French enterprise in Africa

by Hourst

The Company, however, was determined to escort us to the very threshold of their territories. Those who know what it is to be suspected, will involuntarily compare this conduct to the way in which, in certain shops, customers are escorted to the door lest they should steal anything on their way out.

No doubt, without being exactly sharpers, we might have got a lot of information, and have made observations on many things if we had remained longer on the river. Would that have been altogether to the advantage of the Company? D’Agoult says he saw the steamer laden with spirits going by, yet all the time, according to the Company, all its subjects, white or black, would, under its beneficial influence, become teetotalers or total abstainers.

It was politic too, perhaps, to hide from us the troubled state of the district all along the river, and the precarious position of the Company. Do its members know, I wonder, how happy these discontented regions once were under the French Company, and all that would result from the mere presence once again of the French flag?

As for me, however, I prefer to think simply that this obsequiousness of the Company towards us, this insistence on our accepting the offer of being towed down-stream, and paying for the service rendered, this eagerness to see us off, had but one aim, and that aim a humane one.

We were escorted to Wari to save us from another attack from the Patanis. Our departure was hastened because we were tired, worn out, eager to taste once more the joys of home and family life. All serious thinkers, whose opinion is of any weight, and who know anything about English ways, will agree with me, irony or no irony!

We dined at Abo, and when night had fallen, a launch arrived at our anchorage, which was to take charge of us. On board was a bright, jovial young officer, Lieutenant Aron by name, of Australian birth. Judging from what we saw of him, Australia must be to England what the south of France is to the French. Did he not tell us one day that the Company had a post at Kano, another at Kuka, and twelve big steamers on the river? But for these venial exaggerations he was a charming companion, what the English call a very good fellow, who made the hours we were in his company pass very pleasantly. We shall all, Lieutenant Aron included, long remember the dinner we had together on the Kano, as the Ganagana pontoon is called, whilst a tornado was raging, and he sung at the top of his voice all the comic songs in the Anglo-Franco repertory, to the accompaniment of the flute and the harmonium, whilst quaffing the whisky and the claret we still had left.

As is well known, the Niger flings itself into the sea in an immense number of branches. Two of these branches, viz. that of Brass and of Forcados, are more practicable for navigation than any others. The first belongs to the Royal Niger Company, the second to the Niger Protectorate, a regular colony governed directly from England, and I was told that the competition in trade between the two was very keen.

I had long intended to go down to the sea, not by the Brass, but by the Forcados branch, which would enable me to get away from the Royal Niger Company sooner, and pass a few days in the English districts on the coast belonging to the Niger Protectorate.

I preferred to embark there than in a port belonging to the Company. The two Companies are, as already stated, more or less rivals, and those on the French despatch boat Ardent had cause to speak in terms of high praise of the way in which they were treated by the English of the Protectorate.

Lieutenant Aron accompanied us on the Forcados branch as far as Wari, where resides an English vice-consul. We were breakfasting on board the launch when we came in sight of the houses of Wari. Our three barges were roped together, and their three tricolour flags flying. The launch, however, could not hoist the British flag, its gear having somehow got damaged.