348 THE EXPLORATION OF THE NIGER topics of conversation, so we talked more .and more of France, which of course only intensified our home-sickness. Taburet, who had a wonderful memory for dates, seemed to find every day of the month an anniversary of some event.

It became a more serious matter when our ennui resulted in constant attacks of fever, but fortunately these attacks, thanks to the daily dose of quinine, were never very serious, only their recurrence was weakening, the more so that they were accompanied by what we called the Sudanite fever, a kind of moral affection peculiar to African soil.

This Sudanite affection betrayed itself by different eccentricities in different people. It really is the effect of the great heat of the sun upon anaemic subjects, or upon those whose brains are not very strong. Sometimes, at about four o'clock in the morning, we used all of a sudden to hear a series of detonations inside the enceinte. "Holloa!"

we would exclaim, "someone has got an attack of Sudanite fever, and is working it off by firing at bottles floating on the river." Or another of the party would seal himself up hermetically in his hut, blocking every hole or crack through which a ray of sunlight could penetrate. The whole of the interior would be hung with blue stuff, under the pretence that red or white light would give fever. Another case of Sudanite !

We could cite many more examples of the disease during our stay at Fort Archinard.

However different may be most of its symptoms, one is always the same — a patient afflicted with it contradicts everybody and shows an absolutely intolerant spirit.

Truth to tell, I must add, in common fairness, that we were all more or less affected by it. We might have managed to pull along peaceably in an ordinary station with occupations which separated us from each other sometimes, but in this island, this cage, for it was little