FROM FAFA TO SAY 269 one?" By dint of the exercise of much patience, and the use of many soothing arguments, we gradually succeeded in appeasing them. They gave us an original version of the fight which had taken place with Captain Toutee the year before. It was not, according to them, with the Tuaregs that he had fought, but with the people of Sinder.

All the negroes of the riveraine districts of the Niger wear the same kind of costume, including the veil, and use the same kind of weapons as the Tuaregs, which explains the mistake. The Tuaregs had been awaiting the expedition at Satoni, intending to attack it, but it had made a ditour and avoided them. The Wagobs of Sinder by order of Bokar Wandiei'du, and also because a sentinel had by accident killed a nephew of the chief of the village, attacked the canoes of the Toutee expedition, attributing what they thought was a retreat to fear. Fifty natives were killed, and the memory of their fate was still fresh.

About noon the next day we were opposite Satoni, and we anchored the same evening near the right bank, where we could make out some lofty dunes on which were perched three villages and a Tuareg encampment.

I had a presentiment that we had now reached a critical and most perilous moment of our expedition. All the defiance we had recently met with, and the unwillmgness to help us was of bad augury, and we were, as a matter of fact, entirely at the mercy of tlie natives.

Higher up stream, when the Kel es Suk and the Tademeket wanted to bar the road against us, the river was free from obstacles, and they were quite unable to stop us. We could afford to laugh at their futile efforts.

Below Ansongo, too, though the difficulties of navigation were considerable, we could to some extent count upon