During the night a Kel es Suk arrived, who, in a very important manner, informed me that he had very serious news to communicate. The whole of the tribes of the Sahara, he said, had combined against the French, and were advancing upon Timbuktu. Awellimiden, Hoggars and all the rest of them were up, and Madidu himself was at Bamba at the head of his column. This was really too big an invention, and the narrator overreached himself by going so far. Without losing my sang-froid for a moment, I thanked my informant, Father Hacquart acting as interpreter, for my visitor spoke Arabic well, and begged him to take my best compliments to Madidu. The old rogue then turned to the subject he really had most at heart, and tried to make me give him a garment of some kind as a present, but I was too deep for that, and sent him off empty-handed.
OUR PEOPLE SHELLING OUR RICE AT GUNGI.
Directly we stopped we were inundated by visitors, all nearly as worrying as the rain, which had been falling without ceasing since the evening before. To begin with, on the morning of the 22nd came messengers from Sakhaui to ask in his name for advice. The Commandant of Timbuktu had sent him a letter announcing the approaching arrival of Colonel de Trentinian, Governor of the French Sudan. The Commandant ordered Sakhaui to go to Timbuktu, and he was very much frightened. I did my best to reassure the messenger, but I am very certain that Sakhaui does not mean to budge. The message would, however, do us no end of harm, and from my journal that day I perceive that I felt very indignant at the policy pursued by our authorities in the Sudan. I find written there—“We really are an extraordinary people, we seem to expect that the Tuaregs will come and throw themselves into our arms of their own accord, without our having employed any conciliatory or coercive means to induce them to do so. But, good Heavens! if they could send us to the Devil, from whom their marabouts tell them we come, they would gladly do it. And really I don’t blame them, for I see well enough what they have to lose by our presence in their land, though I don’t quite see what they are to gain. Taking into account the apathy with which commercial questions are treated, I do not yet foresee the day when amends will be made for the imposts now levied by force, by the granting of new rights of way, and the supplying of new means of transport.”
Nor have I seen reason since to change my opinion, for to talk of colonial questions in France is to preach in the desert. Nevertheless, I am firmly convinced that then as now I wrote only the exact literal truth.
It was now R’alli’s turn again. We had not seen the fellow for some time, but I am willing to swear three times by Allah, that since we treated him as we did at Zarhoi he had been our most faithful and devoted adherent. He would never let us go anywhere without preparing the way before us, so he had gone on in advance of our barges now, and spread our fame amongst the sheriffs and other idiots, who did not know us as he did, and who received his reports by beating the tabala or war-drum; or, to speak with more strict accuracy, he found the drum being beaten, and fearing that the sound of that one instrument would lead to the beating of others, he confiscated it at once. Then he, R’alli, having inquired what all the noise meant, the owner of the drum replied that he was afraid the white men were coming to take away his goods, his oxen, his sheep, and so on. “Then,” added R’alli, with an air of extreme amiability, “to show him he had nothing to fear, I took everything away from him.” I began to shout at him—“And that is the way you make friends for us!” “To give everything back when you have passed,” he went on with a smile. If the story he told me is true, and I shouldn’t like to swear that it was, I wouldn’t mind taking my oath that the poor sheriff will not get all his property back. However, the unabashed R’alli continued, “You ought to dress me now as you do your other soldiers, for am not I now one of your troops?”
SHERIFF’S HOUSE AT GUNGI.
I observed that I had already given him stuff enough to clothe his whole family.
“But my bubu and breeches are dirty now!” he replied. “Well, go and wash them, you wretch!” was the angry rejoinder. “What!” he cried, “would you like a soldier under such a chief as you to demean himself by such work as that?”