MISTAKES AND FALSE NEWS 381 to travellers with the aid of some pretty fellow-countrywoman of theirs, and it is necessary to be always on guard against this sort of thing.

In the present case the Tabaski fete passed over quietly enough. We regaled our visitors with a little apparently impromptu fusillade, which we had really agreed upon beforehand amongst ourselves, giving the Koyraberos from Talibia a demonstration of the penetrating force of our bullets on the branches of some trees. " Bissimilaye I BissimilayeV' cried old Suleyman Foutanke, hardly able to believe his own eyes.

June, — No rain at Say yet! It really looks as if we had cast a spell upon the place, the more so that the want of rain was accompanied by a plague of locusts. We had invoked the aid of Moses against our enemies, and now, like him, I had brought upon the natives of the land of our exile clouds of locusts to devour all green things. The people were in despair. A drought and locusts together meant perhaps the complete destruction of the harvest. But there is always some good in everything, and the Koyraberos flung themselves, armed with sticks, into the thickest part of the swarms, beating down the insects, which were picked up by the children, and stowed away in their tubus. Fried and seasoned, the locusts made a very appetizing change of diet.

Our men from Senegal, however, made great fun of those who ate them ; they were themselves much too civilized for such food as that. " The Koyraberos," Digui said to me, " are regular savages ! " and it was worth something to hear the tone of contempt in which he gave utterance to this insulting remark.

The chief of Kibtachi, a big Haussa village down-stream, sent us various presents and made many promises to us.

He also begged us most politely to visit him when we i