French enterprise in Africa

by Hourst

Higher up stream, when the Kel es Suk and the Tademeket wanted to bar the road against us, the river was free from obstacles, and they were quite unable to stop us. We could afford to laugh at their futile efforts. Below Ansongo, too, though the difficulties of navigation were considerable, we could to some extent count upon the goodwill of the people, who would, if they were not particularly ready to serve us, at least remain neutral.

Now, alas! I felt that at any moment the smouldering powder might explode, for at our approach the women and children hid themselves. To get guides I had to use every possible means: caresses, presents, even threats, for without guides we should be utterly lost.

The stream here divides literally into thousands of channels; how then were we to choose the best one amongst perhaps ten opposite to us at a time? Then again, in some pass when we are being swept along in the one finally chosen as the best, the least hesitation, the smallest slip in steering, and our boat would be lost, staved in, utterly wrecked. Here and there, too, massive rocks rose on either side of us, so covered with dense vegetation that twenty men armed with bows and arrows or spears could easily have made an end of us.

A little after our arrival at Satoni we were hailed from a canoe containing the son of the chief of Farca, who could not refrain from showing his satisfaction when he found we were not the same white men as those who had come the year before. We had scarcely entered into conversation with him when three Tuaregs also arrived to interview us.

One was a relation of Bokar Wandieïdu, chief of the Logomaten, another his blacksmith, and the third a young man, the son of El Mekki, chief of the Kel es Suk of Ansongo.

The situation was becoming interesting. Our throats were parched with our anxiety. Would peace or war be the issue of the interview?

“Bokar sends you greeting,” began his messenger, “and bids me inform you that at the news of your approach he collected a troop of his warriors; the Wagobés of Sinder, the Kourteyes, the Fulahs, and the Toucouleurs of Amadu Cheiku, have held a palaver with him, and all of one accord agreed to unite their forces, and bar the road against you. Some Toucouleurs are now, in fact, with Bokar making final arrangements.

“Two days ago, however, the young man you see here came to us, sent by Madidu to order us not merely to do you no harm, but to aid you if need were. Fear nothing, therefore, no one can speak further after the Amenokal has spoken. If you flung a dagger up in the air, saying, ‘That is for Madidu!’ it would not touch the ground again until it reached his hands.”

I had not then been mistaken; a formidable coalition had been formed against us, and had it taken action we should, I repeat once more, have been hopelessly lost. True to his word, worthy son of the noble race to which he belongs, chief of the most powerful of the confederations of Nigritia, the Amenokal had interposed his all-powerful influence on our behalf just at the right moment. I assert once more, and would have all my fellow-countrymen know it, that if we ever get home again, if we were the first to go down the Niger to the sea, and to trace the course of that mighty river, if we did not leave our skeletons to bleach upon its banks, it was due to the mighty chief of the Awellimiden, to Madidu Ag el Khotab, and to him alone.

I do not think I owe such a debt of gratitude as this to any man of my own race!