AN ABORTIVE START 9

buried along our path as we returned, or in our little cemetery at Manambugu.

Poor Davoust reached Kita but to die. The order

forbidding us to start had been his death-blow. Until then he had, however, kept up only by force of his intense

determination. It was but his hope of success which sus-

tained him ; he existed only for the sake of his great scheme.

"Merely having /ai/ed to descend the Niger," he exclaimed to me one day, " made Mungo Park famous, but we, we

s/ia// succeed,'*

He could not bear to see all his long-cherished plans upset for no real reason, on the very eve of realization. It was too severe a blow for the little strength which remained

to him. He nevertheless continued to help me in fitting out the Magey a gunboat like the Niger^ which we had brought from France ; he even made some trial trips ; but

in the month of December he set off for home, to try and

regain his strength in his native land, and buoyed up with

the hope of being able to win over our colonial authorities to his views.

He never reached France ; he rests at Kita. When we

thought all was lost, and our mission hopelessly com-

promised, we gathered round his tomb. Perhaps it was

our doing so which brought us good fortune at last.

How many, aye, some even greater men than he, have fallen thus ! Alas ! it has been with the dead bodies of our

countrymen that the soil of the French Sudan, which we hope will some day yield so rich a harvest, has been

fertilized ! Dare we add, that those who went there in the

hope of winning gold braid and crosses, got "crosses"

indeed, but they consisted only of two bits of wood clumsily

nailed together by some comrade, and set up in the corner

of a field of millet, beneath the shade of some baobab tree ; poor ephemeral crosses, soon eaten up by white ants,