The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-03-27
AFRICAN DISPUTE SETTLED.

Recent dispatches from London an
nounce that some of the causes of the
long existing friction in Africa between
Great Britain and France have been
removed by the treaty. just signed by
the Marquis of Salisbury and NJ. Paul
Cambon, the French ambassador.
The real bone of Anglo-F French con-
tention in the dark continent was not
Fashoda; it is not even like Fashoda;
it is the basin of the river Of gazelles,
the Bahr-el- Ghazal, a hundred miles
from Fashoda and fully 500 miles from
Omdurman.
This fertile tract has long been COW
eted by France and claimed by Eng
land. although neither was in formal
possession of the valley, To be sure,
several scattering blockhouses had been
erected, but there was always more or
less uncertainty as to whose real es-
tate the buildings were located upon.
Years ago the restless French of the
upper Congo basin began to push east
ward. First one settlement was made
and then another. Then the more adj
venturous began to blaze trails and to
locate cabins along them. Eventually
the French outposts reached the water
shed that separates the tributaries of
the Bahr-el-Ghazal from the tributa
ries of the Congo Obviously the French
aim was a footing in the basin of the
Nile, and when, during the premiership
of Lord Rosebery, the English govern
ment sought, with no very clear title
to lease the Bahr-el GhaZal to the Bel
glans, the French foreign office con-
strained King Leopold to renounce the
bargain, without protest from Great
Britain. Preparations for a French ex-
petition further eastward then began,
but the official warning of Sir Edward
Grey that England would regard such
a movement as an unfriendly act, for
time checked them. Soon, however, M
Liotard, the French governor of the
upper Congo, passed the watershed
and thus opened out the way for Ma
jor Marchand's subsequent journey to
the Nile
1t is said that this expedition is one
of the most heroic achievements in all
the records of African exploration and
attempted conquest. In view of this one
bright page it certainly seems too bad
that France has lacked the courage and
the continuity and the power, perhaps,
to hold on to a portion of the fruits, at
least.
The treaty is diplomatic victory for
Great Britain. The terms, in substance,
are as follows: The exact frontier from
the northern lime of the Belgian Congo
to latitude Is is to be determined by a
mixed commission, it being agreed that
Great Britain shall retain Bahr-el-Gha-
zal, with Darfur; France keeping
Wadi, wesE of Darfur; Bargami, south
of Lake Chad; Kanem, north of Lake
Chad, and, generally speaking, the ter
ritory east and north of Lake Chad ly-
ing north of the fifteenth parallel. The
French sphere will extend south of the
tropic Of Cancer to the western limit of
the Libyan desert.
This bone of rivalry, the basin of
Bahr- Ghazal, over which a war
seemed imminent a few months ago,
is, from all accounts. we'll worth strug-
Cling over. But the time is up for that.
1t last week passed to the control oe
Great Britain in exchange for a quit
claim deed to the desert of Wadi and a
few smaller tracts of lake and marsh
land.
1t is a valuable windfall. The. river
flows westward from Ccbat, Kitchener's
new fort above Fashoda, toward the
watershed between that river and the
Congo Numerous branches diverge
from it south and west, and the whole
basin makes a very large expanse of
territory-no one has even estimated
its eXtent-between the khalifa's former
provinces of Dafur and Kordofan to the
north, French Congo to the west. the
Congo Free State under the protection
of Belgium to the south, and the val
ley of the main stream of the Nile to
the east.
Before the revolt of the Dervishes
various Europeans in the service of the
khedive, Lupton Bey, Gassi Pasha and
Slatin Pasha, penetrated the Bahr-el-
Ghazal. Lupton Bey was, indeed. the
governor when the mahdi and his fol-
lowers cut his communications with
Khartoum and Egypt and forced him to
surrender.
The control of the khedive seems.
however, not to have been very firmly