Chapter IX: From Say to Bussa (2)

Many of those standing by looked approval of the tone I had adopted, including Issa, the Kurteye guide from Madecali, and the agent himself.

Then, seeing that half the people were intoxicated, not knowing what was at the bottom of the delays, with the very evident feeling against us, and to avoid all risk of a night attack, I had the barges moved some hundred yards off into the submerged grass, as I used to do in the old days amongst the Tuaregs. I ordered a strict watch to be kept, and we settled down to pass the night as best we could.

This simple manœuvre, which was carried out with very little noise, had the effect of filling the soddened brains of the natives with terror.

First came a messenger to tell me that the agent himself would act as guide to Bussa, then about midnight I was awoke by a great noise. What could it mean? It was the chief himself, who, in a great state of alarm, had hastened back from Ilo on purpose to see me. No doubt, when the vapours of the champagne had been dissipated, he had been told of my vexation, and trembling with fear lest my move should mean a declaration of war, he had hastened to me, this time without any attendants, to endeavour to pacify me. I sent Mamé, and the poor chief asked him to beg, pray, and entreat me on his behalf to remain until the middle of the next day. He would then be able to get together a present for his relation at Bussa. If only I would wait he would be profoundly and eternally grateful.

To add to the confusion and misery of the suppliant, the rain now began to pour down. I assured my visitor that it was quite usual for us to move, in case of storms, and that I had had the barges moved away from the banks lest the wind should drive them against them. In fact, I said we did this pretty well every night, but it was just all I could do to reassure the chief and his people. I could not help thinking that the scene was very like what one sees in the lunatic asylum at Charenton, and instead of a naval officer, I ought to have chosen a doctor accustomed to treat the insane, as ambassador to Ilo. He would certainly have looked upon the chief as a dipsomaniac whose case was rather an uncommon one. I was the less interested, however, as it would be my turn to keep watch from two to five o’clock, and I wanted to go to my cabin and have a sleep, especially as the rain was heavy and cold, penetrating to the very bones. In the end it was settled that I was to have the guide the very first thing the next morning. Would the promise be kept this time?

No! not even now. It was evidently decreed that we were not to have a guide. In the morning a man appeared in a canoe who pretended that he was to go with us, and my hopes revived. But he had to wait for a companion who did not turn up, and presently he disappeared himself. At five o’clock, for the tenth and last time, I demanded the fulfilment of the promise made to me, our Kurteye going ashore with my message. “Listen to me,” he said; “I am sick of talking to these drunkards, I declare I can do absolutely nothing with them; and I want you to let me go.” I gave him leave, and we all set to work to drive the people of Girris off the boats, for they were doing a brisk trade in provisions, as if nothing unusual was going on and were in no hurry to go.

“Push off!” I cried at last, this time in earnest, and my only regret was that I had yielded the evening before. The first thing in the morning we resumed our voyage without a guide. What could be the reason for the way we were treated? Did the natives want to make us remain as long as possible for the sake of our presents, and of the purchases we made? Or was it the two Mussulmans, especially Hadji Hamet, who seems to have been guilty of double dealing with the Decœur expedition, to whom we owed the change which had come over the sentiments of the natives towards us?

Later, I learnt that one of my predecessors had had a quarrel with the natives of Ilo, about an ox which had been promised to him, and which, like my guide, never turned up. Perhaps he had not been as patient as he might have been under the circumstances, if he had remembered the interests of those to come after him.

So we started after all without a pilot and passed many villages, the names of which I do not know. The inundated banks were flat and grass-grown, with clumps of trees here and there. We cast anchor in the evening off the left bank, opposite the Fulah village of Raha, a dependency of Gomba.

As we were at dinner we were hailed from a canoe by an old Fulah, answering to the name of Amadu, who offered us five chickens as a present. We circumvented him cleverly. He said he knew the river well down to Bussa, in fact as far as Iggu, where he had been. I proposed that he should act as our guide and introduce us to the chief of Bussa, who he said was a great friend of his. To my delight he actually agreed!

During the whole of the 28th we went rapidly down the wide river, here unencumbered with obstacles, as fast as ever we could row.

About nine o’clock we passed Gomba, inhabited by Fulahs, and the capital of the district. Our guide Amadu evidently thought we should stop there to see the chief, and showed great surprise at our pressing on without a halt. To his discreet suggestions I turned a deaf ear, and our interpreter seemed suddenly to have forgotten all the Fulah language he knew. In the end our guide resigned himself to the inevitable.

We had to make haste, for, reflecting on the causes of the check we had received at Ilo, I was led to think that the English might have had something to do with it, or, at least, that people who had been amongst them—for the English themselves have no political influence in these parts—had had intelligence enough to understand and look after their interests. In the suite of the chief there was a native of Bidda, who asked me to let him accompany me back to his native place, but he too disappeared. In any case, however, as Amadu told me, the news of our stay at Say had not yet reached Gomba, still less Bussa, we might still, by pushing on rapidly, circumvent the plans of those who were anxious to make mischief. Forward then as rapidly as possible!

We soon passed the mouth of the Ngubi-Sokoto, of anything but imposing appearance, but, as we were told, navigable at high water for canoes until nearly up to the village from which it takes its name. In the evening we had made more than 32 miles, the longest distance achieved yet by the expedition in one day. We anchored a little beyond Lanfaku.

Here we were visited by two parties of fishermen, who came to us in canoes from the villages, such as are scattered about near all important Fulah centres of population. The young men had their heads shaved, but for a kind of tuft of hair left on the middle of the upper part of the head, which was really not at all unbecoming. Amadu told me that the Grunner expedition had been attacked on its return from Gando at the village of Gesero, which was at war with Gando. The inhabitants had tried to stop the guides of the Germans by firing at them. Grunner had therefore burnt their village.

At ten o’clock we were overtaken by a tornado. We were back again in the winter in fact, and every night there was a storm, or at least a downpour of rain.

On the 29th we continued our forced march, passing several fine villages surrounded by _tatas_. Kundji seemed a very big, strong place.

At about eleven o’clock we passed three rocks which probably form part of a bar across the river when the water is low, marking the beginning of the difficult and broken course below. At four o’clock we anchored opposite Tchakatchi, on an island at the foot of a group of magnificent baobabs. At the end of this island is a great mass of flint, and the banks were strewn with the big rocks of polished granite we knew so well. We were back again amongst the rapids, and had once more to encounter difficulties such as we had conquered at Ayoru and Kendadji. The whole village turned out to see us, and the chief himself offered to act as pilot. I accepted his suggestion, for our old Amadu had rather exaggerated his hydrographical knowledge. The only garment of most of the men of the village was a little leather apron worn behind, but some few wore drawers made of blue Haussa cotton. The faces of the women were scarred in the same way as those of their sisters of Kebbi, and they wore as ornaments in the lobes of the ear, little pieces of white stick about a quarter of an inch in diameter by seven inches long.

At seven o’clock the next day we started, preceded by the chief of Tchakatchi, who steered a tiny little canoe with a paddle curiously shaped and carved. The river was very much what we had expected it would be the evening before, the rocks forming a regular archipelago of islets, whilst rapids were also numerous. Fortunately this state of things did not last long, and presently we came to an almost calm reach, which brought us to Gilua, the capital of Yauri, where we noted one very large hut, the residence of the chief of the village.

I was in despair at having to travel like a bale of goods, without being able to have any intercourse with the people whose country we were passing through. But what could we do? Since we left Say we had had no power to treat with the natives, our interpreters were scarcely any good, whilst before us we had two great obstacles, Bussa and the English.

According to the most recent information collected, it was at Gilua and not at Bussa that Mungo Park died. Here then we had reached the limit of the path he trod one hundred years ago, and I remembered what Davoust had said to me: “Mungo Park has become immortal through merely having tried to do what we shall now endeavour to accomplish.”

I confess in all humility that since my return to France I have had to change my opinion on that point.

On the left and right of the river there were two mountains remarkable for their shape and their relative dimensions. I tried to find out their names, but was told that they had none in particular. To do honour to our comrades who had died under such melancholy circumstances, I baptized them Mount Davoust and Mount Delagarde, the latter having been the name of a naval officer who died without reaching the Niger.

I trust that these names will be considered of good omen by geographical critics in France, and that it will be admitted that I had every right to choose them. Have not the English named all the peaks of the chain on the banks of the river below Bussa after their great men? Mount Davoust will look quite as well in our atlases as Mount Wellington does in theirs.

We pushed on on the right between the villages of Ikum and Rupia, and after passing a little rapid we anchored opposite a big tree, beneath which a market was being held—an important one I was told by the people of Rupia. The chief of Tchakatchi had told us that we should meet his brother there, who would pilot us further, but he had left that same morning. As usual the people began to shilly-shally with us, and some men from Igga, whom we identified by their white turbans embroidered with green, sold to them by the Royal Niger Company, interposed in the conversation, but not in our favour.

“Off again!” was the word; we would push on and still push on, alone and without a pilot or help of any kind, but we would not be trifled with.

The people of Rupia are many of them Kambaris, a tribe alluded to by Richard Lander. Their women when young go about quite naked, and have the head shaved, but for a narrow tuft of hair left on the top. They have the peculiar custom of dyeing their legs up to above the knee with _rocou_, or red dye, which gives them the appearance at a distance of wearing nothing but light red stockings.

This was the first occasion on which I had seen people in a state of nudity in the Sudan, and this is the more remarkable as there are plenty of stuffs to be had cheap at Rupia.

Noticing my astonishment, one of the beauties of the place made the following naïve remark to me, which I thought was really rather sensible: “Why should we wear clothes? Are we so badly made that we need hide ourselves? All in good time, when we are old like our mothers, we will make up for the loss of our physical advantages by well-made clothes, but not till then.”

Many are the women on this earth of ours who could not say as much!

A little mollified by what my young friend said, I still felt perfectly furious at the sullen hostility and evident prejudice against us we now constantly met with, which delayed our journey in a manner so dangerous. Rightly or wrongly, I saw the hand of the English or of their agents in it all. Fortunately, however, the river is easy of navigation as far as Djidjima, a village picturesquely situated on an island, opposite to which we anchored at four o’clock.

In the evening we went to the village, and I asked for a guide for the next day, without much hope of getting one. I tried to win the people over to my side by distributing a great many little presents. We were invited to be present at a tam-tam, at which three dancers performed, wearing leggings from which were suspended little bits of iron resembling castanets, that made a deafening noise as they struck against each other. The dancers, moreover, were very clumsy in their attitudes.

No guide the next morning, but more men from Igga to stare at us. The accounts that Amadu gives us of the difficulties of navigation before us are heartrending, and as a matter of fact a little further down, the river began to divide again into a great many arms. We therefore anchored, and Digui went on in a canoe to reconnoitre.

Whilst he was away exploring we saw some eighty or a hundred canoes going up an arm on our right, the tam-tam beating ceaselessly. On inquiry we were told that it was only a water convoy on the way to Rupia, where a very big market was about to be held. All the way along the canoes stop to take up traders and their goods, very much as the small steamers do on the Seine, or the omnibuses in the streets of Paris. A canoe presently separated from the rest and came towards us, its occupants saying very amiably that seeing we had stopped, they had come to ascertain whether we were in any difficulty, and to offer to guide us.

There is no doubt there is a good God for honest folk, I very nearly added, and against the English. Be it remarked, for the reader to draw his own moral, that everywhere the inhabitants of the little villages, in a word the poor, helped us. The perpetual difficulties we had to contend with in this part of our journey only arose in the big centres.

Delighted at this chance of going on, we started, our guides being anything but _de trop_, passing several dangerous rapids and arriving safely at Fogué, where the river became once more calm.

On October 2 we had a hard day, but it was the best before we got to Bussa. Near Waro we had twice to go on in single file. The force of the current was now immense, seven miles an hour at least. Once more we felt as if we were dashing over cataracts, a painful sensation we were all too familiar with. Our guide had met a friend, who also to the best of his lights helped us to steer a right course. At half-past five we reached Bussa, and anchored opposite the landing-stage of the village. The river here divides into several arms, the town being on that farthest to the right, about a mile from the bank. A little village occupied by fishermen and traders was situated close to our camp. The water, which is of a black colour, seems very deep here, and the islands are covered with beautiful vegetation. The natives approached us without fear, and we at once began to barter with them in the usual manner, exchanging cloth, bracelets, rings and beads for provisions.

I sent Amadu to greet the chief of the village, promising him a good present if he succeeded in making that chief behave well to us.

I waited his return with impatience. There we were face to face with our last but perhaps the greatest difficulty of our voyage. A very considerable fuss is made about the cataracts or rather the rapids of Bussa. Providence had so far befriended us, and enabled us to reach this point without having lost one of our boats. Not a single man, white or black, belonging to the expedition had lost his life through what a year ago had been called our temerity. We had managed everywhere with greater or less difficulty to pass on in peace, leaving behind us none who had cause to hate us or to vow vengeance on us. Yet one last effort, and our aim would be achieved just as I had hoped to achieve it, exactly in accordance with our instructions, in spite of all the difficulties thrown in our way, not only by inanimate nature but by man. Just because this was to be our last struggle we dreaded it more than we had done any other. I was therefore immensely relieved when I saw Amadu coming back accompanied by an emissary from the chief. According to him all would go well, all was arranged; the chief of Bussa would supply us with all we needed, and, greatly to the delight of our men, give us all the help required for passing the rapids safely. A good supply of the fruit called _kus_ accompanied these cheering words. The chief would receive us the next day.

Whilst I was chatting with our guide and the natives who accompanied him, some girls were singing our praises and those of their master. According to their songs the people of Bussa are descended from the Persians, and they do in fact claim that they are the children of Kisira, who fought with Mahomet, and were driven away by him. Reference to history will show us that Kisira is only another name for Chosroes the Great, who was, as a matter of fact, the unfortunate adversary of the founder of Islam.

I state the fact for what it is worth, for the benefit of ethnologists.