Parfait-Louis Monteil (1855 – 29 September 1925) was a French colonial military officer and explorer who made an epic journey in West Africa between 1890 and 1892, travelling east from Senegal to Lake Chad, and then north across the Sahara to Tripoli. Early career Monteil was the older brother of Charles Monteil (1871–1949), who became a distinguished ethologist. Monteil was a graduate of the École spéciale militaire de Saint-Cyr. He served in Senegal, where his duties included cartographical surveys. In 1884 he was made a member of the Société de géographie de Paris and in 1886 became an officer of the society. He was influenced by the former governor of Senegal, Louis Faidherbe, whom he regularly visited in his apartment (where Faidherbe was confined by paralysis) in the middle 1880s. Monteil served in the French protectorate of Annam, now part of Vietnam, from 1886 to 1888. He then spent time investigating a railway project to link Bafoulabé and Bamako in Senegal, before launching on his great journey across West Africa in 1890. Political background France, Britain, Germany, Portugal and Italy came to a broad agreement on the way in which they would divide up the continent of Africa at the 1884–1885 Berlin Conference. France gained primacy in the bulk of West Africa from Algeria and Tunisia south across the Sahara and the Sahel into the Sudanian Savanna. The other powers could extend their coastal colonies north from the Gulf of Guinea into the interior. In the case of Britain, these colonies included the Gambia, Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast (now Ghana), the Lagos colony and the territory claimed by the Royal Niger Company. On 5 August 1890 the British and French concluded an agreement to clarify the boundary between French West Africa and what would become Nigeria. Britain would acquire all territories up to and including the Sokoto Caliphate, while the French would take the lands further to the north. However, they did not know the extent of the Sokoto Caliphate. Monteil was given charge of an expedition to discover its northern limits. From Senegal to Tripoli via Chad Colonel Monteil and a small party of Frenchmen arrived in Dakar in September 1890. He traveled by railway up the coast to St. Louis where he hired bearers and tirailleurs. He continued his journey up the Sénégal River by steamer, arriving on 18 October 1890 at Kayes, where he bought equipment