With Stibbs ended the English commercial attempts to open up the way to the interior of Africa.
The addition to our knowledge of its geography amounted to the exploration of the navigable part of the Gambia, and the determination of the fact that it had no connection with the Niger.
The French meanwhile were doing for the Senegal what the British were accomplishing in the sister river. Six years after Thompson had entered the latter, the French had established themselves at the mouth of the Senegal and founded the town of St. Louis. Their first exploring trip was made in 1637, when they penetrated some distance along the navigable part of the river.
More important, however, was the expedition in 1697 of one Sieur Brue, director-general of the French African Company, which achieved considerable success. This expedition was backed up by a second voyage up the river two years later, when the fort of St. Joseph was founded, and trade opened with merchants from Timbuktu.
Sieur Brue’s experiences were in every respect similar to those of Jobson and Stibbs on the Gambia, though commercially more fortunate, inasmuch as he had to do with more advanced races, and contrived to reach the frontiers of a rich gold-bearing district (Bambuk) on the one hand, and of an equally profitable gum region on the other.
He also heard much of the Niger and Timbuktu, and seemingly satisfied himself that the Senegal had no connection with the famous river of the interior, and that the latter flowed east, not west, as it was the tendency of his day to believe, since we find the French maps of the eighteenth century showing the Niger flowing towards the interior and an uncertain bourne.