interior by sending a mission to Timbo, the capital of the Fulah kingdom. Over this country France had declared a protectorate in 1881, and though no attempt was made to render this effectual, it was recognised by our Government, a further concession being at the France the mountainous region of Futa Jallon, with which Sierra Leone had long had commercial relations, our merchants having so long ago as 1794 made their first attempt to open up trade with the same time made by withdrawing the frontier to the Great Scarcies river, and thus giving up to France the whole of the country of Benna The relations between the French and the English in this region are inextricably mixed up with the history of Samodu or Samory, the Mahdi of the West, as he has sometimes been described, who has not only been a scourge to the native tribes of the interior, but has cost France much in blood and treasure, and has come into conflict with our own troops in the back countries of Sierra Leone and the Gold Coast. This Samodu is a remarkable man, and is regarded as a prophet by a large number of his African followers. For years he has wielded immense power. He would appear to have been a Soninke or Malinke by birth, and was born about 1830 at Sonankoro, in Konia, near the sources of the Niger. As a young man he was taken prisoner in one of the country wars, and became the slave of a powerful marabout named Fodé Mussa. He was very intelligent, and exhibited much intrepidity and audacity, and he was also a powerfully built man. Added to all this he showed great religious fervour, and acquired such influence in the house of Mussa his master, and over the chief men of the village, that Mussa became jealous of him and placed him in irons. He determined on revenge when he regained his liberty, which he did later on. His influence increased, and, gathering about him many followers, he rebelled and proclaimed a divine mission. Enthusiasts rallied round him, and he seized upon the powerful Mussa and placed him in irons. From this time his power grew; he was invariably successful in his expeditions, and town after town came under his power and leadership. He conquered the large district of Wassulu. He gained recruits from every quarter; small chiefs that were afraid of him voluntarily surrendered, and in self-defence placed themselves under his banner. He became a terror to all, and his influence extended far and wide to countries bordering on Futa Jallon. There was one particularly rich town he desired to possess, named Keniera, eastward of the Niger, occupied by a chief named Bagoba. Bagoba resisted, and sought assistance from the French. The French had just about this time pushed forward the outposts of their colony of Senegal to the Niger. A native officer in the French colonial forces was sent to treat with the Almamy of Bissandugu, as Samodu was officially called; but Samodu received him in such a manner, even menacing him with death, that Colonel Borgnis Desbordes at once took the field against him, and defeated him in a battle at Keniera, on February 27, 1882, followed by another victory at Weyako on April 5 in the following year. But even this did not prove decisive. On June 13, 1885, Samodu was again defeated at Kokoro by Colonel Combes; his army was chased off the field, and pursued with such vigour that his retreat became a veritable rout, and the Malinke chief was barely able to continue the strife. However, it was only after the campaign of 1885-86, in which Lieut.-Colonel Frey crushed the troops of Malinkamory, one of his lieutenants, at Fatako Djingo, that the Almami of Wassulu requested peace. He now received the French envoys in a very different fashion, and signed a treaty by which he relinquished all territory on the left bank of the great river. Farther to the south and west of the points where he had proved the inferiority of his arms against the French weapons of precision, Samodu carried fire and sword into the country of Sulimania, at the back of the colony of Sierra Leone. Twice he destroyed the town of Falaba, in 1884 or 1885, and again, after it had been partly rebuilt, in 1889. On the first occasion the chief blew himself and his family up rather than fall into the hands of the Sofas. Samodu carried his devastating raids almost up to the frontier of Sierra Leone, depopulating large districts and carrying off immense numbers of slaves. He threatened the Timani country until, through the friendly overtures of Sir Samuel Rowe, in 1885 he sent messengers to Freetown, who promised that for his sake Samodu would not touch any of the places in which the British Government was directly interested, and further expressed his wish that all of the countries which he had conquered from the interior down to Falaba should be placed under the protection of the Queen, for one of whose medals and a treaty he repeatedly asked.3 Sir Samuel Rowe received the Sofa officers at a grand reception at Government House, and promised to send an officer to visit Samory. When Major Festing visited the Sofas at Bumbah-Limbah in 1887, he found the ground strewed with human remains, and the country completely devastated. In 1890 Mr. G. H. G. Garrett made a more extended journey into the interior on behalf of the Sierra Leone Government, and visited Samodu at his capital, Bissandugu. He gives sad accounts of the devastation caused by the raids of the Sofas. At Bumban, the chief, Suluku, not unnaturally suspected Mr. Garrett's Mahom Parliamentary Papers (1887), Sierra Leone (No. 332), p. 52. G. H. Garrett: Proceedings Royal Geographical Society (1892), 446. Parliamentary Papers (1892). Proceedings Royal Geographical Society (1892), 455. • Proceedings Royal Geographical Society (1892), 441–53. medan interpreters of being Sofa spies, who were going up to bring the Sofas down to destroy the country. The chief of Mussia told him that the Sofas had utterly destroyed, not only every town in Sulimania except Kaliere, but the northern part of Kuranko, the whole of the Sangara country, and the countries to the north and south. Proceeding farther, Mr. Garrett found the country between Mussia in Dembellia, and Mussia in Trong, in the Wassulu country, a distance of about 190 miles, entirely depopulated, only one town, Kaliere, in all this long distance having been left standing. The chief of Kaliere had saved himself and his people from the general destruction by receiving the Sofas and supplying all their demands upon him. At Falaba, which, as before mentioned, was twice destroyed, the thatch remained on five houses only, which Garrett's party occupied; bleached skeletons lay scattered all over the place. Some bodies at one end of the town, smelling offensively, proved that they had been recently killed. At Farana, on the Niger, Garrett saw over one hundred bodies lying at the side of the road, in various stages of decomposition; all had their arms tied behind them, and the heads quite or nearly severed, showing that they had been killed in cold blood. Mr. G. F. Scott Elliot, M.A., F.L.S., who visited the country a year or two later with the boundary commission, writes that, judging from the size of the many destroyed villages between Falaba and Farana, he calculated that this tract must have supported a population of 100,000 people.' Sininkoro, the capital of Sangara, east of the Niger, where Major Festing died on his way back after visiting the Almami Samodu, a large town, was utterly destroyed, and Garrett saw bleached skeletons scattered about. At Kaliere Garrett had met, on April 28, Kemo Billali, one of the lieutenants of Samodu, with about 200 horse and 1,800 foot soldiers. He openly acknowledged that the Almami had sent him. to eat up the Limba and Timani countries, and thus open a road to Port Lokko. After a long argument he consented to await further instructions from the Almami, whom Garrett was on his way to see, and provided him with an escort, saying that the whole country was destroyed. Crossing the Milo river, Bissandugu was reached about the middle of May, and Garrett was received in considerable state by the Almami. "In the centre of the town," he writes, was a large open space; this was densely surrounded by between 7,000 and 8,000 people. At one extremity was the mosque, to which I was first directed, and then invited to go to the Almami, who was facing us 1 Parliamentary Papers (1893), Sierra Leone (No. 3), p. 7. across the open space. I went over, and giving him a military salute, advanced and shook hands with him; he was seated in a leather-covered arm-chair of European make, and did not rise. His dress was a gorgeous silver-lace gown and a turban of white lawn, brought across his face and concealing all but his eyes; these were darkened with collyrium. He was surrounded by his chiefs, his sons, and wives. After the usual complimentary speeches, he paraded his mounted troops, and then directed some of his people to take me to the huts at the south-west end of the town. The following day I called upon him at his palace; this was fenced in, the gates guarded by armed men. Crossing a courtyard, I passed through a couple of huts joined together, and into an inner one, spacious and very clean, well lighted by doors opening on an inner yard. Here he was seated; an iron kettle full of water was at his feet, out of the spout of which he frequently filled his mouth, and, washing it, squirted the contents out into a big tin bowl at his feet. Before the meeting was over he had a small tin teapot brought him, out of the spout of which he drank, and he rubbed his hands and feet all over with fresh butter. "He wore a blue Mahommedan gown, with white trousers and slippers, a red fez cap, over which was a gorgeous circlet of imitation precious stones, diamonds, sapphires, &c.—in fact, a gaudy tinsel crown. Facing him sat his councillors, among them Tassile Manko, who went to Paris with his son. He spoke in Arabic, expressing great pleasure at seeing me, according me a hearty welcome, and later he referred with much regret to the death of Major Festing. I mentioned the scenes of bloodshed I had seen on the way. This he said the Sangara people had brought upon themselves by their treachery. I urged him to recall the war I had met on the way up, which he promised to consider. "On May 23 he paraded all his family and chiefs, with their followers, in honour of my visit. I was conducted to one side of the mosque in the same open space in which I had been previously received. Some 8,000 to 9,000 people were present in a large circle, many deep; two bands, one on either (each) side, were discoursing weird music on ballangees and a native hautboy. The chiefs were mounted and dressed in varied coloured robes of different material, from silk-velvet and silks to plain white shirting and blue baft; their horses were richly caparisoned, the saddles, mostly of leather, ornamented with patterns of leather, worsted, flannels, &c. After they had ridden round for some time, they formed up, and the Almami rode on to the ground on a splendid chestnut-coloured |