WOMEN OF BUSSA.
During the day more big canoes, from about twenty-seven to thirty-three feet long, came alongside of our boats loaded with rice and the native produce called karité. The English at Seba I was told give two bags of salt for one of rice, and the karité which comes from Rupia fetches a good price in the factories.
I must note here, en passant, how little we French know how to make the most of what we have in our colonies. This karité, for instance, which is a greasy substance extracted from the fruit of the Bassia parkii, is to be obtained in immense quantities in the French Sudan. It has been analyzed, and there has been a great deal of talk about it in periodical literature, but not a pound of it has been exported.
WOMEN OF BUSSA.
I had mentally fixed the 7th as the date for our departure from Bussa, at whatever cost. We had now been there three days, and the English must have heard of our arrival. How would they behave towards us? I know that the Royal Niger Company is not particularly scrupulous as to the means it employs, and of this there are plenty of well-known instances: such as the torture of Mizon by Flint at Akassa, after being wounded in a fight with the Patanis, who were perhaps incited against him; or in the case of the foundering of the Ardent, when her crew, deprived of fresh provisions, died off, the Company showing not a scrap of compassion for them, or at least not sending them any help.
TRUMPETERS OF BUSSA.
From the English point of view, it would be a fairer way of making war to rouse the people of Bussa against us; but never mind, we have cannon, rifles, and thirty thousand cartridges, so that although the natives do own a certain number of quick-firing weapons, we should be the ones to get the best of it in a fight.