Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/195

 as far as Bafulabé, at the Bafing-Bakhoy confluence, and at least two carriage roads have been opened between the stations on the Upper Senegal and Bamaku on the Niger, one running north through Badumbé, Goniokori, Kita, and Dio, the other south by Medina and Niagassola. Dy the Kita route were conveyed from Badumbé to Bamaku all the pieces of the gunboat which at present navigates the Niger, and which on one occasion descended the river as far as Diafarabé, 240 miles below Bamaku. Useless for trading purposes, the present object of this gunboat is to give greater effect to the two military stations of Bamaku and Kulikora, and especially to enhance in the eyes of the natives the prestige of the conquerors. At present the Niger garrisons are in regular communication with Saint-Louis by a combined service of steamers, locomotives, carriages, and runners. In the dry season the journey lasts thirty-two days, in the wet ten days less, and the telegraph system is complete all along the lines, so that the Upper Niger is now in direct communication with France through the two cables connecting Saint-Louis and Dakar with the oceanic lines at Teneriffe and Sam-Thomé.

The French Senegambian possessions contain but one town worthy of the name, Saint-Louis, the capital, founded about the middle of the seventeenth century on or near the site of the older factory of Bokko or Bocos, a term derived from the Portuguese Boca. In population Saint-Louis is the most important coast-town for a space of 2,400 miles, from Rbat-Sla in Marocco to Freetown in Sierra-Leone. It may seem strange that one of the largest towns in Africa should have sprung up on such an unfavourable site for maritime trade, above a dangerous and constantly shifting bar. But Saint-Louis has the advantage of lying near the mouth of a great navigable river, and was founded at a time when vessels trading on this coast drew much less water than at present.

Saint-Louis, or Ndar, as the Wolofs call it, occupies most of the island, considerably over a mile long, which is encircled by the two arms of the river.