As for me, while Aumale was steaming towards Algeria
I was bidding farewell to my excellent friends and
relatives, Queen Dona Maria and King Ferdinand, and
setting sail for Senegal and the Guinea Coast, where
I was to make the round of our colonial settlements.
1843
The canoe manned by four paddlers in which I had crossed
the bar at Guet-n-dar was carried high up on the sand
on the crest of a huge wave. A crowd of blacks
rushed forward before the wave could come back, lifted
me out, and put me down, with loud shouts of “Petit
roi pas goutte d’eau " (Not a drop of water
on our little king), at the feet of Bobokar, King
of Guet-n-dar, a tall negro, dressed in a striped cotton
gown, and with a laced cocked hat on his head, which
had seen better days on a general officer’s
or a coachman’s.
As soon as I was landed, the King of Guet-n-dar (I
only call him king in obedience to the African custom
which bestows the title on every chief who has a right
to beat other people)—the King, I say, set
himself to work to make way for me through his subjects
crowding round, with heavy blows from his cudgel,
and crossing the tongue of sand between the Senegal
river and the sea, which forms his kingdom, I entered
St. Louis, the capital of our possessions on the West
African coast. While nobody talks anything but
sugar at Martinique, nor cod in Newfoundland, at St.
Louis the only subject of conversation is gum.
It is its staple product, and indeed is found nowhere
else, except in Arabia.
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
