The conquest of Bagirmi and Wadai naturally secured to the French the more sparsely populated country of Kanem, inhabited mainly by those Tibu negroids whose race extends right across the Sahara to the hinterland of Tripoli. Now that Italy is in occupation of Cyrenaica, and Turkey can no longer supply arms and ammunition to Wadai for the campaign against the interfering white man, it is unlikely that French rule will be seriously contested any more in the heart of the Central Sudan; so long, that is, as Britain rules to the eastward. Quite possibly a great strategic future may lie before Kanem and Wadai, and the lands of the French Mubangi province; for through these regions may pass the trunk line of Trans-African railways, the route which will connect South Africa with Tangier and with Alexandria. The conquest of Wadai by the French has been the final and the most crushing blow directed at the African slave trade of Islam, and it has been carried out with a lavish expenditure of money and bravery at a distance of something like 1,500 miles from the nearest civilized base, a feat almost without parallel in African history. It may well serve as a pendant and an effacement to that brief lapse from the policy of a civilized Power during which something like a new form of slavery was established by France in Western Congoland. ---------------------------------------------------------------- FRENCH AFRICA Plate IV. [Illustration] W. & A.K. Johnston, Limited, Edinburgh & London. EXPLANATORY NOTE [gray] _Area of French Possessions in 1880_ [pink]   ”    ”    ”    _Colonies and Protectorates in 1912_ ---------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Footnote 122: