FROM FAFA TO SAY 289 might perhaps have managed to do another fifty miles or so, and try to find rest in a more hospitable district, where we could pass the rainy season not so very far from Bussa, which was to be our final goal.

One thing decided me to act as I did, and I can at least claim that I made up my mind quickly. I was determined to fulfil to the letter, with true military obedience, the last instructions I had received before starting. These were my instructions — " Bamako de Saint-Louis, Number 5074. Received on November 23, at half-past four in the afternoon — IVi// arrange for you to receive sitppie?nentary instructions at Say, In case unforeseen circumstances prevent those instructiofis being t /it re before your arrival, iu ait for them'' This, as will be observed, is clear and precise enough. Of course such orders would not have been sent but for the ignorance in France of the state of things at Say, They would otherwise have been simply ridiculous. However, an order cannot be considered binding unless he who gives that order understands exactly what will be the position when he receives it, of the person to whom it is sent, and who is expected to execute it.

Still those instructions might arrive ; rarely had such a thing happened in French colonial policy, but it was just possible that our presence at Say was part of a plan of operations at the mouth of the Niger or in Dahomey. I need hardly add that it turned out not to be so, but I was quite justified in my idea that it might have been, and in any case I had no right to conclude to the contrary.

So I decided in spite of everything and everybody to remain.

Oh, if we had but started a little earlier ; if M. Grodet had not stopped us and kept us in the Sudan as he did !

If we could but have joined the Decceur-Baud, or even the u