_El Fasher._—On the evening of my arrival I installed as usual the prismatic astrolabe and the box of chronometers for my daily astronomical observation, and when it was finished I was filled with a deep and intimate joy: after eighteen years of persistent effort I had at last reached the geographical goal that I had set myself to attain in Central Africa. That last observation, made in the palace yard of El Fasher, set the seal, once for all, on the liaison of the geodetic systems of the basins of the Niger, the Chad, and the Nile, for the longitude of El Fasher had just been determined by the officers of the Sudan Survey Department by the aid of the telegraph line recently established between Khartoum and El Fasher. I had to stay twelve days in this town in order to carry out, in conference with the Governor of Dar Four, a mission with which I had been entrusted by the Governor of the Territory of the Chad. This mission concerned the policing of the borderland of the two Governments, and the settlement of the claims arising out of depredations committed by the rebel tribes of Ennedi. After we had come to a complete understanding I drew up, in collaboration with Mr. A. C. Pilkington, a provisional map, on a scale of 1/1,000,000, of the part of the Franco-Anglo-Egyptian borders affected by our agreement. During all this time, need I say that I was the object of the utmost kindness and attention on the part of the Governor and the British officers who surrounded him. Their friendly reception of me remains one of my most treasured recollections of this journey. El Fasher seemed to be a town of from fifteen to twenty thousand inhabitants, and one of the finest-looking native cities I have seen in Central Africa; it is built on sand-dunes surrounding a temporary lake that dries up a few weeks after the end of the rainy season, and in which in the dry season the natives dig hundreds of wells, the water of which is then sold at an average price varying between a halfpenny and a penny a gallon. The town stands on two sides of the lake, somewhat in the shape of a circumflex accent, open to the southward, and whose apex is marked, roughly speaking, by the Koubba of Zakaria; the eastern side of this angle is more particularly occupied by traders and natives, while the governor’s palace and the greater part of the official buildings are on the western side. Between the business town and the administrative town lies a great square, a sort of Champ de Mars where festivals, parades, and reviews take place, and where once a week the band of the battalion gives a concert.