Just a couple of words about the Dakar St. Louis railway. The Cayor, as the country it traverses is called, is slightly undulating, badly watered, and dreary looking. The natives living in it were hard to subdue. In continual revolt, they more than once inflicted real disasters on the French by taking them by surprise. At Thies the whole garrison was massacred, at M’ Pal a squadron of Spahis perished, for the Cayor had chiefs such as the Damels, Samba-Laobe and Lat-Dior, the last champions of resistance who became illustrious in the annals of Senegambia—real heroes, who made us regret that it was impossible to win them over to our side. The successive governors of Senegambia struggled in vain against the resistance of Cayor to their authority, and the constant insubordination of the natives. But what Faidherbe, Vinet-Laprade, and Brière de l’Isle, to name but the most celebrated, failed to achieve was accomplished peacefully by the railway in a very few years. Nor is that all, for many tracts, previously barren and uncultivated, now yield large crops of the _Arachis hypogea_, or pea-nut, which are taken away by the trains in the trading season. [Illustration: PART OF THE DAKAR ST. LOUIS LINE.] Does not this prove how true it is that peace and commerce advance side by side; that the best, indeed the only way to pacify a country, and to conciliate the inhabitants, is to give them prosperity by opening up outlets for their commerce? Hurrah, then, for the Dakar St. Louis line! Three cheers for it, in spite of the delays and mistakes which were perhaps made when it was begun. To say that it has every possible and desirable comfort would of course be false. In the hot season especially it is one long martyrdom to the traveller, a foretaste of hell, and the advice given to new-comers at Dakar still holds good—“Take ice, plenty of ice, with you, you will find it of double use, to freshen up your drinks by the way and to put in a handkerchief on your head under your helmet. With plenty of ice you may perhaps escape without getting fever or being suffocated.” [Illustration: RAILWAY BUFFET AT TIVIWANE.] The trip by this line, which no European would care to take for pleasure, is really to the negroes a treat, who go by the train as an amusement. The directors did not count upon receipts from the blacks when they started the line, especially after a train which ran off the metals smashed up a whole carriage full of natives against a huge baobab tree. Of course, when that happened no one thought the negroes would patronize the railway again. But it turned out quite the contrary. From that day they came in crowds, but they had provided themselves with talismans! The marabouts, who do a brisk business in charms, had simply added a new string to their bow, for they sold _gris-gris_ against the dangers of the iron road! [Illustration: THE QUAY AT ST. LOUIS.]