Is it an ideal equipage? or is it as bad as it is painted? I do not venture to decide the question. The truth, perhaps, lies between the two extremes. On the one hand, these carts were always able to follow our troops in the Sudan; but on the other, their intrinsic weight might very well be lessened. The chief advantage of metal rather than of wooden carts, is that they are watertight, and that when unloaded they can be floated across streams or rivers, but as I have never seen a Lefebvre cart execute this manœuvre, I feel a little sceptical about it still.
LOADING OUR CONVOY.
When the packages to be carried are small, compact, and about the same size and shape, it is easy enough to stow them away, but this was by no means the case with ours, and our large packages would be fearfully difficult to arrange and balance in the heavy metal carts.
On the 14th the mules arrived, some of which were to be harnessed to the carts, whilst others were to carry pack-saddles. The whole of that day and the next were occupied in the arranging and loading.
The sections of the Davoust could not, of course, have been carried in carts in any case. I had asked for seventy porters to take charge of them, and these porters arrived in the evening. There was nothing now to prevent our starting.
The route from the French Sudan, so often traversed to re-victual our stations, has been too many times described for me to pause to speak of the stages by which the traveller passes from the banks of the Senegal to those of the Niger. For us, the usual difficulties were increased by the variety of our means of transport, including as they did carts, mules with pack-saddles, and porters. Moreover, ours was the first convoy which had passed over the route since the winter, and the road had not yet been mended all the way. The first few days were very tiring, and men and animals were all alike done up when we reached our first halting-place a little after noon. But every one did his best, and became more skilful at managing, so that in three days after the start our black fellows were as well up to their work as we were ourselves.
This was our general mode of dividing the day. At two o’clock in the morning the blowing of a horn roused everybody; the drivers gave the animals their nose-bags containing a few handfuls of millet to keep up their strength on the road; Bluzet, to whose special care I had confided the porters, collected his people, whilst our cook quickly warmed for each of us a cup of coffee which had been prepared overnight. An hour later we were off, the porters leading the way, our path lighted by torches of twisted straw, the fitful gleam of which made our negroes look like a troop of devils come to hold their sabbat in Central Africa.
Bluzet rides at the head of the caravan, looking back every now and then, whilst two or three coolies run in the rear or on the flanks of our little column, like sheep dogs keeping a flock together. About a hundred yards behind the carts come jolting along on their rumbling iron wheels, whilst the pack animals bring up the rear.
