sphere to the south and east of Lake Chad. Thus France obtained European recognition for a continuous empire stretching from Algiers to the Congo Coast, and Oran to Dakar—a remarkable outcome of the landing of 37,000 troops at the Bay of Sidi Ferruj, near Algiers, in the summer of 1830. In the last decade of the 19th century, the French method of administering the territories of the Gaboon, Loango and Congo-Mubangi (grouped since 1888 in one government as “French Congo”) was infected by the “concessionaire” spirit, which had unhappily inspired King Leopold II about the same time in his attitude towards the development of the Congo Independent State. These monopolist, protectionist ideas were a heritage from the older style of colonization in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The great Berlin Conference of 1884 on the Congo question was supposed to have vetoed them and rendered their recurrence impossible. But no sooner was this conference over than this monopolist policy was revived by the Royal Niger Company on the Niger-Benue, by the infant Congo State on the Congo above Stanley Pool, by the French in Loango, and (though much more faintly) by the British South Africa Company in Rhodesia. But it was mainly in the case of the Royal Niger Company that the monopoly was one which completely crushed out other trade. That association did not theoretically forbid the natives to trade with any foreign merchants but itself; it merely said to outside traders: “Sorry! but this place is ours, and so is that—in fact the whole river-bank—and we cannot have you trading on our private land.” The King of the Belgians copied this policy pretty faithfully on the Congo, and so did the French. The whole of French Congo, except two or three old-established towns on the coast, was divided up into concessions, varying from 20 square miles in extent to 54,000 square miles. The villages and plantations actually occupied by the natives at the time were recognized as native property, but this recognition did not necessarily confer on the natives the right to trade with whom they pleased.