Though the French had established themselves at the mouth of the Senegal about the same time that the Dutch founded their colony of New Netherland at the mouth of the Hudson, it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century that they awoke to a realization of the opportunities which awaited them across the Middle Sea. The first step on the road to empire was the conquest of Algeria, which may be said to have been concluded by the submission of Abd-el-Kader in 1847. But even then France did not become alive to her imperial destiny, the colonization of the newly acquired territory across the Mediterranean at first appearing as little more than a means toward the extinction of pauperism in the mother-country. Not until the tribes of the Oued Rir rose in revolt was France introduced to the desert. Laghouat was seized by a flying column in 1852. The tricolor was raised over Ourgla the following year. In 1854 the victory of Meggarine brought about the submission of Touggourt. As the frontier had now been pushed nearly four hundred miles south of the Mediterranean, the work of sinking wells to revive certain of the decaying oases was immediately undertaken and met with conspicuous success. France was beginning to get acquainted with the desert, which was found to be not quite the utter void that had been supposed. In some parts oases dotted its surface, and its surface was crisscrossed by the routes of caravans, which in the old days had carried on a thriving trade between the Sudan and the cities of the Barbary Coast. Frenchmen of enterprise and vision began to see that the Sahara offered possibilities after all, and steps were taken toward a still wider occupation. This movement was temporarily halted by the disastrous war with Prussia and the collapse of the Second Empire, but the echoes of the Commune had scarcely died away before the empire-builders were again at work, building up in Africa a new and greater France. In 1873 General Gallifet entered El Golea. And in 1881 the proclamation of a protectorate over Tunisia, which Italy had earmarked for her own, gave the world its first hint of the scope of France’s African ambitions.