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.)”