Senegal River Mouth

The Senegal River reaches the Atlantic beside a long sandy shore. Near its mouth stands the island known to Wolof speakers as Ndar, where the French built a fort in 1659 and established Saint-Louis. The settlement became a centre for trade in captive people and, increasingly, gum arabic brought from the Sahel. The kingdom of Waalo exercised authority in the estuary and collected payments from river traffic. French and British forces contested Saint-Louis during the eighteenth century, while African traders remained essential to commerce upriver.