French enterprise in Africa

by Hourst

We had on board with us a dog and a cat, which, after a long series of hostilities, had ended by becoming the best friends in the world. But when the cat had managed to run off with a bit of meat, it was worth something to see the advances made to him by his friend the dog, who was bent on taking it away. The cat would begin by putting his paw on the meat, looking angry and showing his claws. The dog would then assume a plaintive air, giving vent to low moans of assumed distress, and advancing gradually upon the cat, who was watching his every movement, would at last completely hypnotize him. This done, he would pounce with a yelp upon the coveted morsel and dash off with it. He was just like the chief of Kompa.

The rain over, we returned on board, followed by an immense number of our new friends. The nephew of the chief of Tendu—who, I was told, was really paramount throughout Dendi—accompanied us, as well as the chief of the captives of the chief of Kompa. The last-named carried a gun, the only one in the village, of which he was very proud, but the hammer having long since been destroyed, the charge had to be set fire to with a wick. The owner of this gun pointed out the spot from which, aided by Ibrahim Galadio, the Toucouleurs had attacked Kompa. He also showed me a big shield of ox-hide, behind which the besieged had tried to take shelter, and which was riddled by the Toucouleur bullets. In spite, however, of the superiority of their weapons, the Foutanis had been driven back with great slaughter, a fact very creditable to the courage of the people of Dendi. It will, in my opinion, be with the aid of this race, little civilized, it is true, but not yet infected with the intolerance and fanaticism of the Mussulmans, that we shall be able to pacify the valley of the Niger by driving away the Toucouleurs first, as with the help of the Bambaras we have restored tranquillity in the French Sudan.

On the 20th we went on to Goruberi, where lives the brother of Serki Kebbi. We cast anchor some little distance from the village, at the entrance to a creek too narrow for our boats to go up, and the chief came to visit us.

He was a tall, strong-looking young fellow, and would have been handsome but for being disfigured, as is the horrible custom amongst the Haussas of Kebbi, with deep scars from the temples to the chin, long incisions having been made in his face with a sharp knife when he was a child.

I at once began to talk about the intentions of his brother, and to preach the crusade I never cease to urge against the Toucouleurs and the people of Sokoto. The answer in this case pleased me particularly. His brother, said the chief, was suspicious of him, charging him with an ambition that he did not entertain. They had been obliged to part, and he for his part had come to live at Gorubi. They were not, however, enemies, and if Serki were to send for him to-morrow, he should start at once to join him. He could promise me that he would repeat all I said to his brother.

We then talked about the Monteil expedition, and dwelt on the troubles its leader encountered at Argungu before he had succeeded in making a treaty with Kebbi. He was very well remembered, and Serki must have been the child whose terrible wound he had cured, and whose death afterwards had been falsely reported to him. Another untrue piece of news had been given to him at Burnu, for Agungu had not been taken, but had repulsed his enemies with very great loss to them. Namantugu Mame, the brother of Ibrahim, alluded to by Monteil in his narrative, was, however, killed in the fight. My visitor assured me once more that Kebbi considered himself the ally of the French, and would be very happy to see the fellow-countrymen of one who had left such pleasant memories behind him.

I must pause a moment here to dwell on this important fact, which justifies our resistance of English greed. No one could possibly deny that the French were guilty of a great piece of stupidity when they accepted the convention of 1890. Above their last factory on the Lower Niger the English had no better-founded pretensions than we to the protectorate of the natives peopling a problematical Hinterland. But however that may be, the thing is done now. Yet once again our geographical incapacity, our interference in African affairs, has permitted our rivals to mock us with assertions which a little less ignorance on our part would have enabled us to refute.

Sir Edward Malet spoke of the Falls of Burrum; it would have been quite enough to open Barth’s narrative to answer that these Falls were non-existent. Reading the narrative of the German traveller might also have taught us that when he passed through, a descendant of the ancient chiefs of the country was maintaining an independent position in Argungu, and the account of his perilous journey from Sokoto to the banks of the Niger would have shown how very precarious was the influence exercised by the Emir of Sokoto on the countries through which he passed. Since 1890, when the Anglo-Franco treaty was signed, that authority has continued to decrease. Kebbi, Mauri, Djerma, and Dendi would very soon have got the better of their oppressors if they had always worked together. However that may be, they have at least now regained independence, and we French are the only European people who have made any conventions with them. Strickly speaking, the treaty signed by Monteil with Kebbi would be enough.

It is therefore no longer at Say, as the English pretend, that the limit of French influence is reached. The line of demarcation, according to the spirit as well as the letter of the treaty of 1890, ought to leave us the four provinces I have just named. We are again about to abandon our rights won at the price of so much trouble and fatigue. Better still, are we going to leave Sokoto (strong through the weapons supplied by the English), after spreading fire and destruction everywhere, to reduce to captivity and slavery the peaceful but courageous swarms of population, capable as those populations are of achieving prosperity under the paternal authority of the French, so different from the commercial control aimed at by our rivals?

Lord Salisbury, in the English Parliament, said scoffingly that they had left nothing for the Gallic cock to do but to scratch up the sand. Let us at least reclaim that sand, and if we can find a little corner of fertile land which the diplomacy of that time forgot to abandon, shall we let the diplomacy of to-day generously hand that also over to our neighbours? Or will our diplomatists, eager to avenge the insult put upon us, reply, “You deceived us by false affirmations, we were stupid enough to have confidence enough in your good faith without any preliminaries to assure us of it, we are willing to bear with the results of our own simplicity, but it has been a good lesson, and we forbid you to attempt to give us another like it”?