FRENCH COLONIAL EXPANSION 129 
established between their Senegal-Niger lands and the 
colony of Dahomey. 
To make sure of this connection, the French had already 
begun active operations in the Dahomey “hinterland.” In 
1893 and 1894, Captain Decceur founded Carnotville and 
pushed northeast to the Borgu country, while Lieutenant 
Baud made treaties with the chiefs of Gambarri and Gourma 
and pushed north to Say. But the Royal N iger Company 
had been trading for some years in this region. Under 
the energetic leadership of Sir George T. Goldie, this com- 
pany — organized as the United National African Company 
in 1879 and chartered by Great Britain as the Royal Niger 
Company in 1886 — had negotiated over three hundred 
treaties with native chieftains by 1894 and placed over three 
hundred thousand square miles of N igeria, as far north as 
Gando and Sokoto, under British protection.! A military 
government was established; and an efficient constabulary 
was organized from the Hausa tribes. The headquarters 
moved north to Lokoja in 1889; and a treaty with France 
on August 5, 1890 2 fixed the boundary roughly between the 
British and French spheres of influence by a line drawn 
from Say on the Niger due east to Lake Chad. But the 
western boundary of Nigeria, the Lagos-Dahomey hinter- 
land, remained undetermined. 
The officials of the company were busy consolidating their 
holdings and developing the trade of the region, when the 
news of the arrival of Captain Decceur in the vicinity of 
west Nigeria reached them. Captain Lugard, who had dis- 
tinguished himself in East Africa by saving Uganda for 
Great Britain, was ordered to the N igeria frontier. By 
forced marches he reached Borgu, Nikki, Kishi, and Gam- 
1 See Chapter VII. 
* drch. Dip., 1899, vol. 1. French Yellow Book, Affaires d’ Afrique, 1881 
93, pp. 211-13.