At seven o’clock the next day we started, preceded by the chief of Tchakatchi, who steered a tiny little canoe with a paddle curiously shaped and carved. The river was very much what we had expected it would be the evening before, the rocks forming a regular archipelago of islets, whilst rapids were also numerous. Fortunately this state of things did not last long, and presently we came to an almost calm reach, which brought us to Gilua, the capital of Yauri, where we noted one very large hut, the residence of the chief of the village.
I was in despair at having to travel like a bale of goods, without being able to have any intercourse with the people whose country we were passing through. But what could we do? Since we left Say we had had no power to treat with the natives, our interpreters were scarcely any good, whilst before us we had two great obstacles, Bussa and the English.
According to the most recent information collected, it was at Gilua and not at Bussa that Mungo Park died. Here then we had reached the limit of the path he trod one hundred years ago, and I remembered what Davoust had said to me: “Mungo Park has become immortal through merely having tried to do what we shall now endeavour to accomplish.”
I confess in all humility that since my return to France I have had to change my opinion on that point.
On the left and right of the river there were two mountains remarkable for their shape and their relative dimensions. I tried to find out their names, but was told that they had none in particular. To do honour to our comrades who had died under such melancholy circumstances, I baptized them Mount Davoust and Mount Delagarde, the latter having been the name of a naval officer who died without reaching the Niger.
I trust that these names will be considered of good omen by geographical critics in France, and that it will be admitted that I had every right to choose them. Have not the English named all the peaks of the chain on the banks of the river below Bussa after their great men? Mount Davoust will look quite as well in our atlases as Mount Wellington does in theirs.
We pushed on on the right between the villages of Ikum and Rupia, and after passing a little rapid we anchored opposite a big tree, beneath which a market was being held—an important one I was told by the people of Rupia. The chief of Tchakatchi had told us that we should meet his brother there, who would pilot us further, but he had left that same morning. As usual the people began to shilly-shally with us, and some men from Igga, whom we identified by their white turbans embroidered with green, sold to them by the Royal Niger Company, interposed in the conversation, but not in our favour.
“Off again!” was the word; we would push on and still push on, alone and without a pilot or help of any kind, but we would not be trifled with.
The people of Rupia are many of them Kambaris, a tribe alluded to by Richard Lander. Their women when young go about quite naked, and have the head shaved, but for a narrow tuft of hair left on the top. They have the peculiar custom of dyeing their legs up to above the knee with rocou, or red dye, which gives them the appearance at a distance of wearing nothing but light red stockings.
This was the first occasion on which I had seen people in a state of nudity in the Sudan, and this is the more remarkable as there are plenty of stuffs to be had cheap at Rupia.