The rest of our coolies dispersed about the town, holding receptions in all the public places of the Sarracolais quarter, telling their adventures with much declamation, and eliciting considerable applause.
The negroes also, it seems, have their mutual admiration for geographical societies!
Later all the brave fellows who had been devoted to us to the death, and some of whom we looked upon as real friends, dispersed themselves once more amongst the Galam villages dotted along the banks of the Senegal, and there at least I can confidently assert our mission, or rather, as Digui called it, the Munition, was and still is popular.
That is something, at all events.
On December 12, 1896, we landed from the steamer on the quay of Marseilles, where men were spitting just as they had been when I left Brest. Looking out of the window of my cab upon the deserted street, I saw a little Italian boy in the drizzling rain which was falling, holding in his arms a plaster statuette representing a nude woman with graceful, supple limbs, probably meant for Diana resting on a crescent of the moon. She and her bearer looked cold and melancholy enough. This was my first sight of a really civilized human being after my three years’ exile.
NATIVES OF AFRICA.
EPILOGUE
I have now narrated all our adventures, and I leave my readers to judge of our work. I think it necessary still just to jot down here the practical conclusions I came to, which may be of use later in French colonial policy.