The gum forests are in country belonging to the Arabs, on the right bank of the Senegal river, and are consequently in the hands of the Moors, who carry the produce to the river. The various stations we have established along its course are intended for the protection of the traders or coloured agents, acting as intermediaries between the natives, and the white merchants, unable themselves to face the deadly climate, and also to close the road to the British markets on the Gambia river to the Moors. To the garrisons of these stations, regular charnel-houses, our officers and men come out to die, or else to catch the germ of some incurable illness. I learn that nowadays, by dint of using quinine as a preventive, and of improvements in some other respects, the effects of the unhealthy climate have been somewhat reduced, but when I was there the condition of things was really terrible. So my first care, when I reached St. Louis, was to go and see the victims of duty in the hospital into which they were crowded, and my heart swelled at the sight of all the poor yellow wasted faces many of them already bearing the signs of approaching dissolution. Poor brave fellows! How I wished I had crosses to pin on all their breasts, to soften the last moments of the life they had given for their country, by a sign of its remembrance of them! But I had not one, and I could not help feeling furious at the thought that we were close on New Year's day, and that a perfect rain of honours was about to fall on a heap of theatrical directors who had done special service to the government, and private secretaries, and political writers, who had never been off the Boulevards, the favoured elect of the world of politics—those odious politics! The dismal, ill-built, rickety hospital was perfectly well managed at all events, thanks to our naval surgeons, and also to our admirable sisters of charity, whose names I cannot pronounce without indulging in another and an indignant digression.
Can we really have fallen so low as to tolerate that these holy and noble women, who have lightened so much suffering, and so worthily sustained the good name of France all over the world, should be sacrificed in these latter days to a pack of public-house reformers and would-be strong-minded freethinkers?
From the hospital, that ante-chamber of death, I went to the barracks for the living, mere dens, built by St. Routine to sealed pattern, at so much a foot, identically the same in every climate, and absolutely unsuitable for any. How different from the spacious, airy, comfortable edifices raised by the English for the comfort and well-being of their colonial garrisons!
St. Louis is built beside a river, the flat banks of which are seen stretching away hedged in by masses of green vegetation. In the mornings the town is usually wrapped in an unhealthy fog. Yet this is the moment at which the inhabitants are to be seen languidly dragging themselves along the straight sandy streets, between the negro huts and a few white houses with terraces before them. When the fog lifts the place is nothing but a scorching desert. I was to have gone up the river to inspect our military stations and their garrisons, but the only available boat was detained outside the bar across the mouth of the river, which was absolutely impassable. After waiting for it in vain for several days, I left St. Louis for Goree and Dakar.
At Goree I once more saw the pretty signares, a regularly enlisted company of mulatto women, which furnishes our officers, civil and military, with wives and housekeepers during their turn of colonial service. Then I came again upon my friend the King of Dakar, an old acquaintance of mine, who sent me his compliments by his "general of cavalry," a perfect giant in stature, excessively thin, who wore a stock and a cocked hat, and no breeches.
At Goree I embarked on board the colonial despatch boat Galibi to inspect our stations on the Gambia and the Cazamanze. This vessel was herself a curiosity, not indeed as a ship of war, for she was a fine little steam despatch boat, armed with four guns, but on account of the organisation and composition of her crew. There were only four whites on board—the lieutenant in command, a poor fellow who was soon to fall a victim to the climate and die at his post, a clerk, an engineer, and a master-gunner. All the rest of the crew were negroes, hypocritically denominated Government prisoners, whose whole costume, as a rule, consisted of a monkey-skin cap and a string of grigris, or charms, round their waists. "Haven't you ever tried to dress them?" said I to the lieutenant.
"Oh yes, but as soon as they get on shore they instantly sell their things, or give them away to their women, and come back naked. So I have given it up."
When it was time for us to start, the captain owned to me that none of the crew had ever known how to steer, except one negro, who acted as his butler, and he could only steer in a river, by keeping the ship at an equal distance from the two banks. He had never been able to understand anything about steering by the compass at sea. As we had to go a certain distance at sea before reaching the mouth of the rivers, I took on board a whaler and crew from my frigate, and my men went to the wheel. But now a fresh difficulty arose. The single engineer could not stop by his engine for ever, without taking any rest. Now and then the care of the machinery had to be confided to a negro, whom he had trained after a certain fashion, and I confess I felt far from easy when I saw him handling the levers and taps with all the self-confidence of a monkey showing off a magic lantern. Besides our negro crew, there was a perfect menagerie of creatures loose on board. Gazelles, which were inoffensive enough, I must grant, a legion of ill-behaved monkeys, and a tame civet. The monkeys never stopped playing spiteful tricks on everybody all day long, and at night they all huddled together, clasping each other, with their tails sticking out like the rays of a star or the spokes of a wheel. If by anybody's fault or misfortune one of those tails got trodden on, the whole cluster of monkeys yelled for an hour, just as journalists do if a finger is laid on one of their fraternity. As for the civet, she used to offer her company as bed-fellow to each of us in turn, and it was of the most stinking and disagreeable kind.
We soon reached the mouth of the Gambia River, and, entering it through a labyrinth of sandbanks, we saw a wide stream with flat shores covered with mangrove swamps, behind which aquatic form of vegetation huge trees rose, fantastically tall, and in all the splendour of their tropical growth. All the rivers of the West African coast present this identically same appearance. We had hardly entered this one before we were confronted by one of those international questions which swarm on the coast in this part of the globe. The Gambia is a British river, but on its banks is a territory belonging to us, called Albreda, which I was about to visit. Had we a right to go there direct, up the English waters of the Gambia, or ought we to stop first of all at St. Mary Bathurst, the capital of the British possessions on the river, to ask permission to do so? If a merchant vessel, French or otherwise, tried to get up to Albreda, the British stopped her by fair words or force, to maintain their right. But this we were contesting, and as the business was still in suspense, I passed St. Mary Bathurst without stopping, and anchored at Albreda. It is not a very important factory. I was received by four white men and a crowd of negroes. The white inhabitant stretched on a couch under the veranda of the one-storied house in which he dwells, has no society beyond that of the signare, who acts provisionally as his wife, and the crowd of slaves of both sexes who go and come around him. Fever lurks on every side, and carries him off on the slightest imprudence. But it is a rich country, for it is inhabited by a race of negroes, fervent Mussulmans, who are industrious workers, and the produce of their industry is a lucrative article of barter. In the evening, after a long walk through the woods, balmy with a thousand sweet scents, where flights of lovely birds, long-tailed parrokeets, and black-plumaged widow birds, perched in the trees, I saw a small British vessel approach, and an officer put off from her. He had been sent by the governor, who was on board, and had been going up the river to call on the captain of the French ship, and express his regret at not having seen him at Bathurst in the morning—a covert complaint, in fact. On hearing who I was, and that I expected to go to Bathurst the following day, he sent me word that he would return and receive me there.
The flagstaff on which our colours had been hoisted having fallen down, I had it set up again. It was necessary in a disputed country, such as this was, and pending the Government's decision, that our flag should wave over our colonists, and protect them from all insult.