April 30.—Khalifa is certainly an extraordinary man. To-night he is to bring to us in a canoe, when the moon is set and all is silence, darkness, and mystery, no less a person than the brother of the chief of Say. We watch all night for the signal agreed upon of the approach of our guests: the lighting of a candle on the bank of the river, but nothing is to be seen. Was the whole thing simply a manœuvre on the part of Pullo to get possession of a box of matches and a candle? Perhaps so, for one of his chief delights when he is in any of our tents,—and he is very often there,—is to strike matches one after the other. He is not the only one with this wasteful habit, Baudry is also afflicted with it, but fortunately we have a sufficient supply even for such vagaries as this, which really are very pardonable in the Sudan.
The next day Khalifa and the brother of the chief of Say actually arrived, after a good deal more fuss and mystery. Even poor little Arabu, who wanted to sleep in the camp, was sent away, weeping bitter tears at the thought that his white brothers did not want him. Very useless were all these precautions, for the brother of the chief of Say, though perhaps rather more polite, was not a bit more sincere than he. Our visitor explained that he had come to see us quite independently, and that his great wish was to make friends with us. What he really wanted, however, was a bubu and a copy of the Koran. As his friendship was of a very doubtful quality, we put off giving the present to another time, when he should have proved his sincerity by getting us a courier to go to Bandiagara. He went off promising to see about it.
We had “big brothers” and “little brothers” ad infinitum, but as there is no masculine or feminine in the Fulah language, the Sudanese when they try to speak French muddle up relationships in a most original manner, without any distinction of sex. Abdulaye said to us, with no idea that he was talking nonsense, “My grandfather, who was the wife of the king of Cayor;” and it is no rare thing for one of our men to bring a young girl to us in the hope of getting a present, who is really no relation to him at all, telling us, “Captain, here is my little brother; he has come to say good-morning to you.”
In my journal I find the following note à propos of this confusion of relationships. The grandson of Galadio, who came to see us, told us he had come to pay his respects to his grandfather, and I was that grandfather, because I was the big brother of his other grandfather. The muddle is simply hopeless, but with it all the natives never lose their heads, but keep in view the possible present all the time.
GALADIO’S GRANDSON.
Sunday, May 3.—The day before yesterday some strange news was brought us by a boy of about fifteen. He had been sent secretly to us by the Kurteye marabout we had seen when we were on our way to Say. A horrible plot was being concocted, he said, for Amadu, remembering the spells of his father, who had been a great magician at Hamda-Allâhi, had made an infallible charm against us. On some copy-book paper, which had evidently been taken off our presents, he had written the most awful curses, imploring Allah seven times over to exterminate the Kaffirs, as he called us, and having washed the paper in water he made a goat drink the decoction thus produced. He then sent that goat to us, thinking we would buy it! But we were warned in time.
The awful grisgris did, in fact, arrive in camp yesterday in the form of a black goat. The poor creature did not look as if she were charged with venom. She was plump not too old, and would make a first-rate stew.
All our men were, however, afraid to have anything to do with her, for in their eyes she was indeed a grisgris endowed with unholy powers by Amadu. The negroes are all superstitious, and their imagination often quite runs away with them. On the other hand, faith is sometimes wanting amongst the Mussulmans. Putting on an air of very great wisdom, therefore, we generously offered two cubits of stuff, worth about threepence-halfpenny, for the goat filled with spells against us, and when the trader who had brought her looked confused, yet almost willing to let us have her at that ridiculous price, we explained to him emphatically that our own grisgris, the tubabu grisgris, had revealed to us the black designs of Amadu, and we intended to have him and his goat taken back to the other side of the river, manu militari, I very nearly said kicked back.
The Kurteye marabout who had warned us, was evidently a friend, unless the whole story was made up to get a present from us. Every evening now regular tornados broke near Say. Up-stream and down-stream, at Djerma and at Gurma, torrents of rain fell constantly, and the lightning flashed from every point of the compass; but, strange to relate, there was no rain at Say itself, and when there is no rain there is no harvest. The report was now spread that we had called down on the village the curse of Allah. The other day Amadu Saturu had publicly recited the Fatiha in the Mosque in the hope of getting rain to fall, and we were told that in the meeting of the notables of the place, the Kurteye marabout had got up and asserted that Say was punished for having given a bad reception to a man sent from God, in other words, to the chief of our expedition, and because Amadu had broken his promise and all his solemn oaths.