4o8 THE EXPLORATION OF THE NIGER good, the water was too deep, ninety or* a hundred feet at least, and we had our trouble and wasted our gun-cotton for nothing.

At ten o'clock on the 19th we went up a little arm of the river, really merely an inundated channel, which brought us near the village of Kompa, and at one o'clock we received a visit from some envoys of the chief, who bid us welcome, and sent us three sheep. These men had not the crafty and false expressions of the people of Say, or of the Fulahs. They were fine-looking fellows, though rather wild, wearing turbans adorned with numerous grisgris, or a kind of cap, common on the Niger as far as Bussa, and rather like those worn by the eunuchs in the Bourgeois Gentilhomme. I did not conceal from them that we had been badly received at Say, and told them that their enemies the Foutanis were also ours. That broke the ice very satisfactorily, and I arranged to go and see the chief in the afternoon.

I went with Bluzet about four o'clock. We crossed an inundated track, where we took a good many foot-baths in the bogs.

We found Kompa surrounded by a wall and a little moat, a kind of defence we met with in all the villages of these parts, as far as Burgu. Here, however, wall and moat alike were in a bad state of preservation. Two trees served as drawbridge. Inside the enceinte were numerous mud-huts with pointed thatched roofs, reminding us of the homes of the Malinkes at Kita. The chief received us in a big hut with three entrances forming the vestibule of his house.

He was a little old man, half-blind, but with an expression alike benevolent and cunning. All the time he was talking to us he was plaiting straw for mats, and so were the various notables surrounding him. All the men of the