NEWS OF THE WEEK.
ITT was announced on Wednesday that an agreement had been reached in the momentous negotiations between France and England which have been proceeding ever since the Fashoda incident. We have dealt with the matter elsewhere, but will point out here that while our right to Darfur and the Bahr-el-Ghazel country—i.e., to all the former posses- sions of Egypt on the Upper Nile—is admitted, France is given the whole of Northern Central Africa between Lake Chad and the Nile Valley. That is, she takes Wadai, Baghirmi, and Kanem. Wadai, as we point out in another column, may give her trouble. It is a powerful State which has never come into contact with Europeans, and its rulers and people are followers of the El Senoussi, a sect of Mahommedan fanatics who number, it is said, twenty millions in North Africa, and whose religions zeal is purer and more real than that of the Mandists. France by this agreement gets a vast African Empire stretching from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. Practically, the hinterland of the Mediterranean coast of Africa—except the Nile Valley—now belongs to France down to the main stream of the Congo, Morocco, Tripoli, and our and the German West African Colonies being merely huge enclaves. The question now is, What will she do with it ?
