436 THE EXPLORATION OF THE NIGER the Decceur expedition, to whom we owed the change which had come over the sentiments of the natives towards us ?

Later, I learnt that one of my predecessors had had a quarrel with the natives of Ilo, about an ox which had been promised to him, and which, like my guide, never turned up. Perhaps he had not been as patient as he might have been under the circumstances, if he had remembered the interests of those to come after him.

So we started after all without a pilot and passed many villages, the names of which I do not know. The inundated banks were flat and grass-grown, with clumps of trees here and there. We cast anchor in the evening off the left bank, opposite the Fulah village of Raha, a dependency of Gomba.

As we were at dinner we were hailed from a canoe by an old Fulah, answering to the name of Amadu, who offered us five chickens as a present. We circumvented him cleverly. He said he knew the river well down to Bussa, in fact as far as Iggu, where he had been. I proposed that he should act as our guide and introduce us to the chief of Bussa, who he said was a great friend of his. To my delight he actually agreed !

During the whole of the 28th we went rapidly down the wide river, here unencumbered with obstacles, as fast as ever we could row.

About nine o'clock we passed Gomba, inhabited by Fulahs, and the capital of the district. Our guide Amadu evidently thought we should stop there to see the chief, and showed great surprise at our pressing on without a halt. To his discreet suggestions I turned a deaf ear, and our interpreter seemed suddenly to have forgotten all the Fulah language he knew. In the end our guide resigned himself to the inevitable.

We had to make haste, for, reflecting on the causes of