Chapter II: The Niger

The Niger, with its vast and misty horizons, is more like an inland ocean than a river. Borne along upon it, scarcely seeing land, the traveller is carried away by those endless dreams which haunt the infinitudes of the sea. Its waters break upon its banks in the monotonously cadenced waves of the Mediterranean shores; and when winds, grown to violence in the desert, swell its waves into a great race, sea-sickness will convince the most rebellious that the river Niger is of kin to oceans.

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Its shores, no less than its waves, resemble those of the ocean. Only occasionally rising into cliffs, as at Koulikoro, they more frequently call to mind our own Atlantic strands, being formed, not of the white impalpable dust of the desert, but of the true reddened shingle of the beach.

Like the oceans, the Niger possesses its sailors, not merely occasional seamen, but whole populations, privileged to serve it exclusively, living for it and by it alone. They are the Somnos or Bosos, and are not the aboriginals of the Nigerian countries, but were among the first of those great migrations of people who saw Western Africa across the centuries. The history of their origin is shrouded in a legend which the ancient among them are very willing to impart.

‘Our ancestors,’ they say, ‘came from the great mountains of the East.’ Do they mean the mountains of Ethiopia? Could they have come from the hills surrounding the Upper Nile? They have no idea. Nothing in their features recalls the marked type of the Eastern African, and their skins are as black to-day as those of the natives of the Sudan. The one thing their legend preserves for certain is, that even in those early times they were a purely aquatic people. They fished and navigated for the king of their country, being bond-servants, apparently, to the crown. The Sudanese to this day do not reckon them among the free tribes.

Thus they boated and fished upon their rivers, until one day the king wished them to build him houses and bridges. This was a task alien to their caste, the work of slaves according to their ideas, and therefore repugnant to them. In revenge they offered their king a present of poisoned tortoise, of which he ate and died; whereupon they took flight in their vessels, carrying all the boats with them, to ensure against pursuit. They followed the course of river after river in their flight until they arrived at the Niger, which, according to them, flowed to the north.

And there they live to this day, lining its streams and tributaries with villages that recall the fishing-hamlets of our own coasts. They form the sole population of these settlements and occupy distinct quarters in the towns and cities, thus emphasising the fact that the Bosos still belong exclusively to the river. All this gave me a reflex affection for them which increased with knowledge, gained by many days spent in the midst of their lives. I have seen them set out to the capture of their great prey (the alligator and sea-cow), looking, the black Bosos in his black canoe, like a bronze group against the blinding light. In the bow of the long, narrow, unsteady pirogue one of their number stands upright in a fine attitude of attack, whilst the other, crouching in the stern, noiselessly obeys the directions of his companion. Silently, almost without movement, they advance until the watchful eye in the bow discerns some alligator asleep on the tide, or some great bearded fish dozing betwixt wind and water. Then the nude silhouette in the bow is strained by a beautiful movement of the free body, the right arm is poised, and the harpoon flung, striking the great beast unawares.

The Bosos is not only the fisherman, he is also the boatman of the Niger, and I have seen him exert admirable physical qualities in this latter capacity, yielding nothing in sobriety and endurance to the ocean-going sailor. The six or eight men forming the crew of my boat worked day and night, alternately sitting to wield the paddle when the water was deep, and standing, when the bottom could be felt, to ply the long bamboo poles. This variation was the only relaxation they allowed themselves besides a few moments for their meals. And what meals they were! If I had permitted it, a few handfuls of millet seed, neither cooked nor ground, but merely moistened with water, would have amply satisfied them. Sometimes when the moon was late in rising, or slumber proved too inviting, one of their number would chant some monotonous and melancholy refrain to which the singer improvised brief couplets which were taken up in chorus by his comrades. Now and again they would rouse themselves to greater exertions by their cry of ‘Tara (quickly), tara, Bosos!’ The six or seven days of our journeying were only broken by some four or five hours of indifferent repose, uncomfortably snatched at the bottom of the boat, and disturbed by the continued paddling of their companions. Could any men of our race furnish a like example of endurance? The chatter and laughter were a little less perhaps in the last few days, and they had recourse rather more frequently to powdered tobacco (their only stimulant), which some thrust up their nostrils and others into their mouths. These were the only signs of unusual fatigue which they permitted to appear. Nor were their exertions undertaken from any motives of devotion, but for a man whom they had never seen until a few moments before starting, and whom they knew they would leave soon after reaching their destination. Moreover, my very eagerness to press forward was unintelligible to them. Time has neither value nor meaning for them; they do not even know their own ages, and their life is merely a road, sometimes long, sometimes short, but in any case leading nowhere.

For the first few days I had to discipline and threaten a little, and, when warnings failed, to distribute a few blows. A strict impartiality always determined these awards, and since a rigid sense of justice is preserved in all primitive natures, they bore me no ill-will for the chastisement. With the mark of the blow still showing grey on their black shoulders, they would seize the first and least pretext to shout with laughter, while the boat slipped along with increased rapidity to the cry of ‘Tara, tara, Bosos!’

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One more tribute I will pay them. Alone among them, distant many days’ journey from the white man, and travelling through an imperfectly conquered, sometimes openly hostile country, never once did I feel that my safety was in any way threatened. Was it entirely owing to the superiority of the white man, a conviction of which becomes firmly impressed upon one (in spite of natural modesty and philosophy) as one traces one’s path through these virgin countries? Did not this sense of security proceed as much from a contemplation of the attractive manners daily displayed before my eyes, the litany of greetings exchanged with the unknown occupants of the canoes we met or overtook, and the good-nature and disinterestedness evinced by all? Fishing Bosos would spontaneously offer my men a share of their catch, a fine fish, or a portion of alligator. Hardly slackening the pace to receive the gift, thanks would still be flying when we had left the giver far behind. ‘Tara, tara, Bosos!’

Is it surprising that the hours spent upon the vast dominions of the Niger should seem pleasant to me? Is it not probable that they will represent the happiest hours of my life as I watch my staff of travel burning on my hearth? They will remain as the souvenirs of a cruise into infinite space and liberty, as a brief escape from the thousand fetters mankind has placed upon man under the pretence of progress. Their memory is a vision of a primeval existence ignorant of good and evil, living, without effort and without laws, an upright and good life. It was, in short, a flight from all the falseness and corruption that civilisation has put into the heart of man, the realisation of the dream which, though played with by many philosophies, has been accomplished by none.

Ah, that delightful, that matchless cruise, which you, fortunate possessors of fast, sumptuous, and elegant yachts, can never enjoy!

My yacht would have ill-supported any one of those adjectives, for it was a whimsical mixture of European barge and aboriginal canoe. It had borrowed from the former its breadth of beam and its flat bottom, and from the latter its sharply pointed extremities and its deplorable facility for springing a leak. A thatched hollow served me amidships as bedroom, dining-room, study, and dressing-room. I enjoyed, moreover, an amphibious existence, for the water unceasingly trickled through the flooring into my apartment. A small folding bedstead was my only piece of furniture. Table, cupboards, desk, washstand, and sideboard were represented by different packages, wicker baskets, bottle-cases, and portmanteaux. A long box filled with earth served as kitchen and stove, and was placed fore and aft in accordance with the direction of the wind. In the remaining very limited spaces the seven or eight men who handled the boat were distributed, together with two bleating sheep (representing our meat-supply) and some clucking hens. The game brought down by lucky shots, and the fish and other properties of my men, were extra; and, in addition to all this, some place had to be found for the kitchen fuel. For the benefit of those who like figures and complicated problems, I will add that my Noah’s ark measured twenty-six feet three by seven feet six in the widest part.

Obviously it would have embarrassed me to give one of those Trouville or Cannes _fêtes_ to which my fellow-yachtsmen are accustomed, but luckily the occasion never arose. Yet _fêtes_ there were, provided day and night by the Niger with a variety and splendour that the richest merchant in sugar-plums could not have equalled. Its waters were now blue as the Mediterranean, now grey as the North Sea, and now again they were apparelled in the green of the great ocean; while Venus Anadiomenes in black sported upon its banks. If these latter were not smilingly coiling their tresses, it was only because their hair was short and greased with butter. Failing this poetic occupation, they were engaged in alternately scrubbing their cooking utensils and washing their children in the splashing wave. Art, however, lost nothing by that, for, in their constantly changing attitudes, their perfect nudity only served to call attention to their marvellously sculptured torsos and their bronze skins, touched into gold by the brightness of the sunshine.

Here and there upon the great strands were playing the strange childish forms, with the great heads and stomachs balanced on the slender limbs, of the negro babies. Drolly would they interrupt their games and run close to the river-bank to watch the white man pass, making him the while--a military salute! Nothing more comical could be imagined than these little naked caricatures with one arm stiffly raised at an angle. If I smiled, they gave me back the same broad laugh the Venus Anadiomenes had tossed me with their ‘Anissagai’ (Good day)--the same that my Bosos laughed a minute after they had been struck. This gentle laughter, with neither intellect nor malice in it, is always ready to their lips, even in the most serious circumstances, and is as necessary to their existence apparently as food or water. It is the happy mirth of a childish people, ignorant of the physical and moral torments from which the more perfect man results.

The placid fisher with the line also greets us in military fashion. This form of salutation seems to be the only thing that our civilisation has brought them so far. Poor souls! when the rest has followed they will have ceased to laugh.

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Between Segu and the regions bordering Timbuctoo I passed wonderful herds of oxen, horses, goats, and sheep. Unlike the stunted cattle and emaciated hacks of the countries of the Niger’s source, these oxen had imposing humps, and the horses were on the lines of Arabs. The sheep, too, were astonishing. Long fleece replaced the close wool of the southern animal, and their flocks were to be counted by such thousands of heads that I was greeted at long distances by ovations of bleating.

Travelling one day between Lake Debo and Sarafara, it was given me to see quite another sort of herd. We were touching upon a large plain bordered by a distant wood, when suddenly, at sunset, four black lions appeared walking in Indian file. They advanced with slow and solemn steps, pausing with heads erect as the sound of our paddles reached them. After fixing upon us a look that was half-displeased, half-disdainful, they turned their backs upon us, and, still keeping the same order, disappeared with unmoved slowness and solemnity in the wooded green of the distance. The scene was so captivating that the thought of my Winchester never entered my head. The gun was always at hand, however, to spread a little perturbation (impossible to effect more appreciable results) among the families of hippopotami who, towards evening, thrust their pink muzzles out of the water, and to annoy the numerous alligators who relaxed in sunny slumbers throughout the day.

The feathered species did not get off so cheaply, however, especially the wild ducks, whom, at my leisure, I would invite to my table in the shape of roast or stew. The white ospreys, the Niger’s favourite bird, were truly innumerable. They dappled the banks, looking like flakes of precious snow, with silky reflections made lustrous by the sun. The gracious outlines of their slender forms, the supple necks and long slim legs, stood out in such dainty visions from the green grass and grey banks that one shot them remorsefully. Alas! their death-warrant is written and attached to the base of their slender necks; for it is there, and not on their heads, that the fragile plumes grow--delicate emblems of themselves and of those alone who should be privileged to wear them. From these plumes, in fact, are made those precious _parures_ which, mounted in jewelled clasps, place such a charming point of pride upon the forehead of brunette and blonde alike. The allurement of such a spoil, seen in imagination adorning some cherished head, dispels all remorse, and hastens the fall of the trigger.

The confidence of these charming birds is very great, for the native, disdainful of its flesh and ignorant of the value of its plumes, has never hunted it. They alight boldly in the midst of the flocks of sheep that have such an inexplicable attraction for them, and it is very quaint to see groups of two or three ospreys surround each sheep, and with gravely measured steps follow its browsing until the innocent ruminant looks like some captive surrounded by its gaolers.

Other birds of valuable feather dart about the sands, such as the marabou, metallic blackbirds, kingfishers in every shade of wonderful azure, and flocks of guinea-fowls, flamingoes, and pelicans. Sometimes, on approaching the sedgy banks, a strange rustling is followed by a cloud of dust. It is caused by those tiny creatures, scarcely bigger than crickets, the millet-eaters. I must not forget to mention the trumpet-bird among my intimate friends--a large black wader, whose note might easily be mistaken for the horn of our tramways.

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As infinitely varied as the colours of the kingfisher are the scenes in which this medley of life unfolds. At Toulimandio the shores are formed of high woods of wonderful verdure, dark and deep as velvet, and the mountains seen in the distance are the last ramifications of the Foota Jallon range. Were it not for the unaccustomed proportions of the river and the marvellous sun, there would be nothing specially tropical about this country.

Little by little the woods thin and the trees diminish in height. The river-bed is strewn with trunks torn from the banks by the floods, and many more hang disconsolately over the water, certain victims to the approaching inundations.

At Nyamina, Segu, and Sansanding, the woods give place to great plains of tillage and cattle-rearing, that spread further than the eye can reach, and close upon them follows, with Lake Debo, a maritime scene. This lake is a huge basin of water by the side of the river, and, the two hillocks guarding its entrance being passed, a veritable sea spreads before you. Water everywhere, always, and for ever. Its shores are invisible, for no distant mountains betray their boundaries, as is the case with the Swiss lakes.

An equally unexpected vision awaits the traveller beyond Lake Debo; and it is now a landscape from Normandy or England that is disclosed to eyes stupefied by such an apparition in the heart of tropical Africa. Great meadows of a moist, intense green are bordered by park-like woods. So vivid is the impression that you are disappointed not to see the turrets and battlements of a Lancashire manor, or the slated roofs of some Château of the Eure, rising from their midst. The superb troops of humped cattle, large and sleek, scarcely dispel this northern illusion.

All this changes after Sarafara, and it is now the tangle of a tropical forest that defiles before my yacht, now some Eastern scene that I have already witnessed in Egypt or Syria. Palm-trees, slenderly erect, dominate a scanty vegetation containing the melancholy green of the olive-trees of Palestine, and thickets of low bushes that recall the fig-trees of Judæa.

El Oual Hadj passed, bright green stretches of quite another character appear, and the villages no longer crowd together upon the bank, but are scattered out of sight, far removed from the river-banks on account of the floods. The only perceptible signs of life come from the fires of these villages, that streak the sky with ribbons of smoke by day and tinge it with red at night. You may travel miles and miles without seeing a living thing, man or beast, upon the shores. An atmosphere of secrecy hovers over the country: you suddenly recall the fact that those mysterious Touaregs are still momentarily its masters and oppressors, and you slip sixteen balls into your Winchester.

Finally, on the borders of Timbuctoo the dunes of the Sahara begin to oppose the sterility of their bare whiteness to the river, increasing in number until the desert itself is behind them.

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Varied as these scenes are, they possess a still further element of change in the formidable rising and falling of the river. A scene known at the height of the waters is unrecognisable in the fall. Taking the same route after some months’ interval, you seem to be following an entirely different river. Where before you sailed in the midst of plains, you now pass between banks some twenty-six feet high. There, where a vast stretch of water gave the impression of a sea, you find a combination of pools and sandbanks recalling the flat shores of the ocean at low tide. At Timbuctoo it flows in swift and foaming torrents, its sides and bed being encumbered with rocks. The towns and villages, at which you had gone ashore to the nearest houses, are now perched upon mounds encircled by vigorously growing grass, and wearing the little airs of a Rhenish _burg_. Fields of tobacco-plants and kitchen gardens flourish on the uncovered banks, while before Segu the oyster-beds pierce the surface of the water. This is in the fall.

All the effects of the rise originate from below Lake Debo, at Mopti, where the river is joined by another as important as itself, namely, the Bani. Towards December they have become a vast mass of waters rushing to the north, and entire plains are submerged to a considerable depth. On the right of Lake Debo an immense region to which the little arm of Koli-Koli formerly gave access, has now become a fief of the Niger. The greatest surprise of all awaits the traveller here, for it is literally a sea of grass. How does that strike you, my luxurious fellow-yachtsmen? It is in truth a singular element, being neither land nor water, but a strange mixture of both; without being a marsh, however, for, the waters not being stagnant, the passing breeze raises no fetid odour. From a depth of six to eight feet the tall grasses emerge, thick and green, and wearing all the appearance of a great field. One of our sheep was so deceived by it that he threw himself overboard, thinking to arrive on pasturage, but committed suicide instead.

Between banks perfectly clear cut, though formed solely by grass, winds that Koli-Koli which has brought hither and spread afar all these waters. The boundaries of Lake Korienza are no less sharply defined in this bizarre element.

In crossing this region my Bosos recommended the abandonment of the easy, but infinitely capricious and winding, course of the Koli-Koli. The journey, they say, will be greatly lessened by cutting straight across this sea of green, a change of route that suits me to perfection.

Paddling being no longer possible, the men, leaning heavily on their bamboos, push the boat vigorously through the grass, which, parting in front, closes together behind us with loud rustling and crackling. We are no longer upon the water, but seem, and it is a truly exotic sensation, to be sliding under a tropical sun over grassy steppes streaked with watery paths. This region of navigable grass is a world apart; the repeated passage of canoes has worn away the green and traced ribbons of water on its surface, in the same manner that the constant tread of man and beast upon the earth destroys the grass and exposes the bare soil. These paths, as conventionality would require of them, are beautifully flowered. Placid water-lilies adorn their surfaces with cups of white, mauve, and yellow, and they are further encompassed by a strange tropical bindweed looking like chaplets of floating onions. With this trivial, perhaps, but certainly apt, comparison they possess another point of resemblance, they are edible, and are greatly esteemed by the native in times of dearth.

It would be ungrateful if among all these pictures, pale images as they are of hours of enchantment, I forgot to include the twilights and nights upon the Niger.

The moments of sunset upon the river are those the greatest intensity of life. The canoes multiply near the villages bringing the fruit of the field to buildings to which the people will flock for to-morrow’s market. The ferry-boat causes the river to resound with gay chatter and laughter, the bleating of sheep, and the clucking of frightened poultry. In the solitudes beyond human habitation the timid hippopotamus, again become the autocrat of the river, gambols grotesquely in the water, prudently waiting until nightfall to come ashore and dine; and the great trees on the bank are so whitened at this hour by the sleeping ospreys that they seem to have been covered by a fall of snow.

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I now join a village and spread my table-cloth on some grassy hillock close to the river-bank. Very animated and well attended are my dinners. First the children come, consumed with curiosity to see the white man, but a little apprehensive too. They advance timidly, evidently feeling for me some of the fear which the negro inspires in white children. A few lumps of sugar soon tame them, however, and then, duly apprised, the chief and notabilities of the village arrive. They salute me and offer (read ‘sell’) presents of milk, eggs, and poultry, and, business being done, I detain them with a little of those two precious commodities, tobacco and salt.

We light great fires as night falls, and they bring out their little clay pipes, their snuff-boxes, or some kola nuts, and a long gossip ensues. Absorbing landscape all day, night reveals to me the soul and thoughts of the country, its history, and the why of a thousand things the sight of which had puzzled me during the day. Above everything, I enjoyed evoking oral traditions concerning the first appearance of the white man in these parts. Mungo Park, the first European to explore the Niger, is the most vividly remembered. I frequently heard, between Nyamina and Khabara, of Bonci-Ba (the great beard), a name given him by the Nigerian tribes, but I could find no trace of our own René Caillié even at Timbuctoo itself. Barth’s voyage, though not accomplished in these regions, is well known by report of people who saw him or heard him spoken of in Timbuctoo. The old men, with wrinkled skins and white hair and eyebrows, were my favourite historians. They could recall to me the past prosperity and great commerce of the Valley of the Niger. They told me of the desolating conquerors and disastrous wars of the present century; of Cheikou Ahmadou, the fanatic Foulbe king, who changed the prosperity of former days to misery. Timbuctoo was the most frequent subject of my questions. It was the home of their youthful memories, and they would speak of it enthusiastically, and with laughter--much laughter--at the recollections of their gay life there, the lively frolics which sweetened their labours, and the especially vivid remembrance of the bewitching beauty of the ladies of Timbuctoo.

In the villages of the Bosos the Niger formed the basis of our conversation. They would narrate to me the legends and the life and being of the giant. On the margin of Lake Debo, they told me, a treasure of gold was hidden in the hillock, which René Caillié pompously christened ‘Mont St. Charles,’ and which they call Mount Sorba. The treasure remains undiscovered to this day. They often alluded to a very large town situated on a lake called Guido. It was the centre of a powerful empire, which, with its capital, has now entirely disappeared.

Finally, with so many other affinities to the great oceans, the Niger could not decently lack its romances of pirates. They had their nest at Sibi, a large village crowning a high mound on the Black Niger. It was passed daily by numberless boats laden with the produce of Massina and Farinanka. Kaid-Ali, the chief of the pirates, was taken with the ingenious idea of stretching an iron chain across the river, in order to prevent the escape of these boats, which he pillaged at leisure.

These Bosos, living at a distance of eight hundred and seventy miles from the coast, possess, as one might imagine, no idea of the sea or of the part of outlet that it plays to the rivers. The question of what becomes of the Niger beyond the regions they know troubles them very little. I sometimes attempted, in the course of conversation, to enlighten their minds on this point. Having one day captured an unusually intelligent Bosos, I made him enumerate all the towns he knew, or had heard of, down the Niger. ‘Sarafara, Khabara, Gao,’ he came to a standstill. ‘Well! and beyond them, what becomes of the river?’ ‘Beyond them,’ he reflected. ‘Oh! beyond them the fishes swallow it.’

When I found some village particularly rich in information and the power of imparting it, I would stay over the following day in order to renew the nocturnal chat, generally retiring to the river at night on account of its beneficial freshness. In the distance, beacon-like fires blazing on the brim of the great river would indicate some native ball, and on approaching one could hear the droning of tom-toms and the cadenced clapping of hands that always accompany these functions. Elsewhere, grazing in the now deserted fields, the noctambulating hippopotamus would neigh us his serenades.

Great fires cover the banks in March. It is the black man’s method of clearing and manuring his fields on the eve of seed-time. He destroys the tall grasses and other parasites by these means, and enriches his soil with their ashes. Thus magnificently illuminated, we glide over the water to the sound of a great crackling which is occasionally mingled with the cry of some wild animal that the flames have surprised in its lair.

In this manner I wandered so much at my own sweet will that even my Bosos, expert as they are, were obliged to confess themselves bewildered at times. With all these pleasures spiced with the apprehension of a sudden illness or unexpected attack, and sustained by the thought of having some lines of the world’s history at the end of my pen when Jenne and Timbuctoo should be attained, am I not right in saying that the cruise of my thatched yacht was a unique one?