440 THE EXPLORATION OF THE NIGER I confess in all humility that since my return to France I have had to change my opinion on that point.

On the left and right of the river there were two mountains remarkable for their shape and their relative dimensions. I tried to find out their names, but was told that they had none in particular. To do honour to our comrades who had died under such melancholy circumstances, I baptized them Mount Davoust and Mount Delagarde, the latter having been the name of a naval officer who died without reaching the Niger.

I trust that these names will be considered of good omen by geographical critics in France, and that it will be admitted that I had every right to choose them. Have not the English named all the peaks of the chain on the banks of the river below Bussa after their great men? Mount Davoust will look quite as well in our atlases as Mount Wellington does in theirs.

We pushed on on the right between the villages of Ikum and Rupia, and after passing a little rapid we anchored opposite a big tree, beneath which a market was being held — an important one I was told by the people of Rupia. The chief of Tchakatchi had told us that we should meet his brother there, who would pilot us further, but he had left that same morning. As usual the people began to shilly-shally with us, and some men from Igga, whom we identified by their white turbans embroidered with green, sold to them by the Royal Niger Company, interposed in the conversation, but not in our favour.

" Off again ! " was the word ; we would push on and still push on, alone and without a pilot or help of any kind, but we would not be trifled with.

The people of Rupia are many of them Kambaris, a tribe alluded to by Richard Lander. Their women when young go about quite naked, and- have the head shaved, but for a