vessel sent out to take over the territory was the ill-starred and ill-navigated Méduse. Owing to her wreck it was not until 1817 that France replaced officially her standard on this Coast. On the 25th of January of that year, and represented by Colonel Smaltz, she again entered into possession of Goree and St. Louis in the mouth of the Senegal, which was practically all she had, and that was in a very unsatisfactory state. Colonel Smaltz, in 1819, had to come to an agreement with the Oulof chief of the St Louis district to pay him a subsidy, but a mere catalogue of the wars between the French and the Oulofs is not necessary here; they were mutually unsatisfactory until there enters on the scene that second great founder of the French power in Africa, General Faidherbe, in 1854. Faidherbe is indeed the founder; but had it not been for Sieur Brüe and his travels far into the interior, and the evidence he collected regarding the riches therein, and of the general value of the country, it is not likely that, as things were in 1854, France would have troubled herself so much about extending her power in Senegal.
Faidherbe was also one of those men who get possessed by a belief in the future of West Africa, regardless of any state of dilapidation they may find it in, and who have the power of infusing their enthusiasm into the minds of others; and he roused France to the importance of Senegal, saying prophetically, "Our possession on the West Coast of Africa is possibly the one of all our colonies that has before it the greatest future, and it deserves the whole sympathy and attention of the Empire."
These were words more likely to inspire France or any other reasonable Power with a desire to give Senegal attention, than those used by the previous French visitor
