French enterprise in Africa

by Hourst

A long and anxious pause ensued. The blacks continued to fly, the Tuaregs appeared to be consulting together. At last two negroes came forward from the bank, and waded through the mud, which was above their knees, towards us, but they halted at a respectful distance. They were evidently in a great state of alarm, and would only converse with us from afar off; if we attempted to approach them they decamped. It was a good half-hour before we were able to reassure them sufficiently for them to come close to us, and even then they still trembled.

The two messengers turned out to be Armas, relations of the chief of the village. Their first articulate words were a prayer that we would go to an island they pointed out to us rather more than a mile away, for they said they were afraid we should come to blows with the Tuaregs, and that their village would suffer.

We tried to reassure them, telling them we had not come to make war; quite the reverse, we wanted to make friends with the Tuaregs. To begin with, would they tell us where Madidu was? Madidu, was the reply, was not far off, though not actually in the village. And what, we went on, was the meaning of all this gathering of forces, as if they were threatened with war? It was to defend themselves, they said, against a raid of the Kel Air, which they had been told was about to take place. I avoided replying that the Kel Air were far away on the east and north, and that it seemed extraordinary that warriors should have gathered on the banks of the Niger to repulse them.

But to return to the question really at issue. I begged the envoys to announce to Madidu the arrival of the nephew of Abdul Kerim, whom his father had received and treated well some fifty years before; adding that we had not come to do any harm, in proof of which I urged that when the Tademeket and the Tenger Eguedeche had declared war against us we had not even answered their challenge.

My uncle, I went on, had given El Khotab a horse, I now brought the saddle for that horse to El Khotab’s son. I then uncovered a splendid velvet saddle embroidered with gold, the handsomest present I had with me, for it seemed to me that if ever the moment arrived for placing it well, it was at this juncture. The Sultan of France, I explained, had sent me to the chief of the Awellimiden to discuss matters concerning them as well as the French, and I wished for an interview with him, or at least with his accredited representatives.

PANORAMA OF GAO ON THE SITE OF THE ANCIENT GARO.

Our visitors then withdrew, and we waited four hours longer without news. At the end of that time the same negroes reappeared, to tell me that Madidu was then in the village with a large retinue (I greatly doubted the truth of this), and was at that moment consulting with his principal advisers. But, they added, to prove your good intentions towards the natives, go to the island. That will also show that you mean no harm. Madidu’s envoys will come to you there.

I preferred yielding to this pressing invitation to go than acting in a high-handed manner. Moreover, I was not sorry to put a little distance between myself and the Tuaregs, for it was very evident that in any discussion about us nine out of ten would vote for attacking us, and in our island we should be perfectly safe from surprise. We should see what to-morrow brought forth.

We estimated the number of warriors now assembled on the bank at several thousand; it was a very different matter from the gathering of the Tademeket and Tenger Eguedeche higher up stream.