Dahomey conquered, the French at once set to work to secure as much of the hinterland as possible. On the north they penetrated to the Niger, on the east they entered Borgu (a country claimed by the Royal Niger Company for Great Britain), on the west they overlapped the territory claimed by Germany as the hinterland of Togo. The struggle with Great Britain and Germany for supremacy in this region forms one of the most interesting chapters in the story of the partition of Africa. In the result France succeeded in securing a junction between Dahomey and her other possessions in West Africa, but failed to secure any part of the Niger navigable from the sea (see AFRICA: _History_, and NIGERIA). A Franco-German convention of 1897 settled the boundary on the west, and the Anglo-French convention of the 14th of June 1898 defined the frontier on the east. In 1899, on the disintegration of the French Sudan, the districts of Fada N'Gurma and Say, lying north of Borgu, were added to Dahomey, but in 1907 they were transferred to Upper Senegal-Niger, with which colony they are closely connected both geographically and ethnographically. From 1894 onward the French devoted great attention to the development of the material resources of the country.
_The "Customs."_--Reference has already been made to the Dahomey "Customs," which gave the country an infamous notoriety. The "Customs" appear to date from the middle of the 17th century, and were of two kinds: the grand Customs performed on the death of a king; and the minor Customs, held twice a year. The horrors of these saturnalia of bloodshed were attributable not to a love of cruelty but to filial piety. Upon the death of a king human victims were sacrificed at his grave to supply him with wives, attendants, &c. in the spirit world. The grand Customs surpassed the annual rites in splendour and bloodshed. At those held in 1791 during January, February and March, it is stated that no fewer than 500 men, women and children were put to death. The minor Customs were first heard of in Europe in the early years of the 18th century. They formed continuations of the grand Customs, and "periodically supplied the departed monarch with fresh attendants in the shadowy world." The actual slaughter was preluded by dancing, feasting, speechmaking and elaborate ceremonial. The victims, chiefly prisoners of war, were dressed in calico shirts decorated round the neck and down the sleeves with red bindings, and with a crimson patch on the left breast, and wore long white night-caps with spirals of blue ribbon sewn on. Some of them, tied in baskets, were at one stage of the proceedings taken to the top of a high platform, together with an alligator, a cat and a hawk in similar baskets, and paraded on the heads of the Amazons. The king then made a speech explaining that the victims were sent to testify to his greatness in spirit-land, the men and the animals each to their kind. They were then hurled down into the middle of a surging crowd of natives, and butchered. At another stage of the festival human sacrifices were offered at the shrine of the king's ancestors, and the blood was sprinkled on their graves. This was known as _Zan Nyanyana_ or "evil night," the king going in procession with his wives and officials and himself executing the doomed. These semi-public massacres formed only a part of the slaughter, for many women, eunuchs and others within the palace were done to death privately. The skulls were used to adorn the palace walls, and the king's sleeping-chamber was paved with the heads of his enemies. The skulls of the conquered kings were turned into royal drinking cups, their conversion to this use being esteemed an honour. Sir Richard Burton insists (_A Mission to Gelele, King of Dahome_) that the horrors of these rites were greatly exaggerated. For instance, the story that the king floated a canoe in a tank of human blood was, he writes, quite untrue. He denies, too, that the victims were tortured, and affirms that on the contrary they were treated humanely, and, in many cases, even acquiesced in their fate. It seems that cannibalism was a sequel of the Customs, the bodies of the slaughtered being roasted and devoured smoking hot. On the death of the king the wives, after the most extravagant demonstrations of grief, broke and destroyed everything within their reach, and attacked and murdered each other, the uproar continuing until order was restored by the new sovereign.