424 THE EXPLORATION OF THE NIGER communities were too prudent to sanction this, and their counsels succeeded in curbing the impatience of the hotheaded, but at Tombutu the chief had just died, and the young warriors, deprived of his advice when it was most needed, did fall upon the French, getting the worst of it.

Though Madecali had really had nothing to do with the skirmish its people were afraid of our vengeance, or at least of a demand from us for compensation, and the first question Soule put to me was, " Are you the same Frenchmen as came here last year ? " I had been promised a guide, but he did not appear, and our palaver grew more and more constrained. I had begun by a distribution of presents, and Soul6 had already received a velvet burnous, a red bubu and two pieces of Guinea cloth, to distribute among the notables of his village, but I now stopped my largesse, declaring that the other presents were at the bottom of the hold : we must be quiet if we were to get them out, and it was impossible to do so with such a crowd about us. They should be handed over, I added, to an accredited messenger from the chief, whom he would be good enough to send with the promised guide.

Tableau ! Soule, who from the specimens he had seen of them, knew that our goods were just what he wanted, was eager for more of them. He replied that he had no one he could send for the rest of the presents, to which I retaliated that I had said my last word.

To change the subject, the chief now asked me if I would not have my guns fired off in his honour, as I had in that of the chiefs of Kompa, Goruberi, and Tenda, so that his wives left behind in the village might hear them. I saw no reason why I should say no, so I had ten rounds fired from an 86-pounder at once, which the old fellow did not seem to like much. I followed this up with a round from