The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 2, No. 11, March 17, 1898 | Page 8

country. Many of these colonies have proved successful,
particularly the ones where the prisoners are allowed to work and build
up their own homes for themselves. Australia was settled in this way,
and it has developed wonderfully.
From reports, Dreyfus is having a very hard time on Devil's Island. He
is not allowed to speak to any one, and lives in absolute solitude. It is
said that his hair has turned grey, and his confinement in other ways is
aging him rapidly. He is allowed to write, but his letters simply declare
his innocence over and over again. It was rumored some time ago that
Dreyfus had escaped, and since then the French Government has
ordered the officials of the convict settlement to telegraph every day to
Paris the fact that the prisoner is safely under guard.
Political prisoners are usually allowed to have their wives with them,
but, although Mme. Dreyfus has made strong efforts, France will not

allow her to be with her husband.
There is a man living in Rome who is said to have been imprisoned on
Devil's Island for several years. His name is Gen. Paolo Tibaldi, who
was sentenced to life imprisonment on the island for conspiring against
Napoleon III. He says that when he was there the island was a bare rock
without a tree or a blade of grass, and the heat of the sun was terrible.
The provisions supplied daily by the Government were a pound and a
half of the worst kind of bread, for each convict, a piece of old meat or
salt fat, beans or rice, a little oil, and also a kind of spirits called tafla.
The general claims that the treatment to which the captives were
subjected was most severe. They were chained by the keepers, fed on
bread and water for months, and beaten with ropes. Five thousand
dollars was raised in France to rescue General Tibaldi, but that only
made matters worse, and he suffered added torments. Finally, public
opinion in France combined with the press in his behalf, and the
General was freed.
* * * * *
The trouble in West Africa promises to become such an important item
of current history that it might be well to look into it more deeply, and
try and get a clear idea of the difficulty.
France undoubtedly wishes to have dominion over the countries lying
between her western and eastern possessions in Africa. On the west
coast she owns the Senegal River and the town of St. Louis. The
Central Soudan also belongs to France, and on the east coast, opposite
Aden, the two towns of Obok and Tanjurrah fly the French flag. The
problem has been to acquire the lands intervening, so as to make one
unbroken line. You can see what an advantage this would be; for, with
the Nile on one side and the Niger on the other, it would be
comparatively easy to ship valuable products from the interior to the
markets of the world.
Since 1880, France has spent great sums of money in trying to bridge
over the space lying between her possessions, and step by step her
empire has pushed its way from the Senegal to the Niger.

England had been confined to the coast. She owned Sierra Leone, the
Gambia Settlements, the Colony of Lagos, and the Niger Protectorate.
The Royal Niger Company owned the hinterland of Lagos, which
means the country back of Lagos, and this is the only hinterland that
England did own. France, owning the country back of the English
Colonies, effectually checks their development.
Until 1890 there was a dispute between England and France about their
West African possessions. In 1890 there was a difficulty about territory
on the Lower Niger, and this was settled for a little while by a treaty
which marked out the British "spheres of influence" by a line drawn
from Say on the Niger to Lake Chad. Say is directly west of Sokoto,
and you can easily find Lake Chad on your map, for it is a very large
lake. To the south, the British were supposed to control "all that
properly belongs to the kingdom of Sokoto."
If France has invaded this kingdom they have broken the treaty, and
they are in the wrong.
On the other bank of the Niger, England, through the Royal Niger
Company, has made treaties with the native chiefs, and thus gained a
good foothold.
In 1893, France conquered and annexed Dahomey, which is on the
coast; but England controlled the hinterland of Dahomey through the
treaties her company had made with the chiefs. France chose to set
aside these treaties, and said that, having been made with savages, they
were not valid. During the last three years she has sent out expeditious