The meeting was very friendly.
Jackson and Germain exchanged most elaborate compliments, and the
commandant, in the name of the XIth Soudanese, presented the expedition
with the banner of the Emir who had attacked them, which had been captured
at Reng. Marchand shook hands all round, and the British officers bade
their gallant opponents a final farewell.
Once again the eight Frenchmen, who had come so far and accomplished
so much, set out upon their travels, to make a safe though tedious journey
through Abyssinia to the coast, and thence home to the country they had
served faithfully and well, and which was not unmindful of their services.
Let us settle the international aspect of the reconquest of the Soudan
while we are in the way with it. The disputes between France and England
about the valley of the Upper Nile were terminated, as far as material
cause was concerned, by an Agreement, signed in London on the 21st of March,
1899, by Lord Salisbury and M. Cambon. The Declaration limiting the
respective spheres of influence of the two Powers took the form of an
addition to the IVth Article of the Niger Convention, concluded in the
previous year. Its practical effect is to reserve the whole drainage system
of the Nile to England and Egypt, and to engage that France shall have a
free hand, so far as those Powers are concerned, in the rest of Northern
Africa west of the Nile Valley not yet occupied by Europeans.
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