Then I landed at Bathurst. Our captives, anxiously directed by the master-gunner, contrived somehow or other to fire a salute of twenty-one guns, which was instantly returned from the British forts, and I went ashore in the whale-boat I had brought from the Belle-Poule. The commander of the Galibi, who wanted to escort me, had manned a boat and rigged out his men for the nonce in smart striped shirts and red caps. Wonderful to relate, they were so electrified by the reception I was given, and the example of my white crew, that they brought both shirts and caps faithfully back! I was received on the beach by a company of what in those days was called the Royal African Corps—splendid black troops, officered by white men. I had a great deal of conversation with the governor, a very sensible man, who expressed the hope that my visit would result in a prompt settlement of a state of local affairs which might give rise to the most serious difficulties. He was exceedingly civil to me, and gave me a very fine dinner-party, before which I was somewhat astonished to see "the ladies" appear in the drawing-room, in the shape of three very dark mulattoes, in full evening dress—low bodices, lace pocket-handkerchiefs, and fans. The doors of the dining-room having just been thrown open, the governor indicated to me by a gesture that I was to take one of these ladies into dinner. Not knowing which of them should take precedence, I held my arm out in the middle of the drawing-room, and one of the dark-skinned ladies blushingly put hers within it. Many years afterwards, dining at Washington with that agreeable man, Charles Sumner, the great abolitionist, and some very charming ladies, I amused myself by telling him about my Bathurst dinner, and asked him whether HE had ever given his arm to a negress. I awaited his answer with some curiosity, to see whether he would dare answer in the affirmative before the American ladies, who are so sensitive on the colour question, but he got out of it very adroitly. "My dear Prince," said he, "in every religion each man has his own share of work. I preach and you practise. Don't let us mix the two things up together."
As we were steaming out of the Gambia I saw the commander of the Galibi on his bridge, in a state of violent excitement, with all his crew mustered before him, and appealing in the most vehement manner to his capitaine de riviere (river captain), the title borne by the chief of the negro crew. I joined him, and he said, "I've just been mustering the men. I can't recollect all the fellows' names, so I count heads. I've done it over again four or five times, and there is always one man too many." And then he began to yell again, "Capitaine de riviere! What's the meaning of this? There's a man too many!" The capitaine de riviere, who had stationed himself well forward, pretended not to hear, but, driven at last from his refuge, he came aft, pulling off his bell-crowned hat, the distinctive sign of his authority, and, uncovering his shock of gray hair, like a woollen travelling cap, murmured in his gentlest tones, "Please, sir, he's a LITTLE PRESENT I was given at Bathurst!"
We were soon in the Cazamanze, after having very nearly been lost on the sandbanks obstructing the entrance to the river, on which the sea breaks furiously. The river is a fine one, wide and deep. I steamed up it for about a hundred miles. After the few villages near the mouth we came to a desert country, covered with impenetrable forest and jungle. We steamed along between two walls of green, and our only excitement as we went was to watch the numerous hippopotami, who seemed very much put out by the passing of the Galibi. As we neared our station at Sedhiou, which I was going to inspect, we noticed several villages, the inhabitants of which greeted us with yells. The jungle had been cleared around the houses, over which the great trees stood like huge parasols. So gigantic was the growth, that sometimes a whole village was sheltered by one and the same tree. The post of Sedhiou—a brick-built fort, with a little bastion armed with a gun at each corner—is placed at a point of great importance on the caravan line from the interior. I was received by an infantry captain, M. Dallin, who had done the most excellent service there, but ruined his health, and by two white soldiers, both wasted by fever. The rest of the garrison consisted of black soldiers, splendid fellows, brave and faithful, and excellent workmen, who had done, and were still doing, all the work on the station.
Thinking of those fine soldiers, and then casting back my memory to the services recently rendered by their successors, the Senegalese Riflemen—first-class troops, useful anywhere, like our Algerian Turcos, who have already proved what they are worth—I ask myself why we should not utilise the considerable recruiting opportunities Western Africa offers us to raise a number of negro battalions. They might if properly enlisted be most usefully employed, especially in those unhealthy countries where we now squander so many invaluable lives. I will even go further, for it is my conviction that in thus acting we should be preparing for the future, and outstripping the march of events. The state of armed preparation which now exists in Europe—with every man a soldier, and forced to be a soldier, with every man's career interrupted, and each man's existence hanging on the chance of an electoral surprise or a parliamentary incident—cannot possibly last. It is unhappily to be feared that to escape from this insane condition of things some violent shock will be necessary, which will make a clean sweep of the false notions dressed up in fine names which we have been accumulating for the past century. When that crisis is over, people will want to be free, as Americans are free—free to do and to be WHAT THEY CHOOSE, and, especially, free not to be soldiers UNLESS THEY CHOOSE. There can be no doubt at all that those inventions of revolutionary tyranny, conscription and compulsory service, will become the object of universal horror, and that the first person who dares to take the initiative in abolishing them will be saluted by the blessings of the entire human race. Wherefore every government will perforce have to come to what is right and just—to armies consisting of volunteers and auxiliaries. And who knows whether we shall not then find the real strength of our army in our black regiments, just as Russia would in her yellow-skinned ones and Great Britain in her Indian troops? But I must bring this digression to a close.
As we steamed down the Cazamanze we ran aground, and while the ship was being got off I went ashore, in a creek, where at the very outset I disturbed the slumbers of a couple of crocodiles sleeping on a stone. A moment later I was nearly knocked over by a big boar with reddish bristles and up-curved fangs, a "wart hog." Then I got into the brush, tall grass much higher than myself, above which hung the green roof of the giant trees. Pushing my way along I came to a place where the ground was trodden and the branches broken, and on which I saw the traces and fresh tracks of a herd of elephants. Close to me, too, I heard the crackling caused by the passage of some big animal which I could not see. We followed the elephants' path, but hindered by the grasses they had trodden down, and our feet catching in the holes made in the damp soil by their huge feet, we were soon forced to beat a retreat. Another wild beast's track led us to an immense glade, like a small plain, hemmed in by the woods, where we saw herds of antelope quietly feeding. We started in pursuit of them, but like the ducks on the ponds, the creatures seemed to have a very correct appreciation of the distance our guns would carry and the impotent fire we poured on them disturbed them not. Not a single beast even left the plain to take shelter in the woods, where we could hear the greater wild ones howling. Ah! if we had possessed long-range weapons, what a shoot we should have had, and what a paradise of sport that virgin country was! But one victim only fell to our rifles, a big monkey, which one of our sailors killed, and which he and his comrades eat. It was, so it would appear, a dish to lick your lips over!
For want of game we brought something else back with us from this expedition up the Gambia and Cazamanze rivers—fever. Not a soul escaped it, and in spite of the care of the surgeon-major of the Belle-Poule, who was particularly skilful in treating the malady, we took a long time to get over it. I went back to Goree, where I was to see another sad sight. One of our gunboats had come in from a river-station with only four healthy men out of seventy-five. Typhus fever was decimating the crew. I had to present the Cross of the Legion of Honour to the lieutenant in command, M. de Langle, who had behaved like a hero. I went alongside his ship to see him in the lonely creek to which the infected vessel had been relegated. A crowd of spectral figures crept to the ports to look at me. It was a pitiful scene.
I had by this time gone the round of nearly all our possessions along the West Coast of Africa, and the impression I was carrying away was far from being a good one. On this coast, as elsewhere, France originally outstripped all other nations, and the first European expeditions to the Black Continent were sent out from Dieppe during the fourteenth century. The principal merchandise they brought back consisted of ivory, and the branch of industry occupied by working this substance still exists in that town at the present day. Up to the eighteenth century all the important factories on the coast were in our hands. After that date, just as in India and America, where also we had been the earliest colonists, everything began to go to ruin, and our possessions dwindled to the unimportant posts I had just been to see. Since my visit an effort has been made to recommence some extension of our factories and trade in the locality. The question is whether it will be successful, and, above all, whether, amidst the vicissitudes of our politics and the constant state of provisional arrangement in which we live, we possess the coherence and connectedness of design and system necessary to that success. I pray it may be so! But there are two insurmountable obstacles which will always prove stumbling-blocks to us—the unhealthy climate, deathly indeed to white men, and the black population, a childish race, who may be disciplined into being good soldiers, but who will never work except when made to by force, and that brute force.
Before continuing our cruise along the African coast, the squadron (the Belle Poule and Africaine, frigates, and Coquette, corvette) went to the Cape Verd Islands, both to give the crews change of air, to test the speed of the various vessels, and to take in fresh provisions. This last object was defeated, in consequence of a curious circumstance. A Portuguese station in the Bissago Archipelago had been attacked by the negroes, and when reinforcements had been asked for, the government at Lisbon had answered by sending two transports to fetch troops from the Cape Verd Islands,—from Porto-Praya, where we had anchored, in particular,—and to convey them to the threatened spot. But before embarking troops they had to be found, and there were none, or rather they existed on paper only. To supply the want and respond to the pressing appeal made to him the governor could devise no better plan than to set an ambush at the gates of the different towns, seize the country people as they came in, and send them away as soldiers. Of course, when once wind of this got about, nobody came in, the markets were deserted, and the towns were famine-stricken. Although the Cape Verd Islands appear from sea to be nothing but arid mountains, with bare rocks and rugged slopes, they really are furrowed with delightful valleys, covered with leafy woods, where innumerable monkeys peacefully dwell, and in which the flocks of guinea-fowl inhabiting the open spaces on the islands take refuge from pursuit. There is no more curious sight to be seen than these mobs of birds, two or three hundred of them together, tearing along like a contingent of Arab horsemen, at such a rapid pace that it is impossible to come up with them, on that rocky soil, even with the best of horses. A native of the island gave us a luncheon in one of the valleys of which I speak. His house, which was reached through an avenue of cocoa-palms, stood in the middle of a grove of enormous orange-trees, over sixty feet in height. We were waited on at table by handsome negresses, slaves; and these, according to our host, were the conditions of their life. Their time, except on Sundays, belonged to their master, who, in return, gave them their food, and, when necessary, an occasional beating. They dressed themselves out of the money they earned—Heaven knows how!—lodged where they best could, and were given a bonus whenever they had a child—a young slave to add to their owner's stock. It was a simple arrangement enough. On my return to the African coast, I was to tumble headlong into all the questions contingent on the slave system, the suppression of the slave trade, which still existed, and the whole future of the negro race.
Sierra Leone, our first port, differs from the rest of the invariably flat African coasts by reason of its background of high mountains, and the green hills which run down right to the seashore. Between these hills lies the mouth of a great river, forming an excellent haven, and a first-rate military and commercial station. But the place is terribly unhealthy. To give us a taste of local colour, we were surrounded, before we got into the river, by hosts of sharks, and in a few minutes we had hoisted five of the huge fishes on board. Then no sooner had we cast anchor before Freetown, than a gentleman of a certain age, in a blue coat and white nankeen trousers and a top hat, appeared, asking speech of the captain. He was sent to me. "Captain," said he, "I've come to know how many ladies will be wanted for the frigate?"
"Why, sir," I replied in some astonishment, "I don't know; I've not thought about it yet."