CHAPTER VIIIMISTAKES AND FALSE NEWS

FORT ARCHINARD.

I cannot too often insist on the fact that it was, thanks to the daily dose of quinine regularly administered by order to every member of the expedition, that we owe our safe return in good health, and with appetites unimpaired.

We owe to it, too, the fact that in spite of many fevers in past days, we actually had gained, on our return to Paris, not only in weight, but in our power of enjoying a joke.

Last January, after my return to France, I had been giving an account at a public meeting of the results of my expedition, and my companions and I were going down the staircase of the Sorbonne, attended by a considerable crowd, when two gentlemen, radiant with health, evidently from the French colonies, and geographers, else why were they there? exchanged their impressions as they passed us. “Pooh,” said one of them, shrugging his shoulders, “they have not even got dirty heads!”

After lunch we all went to take a little siesta, or at least to rest during the great heat of the day. The siesta, though so much in use in the tropics, is really a very bad habit, and many ailments of the stomach are caused by it. It is really better only to indulge in a noonday nap after exceptional fatigue; but of course it is a very different matter just to avoid active exercise immediately after a meal, and to read quietly without going to sleep. To wind up all this advice to future travellers in the Sudan, let me just add this one more word, “Do as I say rather than as I did.”

Many of the coolies did not go to sleep in the resting hour, but chatted together about the news of the day, or gave each other a little elementary instruction, for negroes,even when grown up, are very fond of teaching and of being taught. Their ambition, however, is generally limited to learning to write a letter to their friends or family. They take great delight in corresponding with the absent, and I have known young fellows in the Sudan who spend nearly all their salaries in sending telegraphic despatches to their friends. I knew others, amongst whom was Baudry’s servant, who gave up most of their free time at Say to writing letters which never reached their destination, for a very good reason. They were all much in the style of the one quoted below—

“Dear Mr. Fili Kanté,—I write to inform you that the Niger Hydrographical Expedition has arrived at Fort Archinard, and that, thanks to God, all are well. When you write to me, send me news of my father and mother, and my friends at Diamu (the writer’s native village). I shall be very pleased, too, if you will send the twelve samba (sembé) (coverlets), four horses, ten sheep, etc.

“With my best greetings, dear Mr. Fili Kanté.

“(Signed)Mussa Diakhite

(in the service of Mr. Baudry.)”

Might you not fancy this letter, with all its decorative strokes, to be one from the soldier Dumanet to his parents? Nothing is wanted to complete the resemblance, not even the attempt to fleece his correspondent.

Besides these lovers of correspondence, there were others who were mad about arithmetic. Samba Demba, Suzanne’s groom, already often mentioned, wanted to know enough arithmetic to matriculate. All through the hour of the siesta, and often also when he was at work, he was muttering the most absurd numbers over to himself; absurd for him, at least, for the negroes who do not live wherethe cowry serves as currency, cannot conceive the idea of any number beyond a thousand. Samba Demba would read what he called his “matricula” of nine figures and more, to Father Hacquart, with the greatest complacency, whilst Ahmady-Mody, who had patched up theAube, strove in vain to learnb-a ba, b-e be, or twice two are four, twice three are six, with his head bent over a big card. The marabout Tierno Abdulaye actually composed and sung Arabic verses. In the midst of it all the voice of Dr. Taburet would be heard from his tent hard by complaining that he could not sleep.

All these good fellows, with their eagerness to learn, had a child-like side to their characters. There is no doubt that they would very quickly learn to read, write, and cipher, as the advertisements of elementary schools express it—read without understanding too much, write without knowing what, and calculate without ever being able to apply their arithmetic. Anyhow, however, even this little knowledge will wean them from the pernicious influence of the marabouts.

OUR COOLIES AT THEIR TOILETTE.

After sunset the heat became more bearable, and the time for our evening bath arrived. At the northern extremity of our island were a number of pools amongst the rocks, varying in depth according to the tide. Here and there were regular cascades, and we could stand on the sand bottom and get a natural shower-bath. Some of us became perfectly enamoured of this style of bathing. Opinions differ inAfrica as to the healthiness of it, however. For my part, I know that bathing in the tepid water, warmed as it was by the heat of the sun, was very refreshing, and of course the cleaner we kept ourselves the better the pores of our skin acted. It may be that stopping long in the water every day was weakening, and some fevers may have been caused by it when it happened to be colder than usual. There are two opinions on this as on every subject, but where is the good of discussing them?—the best plan is to do what you like yourself.

In the river near Fort Archinard there were lots of common fish, which used to shoot down the cascades of an evening for the sake of the greater freshness and coolness of the water below. These fish would actually strike us now and then on the shoulders, making us start by the suddenness of the unexpected blows. It was still more unpleasant to know that other denizens of the river, the terrible crocodiles, though further off, were still there.

Oh, what numbers of the horrible great grey creatures we used to see floating down with the stream or lying about the banks! Some of them had taken up their abode quite near to us, along the side of our island, just where we used to do our fishing with the gun-cotton, but their being close to us did not prevent either the coolies, or for the matter of that the whites, from going into the river.

With sunset came the hour of supper or dinner, and what grand sky effects we used to see whilst we were at that meal in these winter quarters of ours! Our walls were flecked with every colour of the rainbow, whilst in the east, above the sombre wooded banks, would often rise red masses of curious-looking clouds, precursors of the approaching tornado. Sometimes the sun had not quite set before the lightning would begin to flash, and the thunder to roll incessantly, sounding like the roar of artillery in battle.As we sat at table we would discuss the situation: what would the tornado do this time? Would our huts be able to bear up against it? Would much water come in? “Make haste, Fili, bring us thatnougatbefore it rains!” said Bluzet. And were the barges securely moored? Had the sentry got his cloak? and so on.

A WOMAN OF SAY.

Father Hacquart became as time went on, quite an expert meteorologist, and only once or twice made a mistake in his predictions about the weather.

The terrible arch of clouds peculiar to a tornado, meanwhile, goes up and up till it nearly reaches the zenith. Behind it in the east is a great glow of light, resembling thereflection of a conflagration in the big plate-glass windows of some shop on the Paris boulevards seen through the rain.

We all disperse now, going to our huts to light our candles, whilst the rain pours down in torrents, and the leaves are torn from the trees and whirled round and round. The branches are creaking, the roofs are bending beneath the fury of the storm, the rain turns to hail, and through the great sabbat of the elements, the voices of the sentries are heard calling out from beneath the deluge pouring down upon them, “Is all well?” and the reply comes soon, “All is well.”

Then when the worst seems to be over, we go to examine how much damage is done, and Father Hacquart comes out to have one more look at the weather. Presently we hear some one growling out that the rain has come through his roof like a thief in the night, or that it is pouring over his threshold. We all laugh together, for we are all in the same boat.

Fortunately the damage done is seldom greater than this, for the huts stand the strain well. We only once had to deplore a real misfortune, and that not a very serious one, only it made us fear that a worse might happen.

A pair of white and black storks had nested in the big tamarind tree which formed the eastern corner of thetatalooking down-stream, and we considered this a good omen for us, a talisman ensuring to us the protection of Allah during our stay in the island. Storks, as is well known, are very peculiar birds, and acts of extraordinary intelligence are attributed to them, which would appear to prove that their lives are regulated by certain social laws. It was an amusement to us to watch them of an evening, and to note all the details of their family life; the first finding of a home, for instance, their courtship, their talks in the gloaming; when perched together on one branch they would seem to be looking at us, balancing themselves with theirheavy heads on one side, with the air of old men considering some new invention, or savants discussing abstract verities.

Our pair of storks, in spite of their calm and sedate appearance, must really have been only just beginning their jointménage, and can have had no real experience of life. They evidently knew how to fish by instinct; but a sad catastrophe befell their home, which they had built on a big dead branch, for in a specially violent tornado the bough was torn off, nest and all, and flung upon the quick-firing gun pointing up-stream, knocking over Ibrahim Bubakar, who was on sentry duty, but who fortunately escaped with a fright and a few bruises on the legs. Alas! however, threeyoung storks, the children of the pair, were flung to the ground and killed. We picked them up dead the day after the tornado, and stuffed them.

A NATIVE WOMAN WITH GOITRE.

Our men were in great despair. The charm which would have brought luck to our camp was broken; but the parent birds, in spite of the loss of their little ones, evidently determined to act as our talisman to the end of our stay, for they continued to fly round and round our tamarind, and to talk together of an evening, though sadly. It was not until a few days before we left that they flew away towards the north. Thanks to them, perhaps, we had a run of good luck to the last.

The tornado freshened the atmosphere very considerably, and the sudden change could only be fully realized by consulting the thermometer. In five minutes the glass would sometimes fall from forty-five to thirty degrees. A corresponding and sympathetic change would take place in the state of our nerves; we could sleep a little if only the mosquitoes would let us, but, alas! their droning never ceased. Oh, that horrible music, which went on for ever without mercy, causing us more anguish even than the bites, and against which no curtain could protect.

The frogs, too, added to the droning of the mosquitoes what we may call their peculiar Plain Songs or Gregorian chants. They were very tame, showing no fear of us, but took up their abode here, there, and everywhere: out in the open air, or in the huts, in our books, under our tins, and in our water-vessels, and their ceaseless singing in full solemn tones, echoed that of the distant choirs of their wilder brethren chattering together amongst the grass by the river-side. Although not composed on the spot, I cannot refrain from quoting the following sonnet, produced by a member of our expedition, and which forms a kind of sequel to the others I have transcribed above—

LOVE-SONG.When evening falls upon the land asleep,When mute the singers of the tropic plain,When winds die down, and every bird’s refrainOr insect’s cry is hush’d in silence deep;Then from the lotus beds triumphant leapFrantic crescendoes of a rhythmic strain,Wild cadences mount up, to sink againLamenting, as when mourners wail and weep;—Comes to the traveller upon the stream,A Plain-Song Litany of high despair;The notes Gregorian fit into his dreamOf home and fatherland, remotely fair;—Whilst from the gleaming mud in Niger’s courseRises an amorous croak, now sweet, now hoarse.

LOVE-SONG.

When evening falls upon the land asleep,When mute the singers of the tropic plain,When winds die down, and every bird’s refrainOr insect’s cry is hush’d in silence deep;Then from the lotus beds triumphant leapFrantic crescendoes of a rhythmic strain,Wild cadences mount up, to sink againLamenting, as when mourners wail and weep;—Comes to the traveller upon the stream,A Plain-Song Litany of high despair;The notes Gregorian fit into his dreamOf home and fatherland, remotely fair;—Whilst from the gleaming mud in Niger’s courseRises an amorous croak, now sweet, now hoarse.

When evening falls upon the land asleep,

When mute the singers of the tropic plain,

When winds die down, and every bird’s refrain

Or insect’s cry is hush’d in silence deep;

Then from the lotus beds triumphant leap

Frantic crescendoes of a rhythmic strain,

Wild cadences mount up, to sink again

Lamenting, as when mourners wail and weep;—

Comes to the traveller upon the stream,

A Plain-Song Litany of high despair;

The notes Gregorian fit into his dream

Of home and fatherland, remotely fair;—

Whilst from the gleaming mud in Niger’s course

Rises an amorous croak, now sweet, now hoarse.

In every country in the world fine weather comes after rain, and the tornado was succeeded on the Niger by a star-light night of a clearness and limpidity such as is never seen anywhere out of the tropics. The soft murmur of the Niger was borne to us upon the gentle night breeze, reminding us of the Fulah proverb—

“Ulululu ko tiaygueul, so mayo héwi, déguiet,” which may be translated—

“Ulululu cries the brook, the big river is silent.”

A true description indeed of what really often seemed to happen during our long imprisonment on our island, for we could hear the gurgling of the rapid further down-stream, but the voice of the river was hushed.

Our nights passed quietly enough, watch being always kept by one white man, one black subordinate officer, and two coolies. From Timbuktu to Lokodja, that is to say, from January 21 to October 21, we five Europeans had taken the night-watch in turn. It must be admitted that at Fort Archinard it was sometimes rather difficult to remain awake, and to keep ourselves from yielding to our exhausting fatigue. We had to resort to various manœuvres, suchas pinching ourselves, bathing our feet, wrists, or head, and walking rapidly up and down. Sometimes, as one or another of us sat in Father Hacquart’s folding-chair, looking out upon the moon-lit scene, there was something very charming about the silence and repose, and as we have already given several quotations of poetical effusions, I think I must add just one more on the night-watch, also composed by one of our party.

NIGHT-WATCH.I loll and smoke, with mind a-blank;—we sailTogether, all ye stars of motion slow!Moon! a poor trophy you may hang me nowUpon one horn—Moon! like a fairy’s nailCurved, tilted, thin and delicately pale!You, old Orion, may not lift your browTo where on high the mystic symbols glowOf Cross and Angel’s Car that next I hail;Then Venus—Beauty bathed in lambent streamOf astral milk, outpour’d long ages pastFrom time-worn breasts!—to these, in the first gleamOf morning freshness, from the dreary waste,Whilst as our bark adown the dim stream floats,With rower’s boat-song blends the frog’s last notes.

NIGHT-WATCH.

I loll and smoke, with mind a-blank;—we sailTogether, all ye stars of motion slow!Moon! a poor trophy you may hang me nowUpon one horn—Moon! like a fairy’s nailCurved, tilted, thin and delicately pale!You, old Orion, may not lift your browTo where on high the mystic symbols glowOf Cross and Angel’s Car that next I hail;Then Venus—Beauty bathed in lambent streamOf astral milk, outpour’d long ages pastFrom time-worn breasts!—to these, in the first gleamOf morning freshness, from the dreary waste,Whilst as our bark adown the dim stream floats,With rower’s boat-song blends the frog’s last notes.

I loll and smoke, with mind a-blank;—we sail

Together, all ye stars of motion slow!

Moon! a poor trophy you may hang me now

Upon one horn—Moon! like a fairy’s nail

Curved, tilted, thin and delicately pale!

You, old Orion, may not lift your brow

To where on high the mystic symbols glow

Of Cross and Angel’s Car that next I hail;

Then Venus—Beauty bathed in lambent stream

Of astral milk, outpour’d long ages past

From time-worn breasts!—to these, in the first gleam

Of morning freshness, from the dreary waste,

Whilst as our bark adown the dim stream floats,

With rower’s boat-song blends the frog’s last notes.

Thus the days went on monotonously, so monotonously that we were often quite feverish withennui! At the beginning, the building of the fort and settling down gave us a little variety, but of course that did not last.

Winter in the Sudan would really not be much worse than anywhere else if plenty of occupation and movement could be secured, with occasional change of air; but it becomes simply deadly dull when one is limited to a small space, compelled to inhale the same miasmic exhalations, and absorb the same kind of microbes every day and every night.

Yet this was exactly our position. We were a small party in the midst of a hostile population. Even if we hadventured to leave our camp we should have had to divide, one-half of us remaining on guard; but neither division would have been strong enough in any emergency, for those who went could not spare any coolies as scouts, whilst those who remained would have no sentries. When we went to fetch wood, we did not go out of sight of our fort, which was left to the care of the halt and lame, so to speak: the interpreters and the scullions, and I was quite uneasy about them when I saw the men leave of a morning.

A TOWER OF FORT ARCHINARD.

Our one safe road, the river, was blocked above and below the camp, for we had a rapid up-stream and a rapid down-stream, so that even quite small canoes could not pass.

There has been much talk of winter in the Arctic regions, and of course such a winter is always very severe, but the one we passed at Say was simply miserable. I really do think that the fact of all five of us Europeans having survived it, is a proof that we were endowed with a great amount of energy and vitality.

The temperature had much to do with our sufferings. It increased steadily until June, and then remained pretty stationary. The thermometer, which was set up beneath a little wooden shelter daily, reached extraordinary maxima. For one whole month the maximum fluctuated between forty and fifty degrees Centigrade, the atmosphere becoming heavier and more exhausting as the day wore on until sunset. During the night the maximum was generally a little over thirty degrees, and you must remember that I am speaking of the winter, when the air was pretty well saturated with moisture.

I have read in books of travel of countries where, to avoid succumbing from the heat, Europeans live in holes dug in the earth, and make negroes pour more or less fresh water on their heads from calabashes to keep them cool. We never got as far as that, but I do think that Say, at least in June and July, can compete in intensity of heat with any other place in the world.

In such an oven we quite lost our appetites!

Now ensued a time of terribleennui. All our energy, all our gaiety, all our philosophy melted away before the awful prospect of living in this remote and hostile corner of the earth for five whole months; five months during which we knew we could not stir from the island; five months in which we must endure all the storms of heaven in our frail huts, and be exposed to the ceaseless plots against us of Amadu. The dreary, monotonous days in which nothing happened, did not even supply us withtopics of conversation, so we talked more and more of France, which of course only intensified our home-sickness. Taburet, who had a wonderful memory for dates, seemed to find every day of the month an anniversary of some event.

It became a more serious matter when ourennuiresulted in constant attacks of fever, but fortunately these attacks, thanks to the daily dose of quinine, were never very serious, only their recurrence was weakening, the more so that they were accompanied by what we called the Sudanite fever, a kind of moral affection peculiar to African soil.

This Sudanite affection betrayed itself by different eccentricities in different people. It really is the effect of the great heat of the sun upon anæmic subjects, or upon those whose brains are not very strong. Sometimes, at about four o’clock in the morning, we used all of a sudden to hear a series of detonations inside the enceinte. “Holloa!” we would exclaim, “some one has got an attack of Sudanite fever, and is working it off by firing at bottles floating on the river.” Or another of the party would seal himself up hermetically in his hut, blocking every hole or crack through which a ray of sunlight could penetrate. The whole of the interior would be hung with blue stuff, under the pretence that red or white light would give fever. Another case of Sudanite!

We could cite many more examples of the disease during our stay at Fort Archinard.

However different may be most of its symptoms, one is always the same—a patient afflicted with it contradicts everybody and shows an absolutely intolerant spirit.

Truth to tell, I must add, in common fairness, that we were all more or less affected by it. We might have managed to pull along peaceably in an ordinary station with occupations which separated us from each other sometimes, but in this island, this cage, for it was littlemore, we were always rubbing shoulders, so to speak, and constant friction was inevitable. In fact, we ran our angles into our neighbours instead of rubbing those angles down. We were regularly prostrated with our inactive, almost idle life, and the true characters of each one came out without disguise.

THE MEMBERS OF THE EXPEDITION AT FORT ARCHINARD.

At table every discussion led to a kind of squabble. Each of us stuck to his own opinion, even when the most astounding paradoxes had been enunciated. Sometimes, after a regular row, we all sat perfectly mute glaring at each other, and wondering what was to happen next.

At night, or in the hour of the siesta, I used to get out my flute—another form of the Sudanite fever—and play melodies from theOr du RhinorTristan et Yseult, but even music failed to calm the disputants. The tension was too great, and I was afraid that, even at this late period of our expedition, things would go wrong in consequence.

All of a sudden a happy idea occurred to me, a regular inspiration from Heaven, which every one fell in with at once.

This idea was simply that we should all work, and the result was the immediate restoration of order.

It was a simple task enough that we now set ourselves to do, just to make vocabularies of the various more or less barbarous idioms in use in the Niger districts. There were plenty to choose from, for there is more confusion of tongues, such as is described in the Bible, in these parts than anywhere else. There is a perfectly inexhaustible supply of peculiar phrases.

For instance, between Abo, in the highest part of the delta of the Niger, and the sea, as an officer of the Royal Niger Company told me, there are no less than seven dialects spoken, none of which have the very slightest affinity with each other. It would appear that one waveof migration has succeeded another, as the breakers do on the beach, the natives composing the different parties of emigrants dying out, or leaving only a few survivors stranded like islets in a flood in the tropical forests, retaining their original customs and dialects, and continuing to offer sacrifices in the old way, uninfluenced by the other native populations.

It has been different further inland, for the last emigrants have been absorbed by the earlier settlers, rather than driven back, but at the same time their characteristics have not been merged in those of other tribes, so that we still find side by side totally different customs, and people speaking different dialects quite unlike each other, such as the Tuareg, Fulah, Songhay, Bambara, Bozo, Mossi, etc., almost equally distributed over extensive districts.

So we all set to work. Father Hacquart and I buckled to at the Tuareg language. Pullo Khalifa turned out to be an indifferent teacher, though he was full of good-will. He was never at a loss for the signification of a word, but his renderings were mostly merely approximate. I have already dwelt upon the peculiarities of the Tuareg language in a previous chapter, so I will only add here that we had two other instructors in it, another Fulah, a Mahommedan, who shilly-shallied a good deal in his interpretations, and a female blacksmith of Bokar Wandieïdiu, now attached to the service of Ibrahim Galadio, who lent her to us. The last-named was certainly the most interesting of our linguistic professors. She had a tremendous voice, and was as ugly as sin, but she gave herself many airs and graces. With the aid of these three and a few others we drew up quite an imposing comparative vocabulary of the Tuareg language.

Father Hacquart also devoted some time to the study of Songhay, which is spoken between Say and Timbuktu,and also in other districts beyond those towns in the east and west, for we meet with it again at Jenné and at Aghades. Near Say, they call the Songhay languagedjermanké. Pretty well every one undertook to teach us Songhay; it was a simple dialect enough, spoken through the nose, and it was likely to be very useful to us. ThePères blancsof Timbuktu give especial attention to its study.

Tierno Abdulaye Dem, a few coolies, old Suleyman, who had deserted Amadu, tired of wandering about after him, and had rejoined us to go back to his beloved Foota, used to assemble every day in Baudry’s hut, which was transformed into a Fulah academy.

Most unexpected results ensued from these meetings. The Fulah language is a very charming one, and has been carefully studied by General Faidherbe and M. de Giraudon, but there is still a good deal to be learnt about it. It is very difficult to connect it with any other. It is the one language necessary for travelling or for trading between Saint Louis and Lake Tchad. There have been many theories on the subject of the Fulah migration, and a great deal of nonsense has been talked about it. Baudry, who studied the language with the greatest zeal, discovered some extraordinary grammatical rules in it and strange idioms, enough to frighten M. Brid’oison himself. No one could now utter two or three words at table without Baudry declaring how they could be translated into one Fulah expression. The following example will give an idea of how much could be expressed in a Fulah word. I must add, however, that Baudry and Tierno Abdulaye agree in saying it is very seldom used.

The word I allude to isNannantundiritde, which signifies to pretend to go and ask mutually and reciprocally for news of each other.

Tierno Abdulaye, who was a Toucouleur from the Senegal districts, gave out that he could speak his maternal language or Fulah pretty perfectly. When, however, Baudry set to work to explain to him the formation of Fulah words which he claimed to have discovered, Tierno realized that after all he did not know much about it, so he tried to acquire grammatical Fulah, with the result that many of his fellow-countrymen could not understand what he said. They were completely confused by all these new rules, but Baudry was delighted at having won a disciple.

The people of Massina, or the districts near the great bend of the Niger, speak very quietly and in a low voice, as if they realized the beauty of their language, and do not trouble themselves very much about strict grammatical accuracy. The Fulah tongue, in fact, admits of an immense number of shades of expression, and though there is not perhaps exactly anything that can be called Fulah literature, except for a few songs which can only be obtained from the griots with the greatest difficulty, the language simply teems with proverbs. Here are a few examples, but of course, like all such sayings, they lose terribly in translation:—

“When you cannot suck the breasts of your mother, you must suck those of your grandmother.”

“When a man has eaten his hatchet and his axe, he is not likely to sputter much over broiled pea-nuts.”

“A stick may rot in the water, but that does not make it a crocodile.”

“There is the skin of a sheep and the skin of a cow, but there is always a skin.”

Thanks to Osman, Bluzet had unearthed a cobbler orgaranké, a native of Mossi. He was a very worthy fellow, but, it seems to me, most of his fellow-countrymen are equally estimable. The Mossi, at least those we knew, wereall very easily intimidated, but honest and trustworthy. At first Bluzet had a good deal of trouble to get any information out of this Mossi, but when he gained a little confidence he got on apace, and used to indulge on occasion in long monologues, as when he treated us to the following little tale, which he related to us all in Mossi in Bluzet’s hut.

“One day, a woman going along the road to Say, taking some milk to market, sat down at the foot of a tree and fell asleep.

“Presently three young men came up, and when they saw the woman one of them said to the others—

“‘Follow me, and imitate everything I do.’

“They approached her cautiously, making adétourround the brushwood. ‘Hu! hu!’ cried the leader, when he got close to the sleeper, and the others shouted after him, ‘Hu! hu!’

“The woman started up terrified, and ran away, leaving the calabash of milk on the ground.

“Then the eldest of the three young men said, ‘This milk is mine because I am the eldest.’ ‘No,’ said the second, ‘it is mine because I thought of crying, Hu! hu!’ ‘No, no,’ cried the third, ‘I mean to drink it, for I am armed with a spear, and you have only sticks.’

“Just then a marabout passed by. ‘Let him be the judge!’ said the disputants, and they put their case before him.

“‘I know of nothing in the Koran which applies to your difficulty,’ said the holy man; ‘but show me the milk.’ He took the milk, he looked at it, he drank it. ‘This is really good milk,’ he added, ‘but there is nothing about your case in the Koran that I know of.’”

With two other vocabularies of Gurma and Bozo expressions, less complete than those of the Songhay andFulah languages, we made up a total of more than ten thousand new words, to which we added many very interesting grammatical remarks.

This absorbing occupation, which fortunately became a positive monomania with some of us, contributed more than anything to our being able to survive the last month of our stay at Fort Archinard.

OUR QUICK-FIRING GUN.

NATIVES OF SAY.

Wemust now return to our arrival at Say. Although the days there were most of them monotonous enough, they brought their little ups and downs, and we received news now and then, of which, under the circumstances, we naturally sometimes exaggerated the importance. It would be wearisome for me as well as for the reader to give an account of what happened every day during our long winter at Fort Archinard. My notes were written under various difficulties and in very varying moods, reflecting alike my exaggerated low spirits when things went wrong, and my excess of delight when anything occurred to cheer me. Consecutive pages of my journal often contradicted each other, and any one reading them would imagine they were written by two different persons;but this is always the way with travellers, and even Barth himself was not exempt from such fluctuations of mood.

My journalin extensomight serve as an illustration of the psychology of the lie as illustrated amongst the negroes and Mussulmans, but no other useful purpose, so I shall greatly condense it. The reader will still, I hope, get a very good idea of all we went through. If what I quote is rather incoherent, excuses must be made for me, for the news we got was often incoherent enough, and our life at the Fort was rather a puzzle too sometimes, with our alternations of hope and anxiety.

Friday, April 10.—We are getting on with our fort; our abattis are finished and ready for any attack. (This was written the day after our arrival, whilst our work was still in full swing.)

We put theAubein dry dock to-day, and it took the united efforts of us all to haul her into position: non-commissioned officers, interpreters, servants, all had to work, and even we white men lent a hand. During the operation of turning her on to her side, the poorAubemight have tumbled to pieces, for all her planks were loose. But she held together yet once more, and, as you will see, we did not have to abandon her until the very end of our voyage.

A new recruit joined us to-day, my journal goes on, so with Suleyman Futanké we have two extra hands now. This was how he came to join us. During the siesta hour we heard a man shouting from the other side of the river, “Agony! agony!” and looking out we saw some one waving a white cloth. We sent theDantecto fetch him, and when he arrived he kept shouting “Agony! agony!” in a joyful voice. He showed us his cap of European make, evidently expecting us to understand what he meant, but that did not explain the use of the word “agony” so often.

It was Tedian Diarra, a big Bambarra, who had acted as guide to General Dodds in the Dahomey campaign, who solved the mystery at last, and told us that the man had been a porter at Say to the Decœur expedition. He had been taken ill with an attack of some discharge from the joints, and had been left under the care of the chief of the village to be handed over to the first Frenchman who should happen to pass. The poor fellow, whose name was Atchino,—at least that is what we always called him,—was trying to explain to us that he came from the village of Agony on the Wemé. He had feared he should never see his native village again, with its bananas and oil palms; but as soon as he heard of our arrival at Say, he came to take refuge with us. Later I indemnified the man who had taken care of him for the expense he had been put to. We made this Atchino our gardener, and he turned out a very useful fellow, a decided acquisition to our small staff.

Monday, April 13.—We finished the repairs of theAube. She still let the water in like a strainer, but, as we always said, we were used to that. This expression, “used to it,” was perpetually employed by us all, and it enabled us to bear with philosophy all our troubles. It is, in fact, the expression which gilds the bitterest pills to be swallowed on an exploring expedition, and no one need dream of starting on such a trip as ours if they cannot adopt what we may call the philosophy of use and wont on every occasion. Have twenty-five of us got to pack into a boat about the size of my hand? What does it matter? go on board, you’ll get used to it. Have we got to find place for provisions and things to exchange with the natives when there is no more room? Never mind, ship them all, we shall get used to them when we settle down. Are you in a hostile district? Do rumours of war, of approaching columns of thousands and thousands ofnatives uniting to attack, trouble you? Never mind, they will turn out not to be so many after all; you are used to these rumours now. You have some dreadful rapids in front of you; you have got to pass them somehow. There are so many, you can’t count them. Shall we draw back? Shall we allow them to check our onward march? No, no, we shall get used to them. If you take them one by one, you will find that each fresh one is not worse than the last, and that the hundredth is just like the first. You get quite used to them, at least if you do not lose your boats and your life too. Which would be the final getting used to things, the last settling down!

Adiavanduand his sister one day presented themselves at the camp. Thesediavandus, who are the guides and confidants of the people, are everywhere met with amongst the Fulahs. I don’t know what trade the sister followed, but thisdiavanducame to offer us his services. He offered to perform all the usual duties of his office on our behalf, and was ready either to sell us milk, or to act as a spy for us. He was a little fellow, of puny, sickly appearance. We made him drink some quinine dissolved in water, and our people told him that the bitter beverage contained all the talismans of the infernal regions. Certainly the witches inMacbethnever made a philtre nastier than our mixture.

Ourdiavanduswore by the Koran, without any mental reservations, that he would be faithful to us, and our spells and thegrisgriswe had given him would, he knew, kill him if he were false to us, or betrayed us in any way. Then we sent him to see what was going on in Amadu’s camp. I do not know what eventually became of him, but perhaps if he was false to us the quinine killed him by auto-suggestion; perhaps he was simply suppressed by our enemies, or he may have died a natural death; anyhow we never saw either him or his sister again.

About the same time Pullo Khalifa appeared at Fort Archinard, sent, he said, by Ibrahim Galadio, the friend of Monteil. He began by asking us what we wanted, but it really was he who wanted to get something out of us. We gave him a fine redchechiato replace his own, which was very dirty and greasy. Later we gave him various other presents, but, strange to say, he always came to visit us in his shabbiest garments.

TALIBIA.

Thursday, April 23.—In the evening a sudden noise and confusion arose on shore at Talibia, and in our camp we heard dogs barking and women shrieking, whilst the glare of torches lit up the surrounding darkness. Gradually the tumult died away in the distance. Had the Toucouleurs been on the way to surprise us, but finding us prepared given up the idea for the time being? We shouted to Mahmadu Charogne, but no answer came. Mamé thenfired a fowling-piece into the air, but nothing came of it. All was silent again, but we passed the night in watching, for we knew that that very morning a man wearing a whitebubuhad tried to tamper with our coolies, and to frighten away the native traders. He had shouted from the left bank that Amadu had let loose the Silibés upon us, giving them permission to make war on us, and promising them the blessing of Allah if they beat us. No wonder such a coincidence as this put us on our guard.

The next morning Mahmadu explained the uproar of the preceding evening. It had been a question not of an attack on us, but of a wedding amongst the Koyraberos. He told us a marriage is never consummated until the bridegroom has literally torn away his bride from her people, and the rite of abduction, for a regular rite it is, is a very exciting ceremony. When the suitor comes to pay the dowry it is customary for him to give hisfiancée, it is considered good form for the parents to shrug their shoulders, and pretend that the sum offered is not enough; millet is very dear just now, they say, and they cannot afford wedding festivities worthy of their daughter. They must keep her at home until after the harvest, and so on.

The young man goes home then with bowed head and a general air of depression. When he gets back to his own village he calls his relations and friends together, chooses out the best runners and those who can shout the loudest, and with them returns to seize the object of his choice. He finally succeeds in taking her away in the midst of screams, yells, and the sham curses of her relations, who are really full of joy at the marriage. The so-called ravishers of the dusky bride are pursued to the last tents of the village, and the ceremony concludes, as do all weddings amongst the negroes, with a feast such as that of Gamache immortalized inDon Quixote.

Soon after this exciting night our relations with Galadio began, and throughout the winter all our hopes were centred on this man. We counted on him to the very last moment as our best friend, and he really was more reasonable than most of those with whom we had to do during that dreary time. It must not, however, be forgotten that amongst Mussulmans, especially those of the Fulah race, wisdom means profound duplicity. The Fulahs actually have no word to express giving advice, only one which means “give bad advice,” or “betray by counsel given.” The idea is simple enough, and is the first which comes into their heads. So that if by any chance they want for once to translate our expression, “advise you for your own good,” they have to go quite out of the way to make the meaning intelligible, and to use a borrowed word. This is really a reflection of the Fulah character.

TALIBIA.

Galadio was in this respect a thorough Fulah, although he had Bambarra blood in his veins. His mother was a Fulah, of the Culibaly tribe, and he deceived us perpetually with good words which meant nothing. Still I must do him the justice to add, that he was careful to save us from being involved in open war. Perhaps he saw how fatal that would be to his own influence, or he may have dreaded it as a calamity for the country he was now living in, or for the people over whom he had been set. Anyhow he managed to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds: in other words, to keep in with Amadu and us. He always gave us to understand, that if the worst came to the worst he would at least preserve a strict neutrality, and as a reward for this he got many very fine presents. He was treated almost as the equal of Madidu himself, and he too received from us a velvet saddle embroidered with gold. His messengers were provided with a pass by us, and were received with all due honour, for it was not until quite the end of our stay that the mystery was solved, and Galadio appeared in his true colours. Of his own free will he had concluded a regular treaty with me, a treaty drawn up quite formally in Arabic and French, and which he signed with his own name. He showed, moreover, a very eager wish to enter into relations with Bandiagara.

April 30.—Khalifa is certainly an extraordinary man. To-night he is to bring to us in a canoe, when the moon is set and all is silence, darkness, and mystery, no less a person than the brother of the chief of Say. We watch all night for the signal agreed upon of the approach of our guests: the lighting of a candle on the bank of the river, but nothing is to be seen. Was the whole thing simply a manœuvre on the part of Pullo to get possession of a box of matches and a candle? Perhaps so, for one of his chief delights when he is in any of our tents,—and he is very oftenthere,—is to strike matches one after the other. He is not the only one with this wasteful habit, Baudry is also afflicted with it, but fortunately we have a sufficient supply even for such vagaries as this, which really are very pardonable in the Sudan.

The next day Khalifa and the brother of the chief of Say actually arrived, after a good deal more fuss and mystery. Even poor little Arabu, who wanted to sleep in the camp, was sent away, weeping bitter tears at the thought that his white brothers did not want him. Very useless were all these precautions, for the brother of the chief of Say, though perhaps rather more polite, was not a bit more sincere than he. Our visitor explained that he had come to see us quite independently, and that his great wish was to make friends with us. What he really wanted, however, was abubuand a copy of the Koran. As his friendship was of a very doubtful quality, we put off giving the present to another time, when he should have proved his sincerity by getting us a courier to go to Bandiagara. He went off promising to see about it.

We had “big brothers” and “little brothers”ad infinitum, but as there is no masculine or feminine in the Fulah language, the Sudanese when they try to speak French muddle up relationships in a most original manner, without any distinction of sex. Abdulaye said to us, with no idea that he was talking nonsense, “My grandfather, who was the wife of the king of Cayor;” and it is no rare thing for one of our men to bring a young girl to us in the hope of getting a present, who is really no relation to him at all, telling us, “Captain, here is my little brother; he has come to say good-morning to you.”

In my journal I find the following noteà proposof this confusion of relationships. The grandson of Galadio, whocame to see us, told us he had come to pay his respects to his grandfather, and I was that grandfather, because I was the big brother of his other grandfather. The muddle is simply hopeless, but with it all the natives never lose their heads, but keep in view the possible present all the time.

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