Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 3.djvu/221

 CASAMANZA BASIN. I79 stations, and as the districts became depopulated they had frequently to shift the site of their factories. The English also founded some stations on the banks of the Casamanza, but never purchased any lands from the surrounding tribes. The French made their first acquisition in 1828, although no settlement was made in the island of Jogue, north of the estuary, which was at that time ceded to them. But in 1836 and 1837 they occupied the two islands of Carabane and Guimbering, commanding the southern entrance of the estuary, and also founded the station of Sedhiu, at the head of the deep-sea navigation. Since that time numerous treaties with the riverain tribes have secured to them the suzerainty or possession of nearly the whole basin, and the convention signed with Portugal in 1886 accurately defines the frontier line of the French and Portuguese territories between the Casamanza and Cacheo rivers. The station of Ziguinchor, the last remnant of Lusitanian power in the Casamanza basin, was then ceded to France, while eastwards the French domain was virtually extended across the unexplored wastes of Firdu and Khabu towards the Upper Gambia and Faleme. Thus the Casamanza is hence- forth regarded as belonging politically to the Upper Senegal basin. At Sedhiu, 105 miles from the sea, the estuary has still a mean breadth of at least 1 J mile ; but it is so shallow that craft drawing 6 feet have to proceed very cautiously, or follow a channel buoyed at intervals with branches of trees. Above Sedhiu boats penetrate for some 60 miles, to the village of Kolibanta ; below it the Casamanza is joined only by one large affluent, the Songrogu (probably the Portuguese Sam-Gregorio), which rises in a marshy district near the Gambia basin. Below the Songrogu confluence, which is nearly 3 miles wide during the floods, the lateral channels become more and more numerous, forming a navigable network of some hundred miles shifting with the seasons and years, rising and falling with the daily ebb and flow. The water is everywhere brackish as far as and beyond Ziguinchor, 45 miles from the coast. In the lower part of the delta the channels and backwaters communicate in one direction with the Gambia, in another with the Cacheo estuary. But notwithstanding all these inland crossings and intersections, the seaboard preserves a straight line from Cape St. Mary to Cape Roxo, where begin those intricate indentations so characteristic of all the coastlands in Portuguese territory. The bar of the Casamanza, which first breaks the regular shore-line, is very shallow, with scarcely more than 6 or 7 feet at low water and with three constantly shifting sills. The extensive riverain forests abound in game, and are infested by few rapacious animals. Inhabitants of the Casama^nza. In the upper reaches the dominant peoples are the Khabun'ke, or " Khabu- men," and the Mandingans, here also called Suzi, the Sossays of the early writers. Advancing constantly from the east, they have driven before them the aboriginal inhabitants ; but their progress has been arrested by the French, and they have now ceased to press upon the coast people, just as they .have themselves been