few colonists in our old possessions of Senegal, but yonder
in the Niger valley, beyond Djenny, there are, I think, only ourselves.
We are the pioneers, the vanguard, the riskers full of faith and hope.
And there is some merit in it, for to sensible stay-at-home folks it
all seems like defying common sense. Can you picture it? A French family
installed among savages, and unprotected, save for the vicinity of a
little fort, where a French officer commands a dozen native soldiers--a
French family, which is sometimes called upon to fight in person, and
which establishes a farm in a land where the fanaticism of some head
tribesman may any day stir up trouble. It seems so insane that folks
get angry at the mere thought of it, yet it enraptures us and gives us
gayety and health, and the courage to achieve victory. We are opening
the road, we are giving the example, we are carrying our dear old France
yonder, taking to ourselves a huge expanse of virgin land, which will
become a province. We have already founded a village which in a hundred
years will be a great town. In the colonies no race is more fruitful
than the French, though it seems to become barren on its own ancient
soil. Thus we shall swarm and swarm, and fill the world! So come then,
come then, all of you; since here you are set too closely, since you
lack air in your little fields and your overheated, pestilence-breeding
towns. There is room for everybody yonder; there are new lands, there is
open air that none has breathed, and there is a task to be accomplished
which will make all of you heroes, strong, sturdy men, well pleased to
live! Come with me. I will take the men, I will take all the women who
are willing, and you will carve for yourselves other provinces and found
other cities for the future glory and power of the great new France."

He laughed so gayly, he was so handsome, so spirited, so robust, that
once again the whole table acclaimed him. They would certainly not
follow him yonder, for all those married couples already had their own
nests; and all those young folks were already too strongly rooted to the
old land by the ties of their race--a race which after displaying such
adventurous instincts has now fallen asleep, as it were, at its own
fireside. But what a marvellous story it all was--a story to which big
and little alike, had listened in rapture, and which to-morrow would,
doubtless, arouse within them a passion for glorious enterprise far
awa