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EUROPE AND AFRICA 
baga and made treaties with the chiefs there, and Captain 
Wallace renewed the alliances with the Kings of Sokoto 
and Gando, before Captain Decceur’s appearance on the 
scene in October. Thus, in the initial moves of the contest, 
the Niger Company scored first. 
Still, the French pioneers were not discouraged. They 
held with great determination to their plan of securing a 
hold on the Lower Niger as an outlet for the trade of Upper 
Dahomey, and of establishing a thorough connection be- 
tween Dahomey and their Senegal-Niger possessions. The 
next year, 1895-96, we find Captain Toutée quietly making 
his way up through the “debatable lands,” as far as Boussa, 
signing treaties wherever possible; and Lieutenants Voulet 
and Chanoine coming down from Bandiagara in the north, 
which they left on July 30, 1896, and securing protectorates 
over Yatenda, Mossi, Gourounsi, and the Bobos. Captains 
Baud and Vermeesch left Porto Novo in November and, 
passing via Gourma to the northwest, finally effected a 
junction with Voulet’s party at Tibja on February 17, 1897, 
thus completing the occupation of some 100,000 square 
kilometers of territory. The British Foreign Office notified 
the French Government, meanwhile, as early as January, 
1895, of its treaties with the rulers of this district, and com- 
plained of these incursions of the Senegal officials. A diplo- 
matic correspondence ensued concerning the limits of the 
French and British spheres of influence in West Africa, 
which lasted for nearly three years and which, though pressed 
with considerable firmness and heat at times, was con- 
ducted with the utmost courtesy and conciliation on both 
sides. 
Before the questions at issue could be satisfactorily ad- 
justed, however, the situation was complicated by events in 
Nigeria. On January 1, 1897, Naval-Lieutenant Bretennet, 
who had been commissioned to make a direct and perma-