Upper Senegal and Niger, Vol. 1

UPPER SENEGAL-NIGER

General Archinard at Nioro, Ouossébougou, and Djenné, and General Audéoud at Sikasso renewed the exploits of Cortez Hernán Cortés, the Spanish conquistador who led the expedition that caused the fall of the Aztec Empire. and Pizarro Francisco Pizarro, the Spanish conquistador who led the conquest of the Inca Empire., as well as those more recent exploits of other Frenchmen, like Francis Garnier and his few companions during the first conquest of Tonkin The northernmost part of modern-day Vietnam, which became a French protectorate in the 1880s..

Alongside the most famous leaders and battles, how much obscure heroism, how many fatigues and sufferings: the climate, the fevers, the privations, the boredom of distant exiles, and the depressing inaction during the bad seasons! Pain seems inseparable from every human birth; thus is justified once more the poet's verse:

... Such a great labor it was to found the Roman race. original: "Tantæ molis erat romanam condere gentem," from Virgil’s Aeneid, Book I, line 33.

Of all these perils, those of combat were always the most cheerfully faced. It seems that war possesses a peculiar and singular virtue, at least from an aesthetic and moral point of view, since men whom I otherwise knew to be quite ordinary—sometimes even vulgar—and our simple Black soldiers themselves Likely referring to the Tirailleurs Sénégalais, West African colonial infantry units of the French Army., when they fall with weapons in hand, know how to die beautifully, with a stoic nobility and a purely classical bearing.

Among these soldiers, many were excellent organizers and administrators. The Colony still operates within the administrative frameworks established by Generals Archinard and de Trentinian. It would be unjust, however, to forget Governor Grodet, whose circulars and instructions—especially in financial matters—have lost none of their value. The controversies, now forgotten, which his time in the Government of the Sudan provoked, have caused this solid and unassailable part of his work to be too often neglected.

From 1900 to 1908, my immediate predecessor, Governor General Ponty, worked with the most enlightened spirit and the keenest practical sense toward the development of the young Colony. From the whole of his work, two facts stand out with particular prominence and will long perpetuate the mem—