Chapter VII: Stay at Say (2)

_À propos_ of this episode, Suleyman the interpreter held forth in the following strain—“From the earliest times prophets, marabouts, and the negro chiefs who founded the religious dynasty of the country, have been terribly severe on any lapse from morality amongst their women, but it is all humbug, for most of the marabouts are the fathers of illegitimate children.

“Amongst Amadu’s people the man and woman who have sinned are deprived of all their property, but Abdul Bubakar goes still further, for he sacks the entire village to which a frail woman belongs, a capital way of getting slaves and everything else. In other districts the woman is put in irons, but the man goes free; but if the seducer comes forward and owns his crime, he can obtain remission of the punishment by payment of a large sum to the chief of the village; generally, however, the unfortunate girl dies in her chains.

“Such are the manners and customs of the Mussulmans, and God alone knows what their women are really like.

“Samory used to kill both the guilty parties, but Tieba, his enemy and neighbour, professed an amiable kind of philosophy on the subject of the weaker sex and the ways of women. When Samory was conquered by Tieba, the chief auxiliaries of the latter were the nomad Diulas who were strangers in the land. These Diulas had come to the district by way of Sikasso, where they had met with women of free and easy manners, and had been driven by the force of circumstances to remain amongst them, adopting their ways. Now it generally happens amongst the negroes, that those who have travelled much and seen something of the world are not only brave but sensible and free from bigotry.

“Samory, who was so fond of cutting off heads in obedience to the injunctions of the Koran, had a wife named Sarankeni, who is still his favourite, and she was the one to lay her finger on the cause of his defeat, when he was still smarting from its effects. She saw that it was the women of easy morals who prevented the strangers who had aided Tieba from deserting him in his need. Samory was open to conviction, and since then”—according to Suleyman, though I think he exaggerated—“if one of the chief’s people discovers that a woman or a daughter of his house has gone wrong, he gives a fee to the seducer, or at least offers him refreshments and speaks him fair, and this has now become the fashion throughout the districts reigned over by the great Fama. Sarankeni, the favourite, the giver of the advice which led to the change, is alone excepted from the new rule.” Probably, as she is still young, she had a very different motive for her conduct than that generally accepted.

Whilst the market was going on, we used also to make a tour of inspection in our kitchen-garden. An officer of the garrison of Timbuktu had been good enough to give us some packets of the usual seeds, and under the skilled direction of the doctor we had had a plot of ground cleared, manured, and planted. To sow seed is one thing, however, to reap results is another, and in spite of the delicate attentions of Atchino, our man from Dahomey, our gardener for the nonce, who religiously watered the seeds every morning, and in spite of the visits we paid to our plantations at dawn and eventide, no great results ensued. Probably the sheep and goats, who were greedy creatures all of them, got the pick of everything, in spite of the thorn hedge we had put up round our garden.

All we got ourselves were a few big tomatoes, some cucumbers, some little pink radishes, and two or three salads. You can just imagine our delight when on one occasion Taburet triumphantly brought in three radishes apiece.

For all that, we can’t be too grateful for our garden. If we did not get many vegetables, we always had the hope of getting some, and the pleasure of watching the growth of various weeds which we expected to turn out to be lettuces, beetroots, or cabbages, and we used to say joyfully, “When that is big enough to eat, or when this is ready,” and so on. The hope of luxuries, when we are provided with all that is absolutely necessary, is always cheering.

Whilst we are on the subject of food, I may as well say a little about what we lived on during our stay at Fort Archinard. In spite of our long distance from home we must be strictly accurate, and I am almost ashamed to own that we were never reduced to having to eat our dogs. Nor was the reason for this the fact that we had no dogs with us to eat. Far from that; we had three dogs, one after the other, not to speak of the cats already referred to. Our three dogs were all, I don’t know why, called Meyer. They were yellow, famished-looking beasts, who were native to the country, and rather savage. All came to a sad end and got lost, but I don’t know exactly what became of them. Once more, however, I swear by Mahomet we did not eat one of them.

Although we ate no dogs we managed to subsist, for we were never without sheep or rice. The diet was not much to boast of, and we had to keep a whole flock in our island always, for there was very little pasturage on our small domain for some twenty or thirty animals. After a few days of such nourishment as they got, our sheep became anæmic, and their flesh turned a greenish colour. Still we managed to eat it in semi-darkness. On the other hand, our rice was always good. That grown in the country is small, and of a slightly reddish colour. It swells less in cooking than the white rice of Cochin China or Pegu, but it has a nicer and a stronger taste. Taburet used to swear by all the heathen gods that he would never eat rice, yet very soon he could not do without it. Fili Kanté, already mentioned, turned out a first-rate cook, and he really did deserve praise for what he achieved, for we were none of us able to help him with advice. True, the Commandant had made everybody’s mouth water by saying that he would take charge of the pot as soon as the expedition arrived at Say; but he never troubled his head about the matter again.

He did, however, sometimes preside at the cooking of _mechuis_, that is to say, of sheep roasted whole on the spit in the Arab style, and the _mechuis_ of Fort Archinard were celebrated—on the island!

Rice and mutton were the staples of our meals. Every morning Fili Kanté used to come to the chief of the mess and say, as if he were announcing a new discovery—“I shall give you mutton and rice to-day, Lieutenant.”—“And what else?” I would ask.—“An omelette.”—“And after that?”—“A _nougat_ and some cheese.”

You read that word _nougat_? Well now, would you like to know what it was made of? Here is the recipe (not quite the same as that for Montélimar almond cake): Take some honey; make it boil; add to it some pea-nuts shelled and ground. Turn it all out on to a cold plate—the bottom of an empty tin will do if you have nothing else—and let it stand till cold.

It makes a capital dessert, I can tell you, especially when there is nothing better to be had.

You read, too, that we were to have cheese. We could generally get as much milk as we liked, and it made a first-rate cheese the second day; quite delicious, I assure you. We generally had cheese for all our mid-day meals, and _nougat_ at supper or dinner, whichever you like to call it.

Sometimes, too, we fished, but there was not very much to be got out of the Niger near Fort Archinard; now and then, however, we succeeded in making a good haul, enough for a meal, with the use of a petard of gun-cotton.

The fish we caught in the Niger were much the same as those found in the Senegal. The kind the natives call “captains” and _ntébés_ are very delicate in flavour, and often of considerable size. We once caught a “captain” at Gurao on the Debo, weighing nearly 80 lbs. It took two men to carry it, and when it was hung from a pole it trailed on the ground. But we rarely had such luck as this at Fort Archinard.

Another kind of fish, called the _machoiran_, with very flat jaws, was to be found in the mud and ooze of the Niger, but beware of eating its flesh. If, it is said, you cut the fat off its tail (Heaven only knows if it has any), by mistake, at full moon, and then drink some fresh milk, and sleep out of doors for the rest of the night on a white coverlet, and then in the morning drink a basin of water, you will surely catch leprosy. I don’t suppose the lepers of Say had really taken all these precautions to ensure having the disease.

I must add that there is one thing which all travellers in Africa will find very useful. I allude to the Prevet tablets of condensed food. We can justly testify to their efficacy, whether they are Julienne, carrots, Brussels sprouts, pears, or apples. They are light, easily carried, and easily divided. To have used them once is recommendation enough, but it is necessary to know how to prepare them, and not to follow Baudry’s example, who one day served us some Prevet spinach, which tasted for all the world like boiled hay. If ever you travel with him, don’t make him chief of the commissariat.

In the morning we also worked at making our map, for we should certainly never have been able to finish it in Paris in the limited time we should be allowed for it. We made a duplicate copy of the map, _grosso modo_, from Timbuktu to Say, to guard against the possible loss of one of the barges. Then came the time for taking our daily dose of twenty centigrammes of quinine dissolved in two centilitres of alcohol, which, truth to tell, was anything but pleasant to the taste. Even Abdulaye himself, who could swallow anything, made a wry face at this terrible mixture; but to help us to digest the everlasting mutton and rice boiled in water, and to keep down the symptoms of fever which threatened us all, nothing could be better.

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 where the 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 the _Aube_, strove in vain to learn _b-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.

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 in Africa 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 that _nougat_ before it rains!” said Bluzet. And were the barges securely moored? Had the sentry got his cloak? and so on.

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 the reflection 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 the _tata_ looking 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 their heavy 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 joint _ménage_, 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, three young 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.

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 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, such as 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 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 with _ennui_! 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 had ventured 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.

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 terrible _ennui_. 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 with topics 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 our _ennui_ resulted 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 little more, 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.

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 the _Or du Rhin_ or _Tristan 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 wave of 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 language _djermanké_. 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. The _Pères blancs_ of 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 is _Nannantundiritde_, 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 or _garanké_, 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, were all 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 a _détour_ round 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 and Fulah 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.