75,103 francs in 1893 to 23,102,064 in 19O1-O2[470].

[Footnote 469: _L'Afrique nouvelle,_ by E. Descamps (1903), chap. xv.
Much of the credit of the early railway-making was due to Colonel Thys.]

[Footnote 470: _Ibid_. pp. 589-590.]

Far more important is the moral gain which has resulted from the
suppression of the slave-trade over a large part of the State. On this
point we may quote the testimony of Mr. Roger Casement, British Consul
at Boma, in an official report founded on observations taken during a
long tour up the Congo. He writes: "The open selling of slaves and the
canoe convoys which once navigated the Upper Congo have everywhere
disappeared. No act of the Congo State Government has perhaps produced
more laudable results than the vigorous suppression of this widespread
evil[471]."

[Footnote 471: Parl. Papers, Africa, No. I (1904), p. 26.]

King Leopold has also striven hard to extend the bounds of the Congo
State. Not satisfied with his compact with France of April 1887, which
fixed the River Ubangi and its tributaries as the boundary of their
possessions, he pushed ahead to the north-east of those confines, and
early in the nineties established posts at Lado on the White Nile and in
the Bahr-el-Ghazal basin. Clearly his aim was to conquer the districts
which Egypt for the time had given up to the Mahdi. These efforts
brought about sharp friction between the Congolese authorities and
France and Great Britain. After long discussions the Cabinet of London
agreed to the convention of May 12, 1894, whereby the Congo State gained
the Bahr-el-Ghazal basin and the left bank of the Upper Nile, together
with a port on the Albert Nyanza. On his side, King Leopold recognised
the claims of England to the right bank of the Nile and to a strip of
land between the Albert Nyanza and Lake Tanganyika. Owing to the strong
protests of France and Germany this agreement was rescinded, and the
Cabinet of Paris finally compelled King Leopold to give up all claims to
the Bahr-el-Ghazal, though he acquired the right to lease the Lado
district below the Albert Nyanza. The importance of these questions in
the development of British policy in the Nile basin has been pointed out
in Chapter XVII.

The ostensible aim, however, of the founders of the Congo Free State
was, not the exploitation of the Upper Nile district, the making of
railways and the exportation of great quantities of ivory and rubber
from Congoland, but the civilis