172 THE EXPLORATION OF THE NIGER experience, so we neither of us closed an eye, for we discussed the situation, and what we should say, the next day, for the whole night.

The result of our conference was, that we resolved to do the best we could under whatever circumstances might arise, for to foresee them was impossible ; in a word, as sailors say, " Trim our sails according to the weather."

The Father, moreover, took an optimist view of our position, partly because he is naturally of a hopeful disposition, and partly because, by a really singular chance, our experiences coincided in a remarkable way with his own two years before, when he was in the Sudan on a similar journey. To begin with, the time of year was the same, for it was on March 5 that he and Attanoux had arrived to confer with the Tuaregs, Azgueurs, etc.

All night the left bank of the river was illuminated with the watch-fires of the Tuareg camp, which resembled a great conflagration. We had not been wrong, a large, a very large force was assembled there.

In the morning my heart beat fast when I saw a canoe approaching, and I made out in it one of the negro messengers of the chief of the village, a Tuareg, and another native whose woolly crop of hair showed him to be a Moor or a Kunta.

The boat touched land, and the third person in it turned out to be really a Kunta, whilst the Tuareg was Madidu's blacksmith.

Why had this blacksmith come ? Because in the Sudan the blacksmiths form a regular caste, which has attained very great influence over the negro chiefs, and the Tuaregs of the river districts followed the example of the negro potentates in listening to their counsels.

Not all the blacksmiths, it must be explained, follow their nominal trade. They are many of them the familiar