454 THE EXPLORATION OF THE NIGER our store of thirty thousand cartridges was intact. I decided to sacrifice twenty-two thousand, and Digui, having found a place where the river was deep enough not to dry up in the summer, our canoe went backwards and forwards, and our men threw the cases into the river one by one. The natives of Bussa ran to the banks and looked on in stupefied astonishment ; the copper cases gleaming in the sunshine excited their cupidity.

Next we drowned many of our other stores. Into the water with our bottles of oil and pots of pomade ! Then into the fire with our celluloid bracelets, necklaces, and rings ! The despair of the natives on the bank became deeper and deeper, reaching its height when, just to wind up with eclat and to increase their regrets rather than from necessity, we flung two or three dozen many-coloured umbrellas on to the blazing pile. This produced positive desolation amongst the spectators. All the better, it would teach them to behave properly to foreigners.

A Fulah, sent I was told by the Sultan of Gando, flung himself at my feet and entreated me to stop the destruction, assuring me that the chief of Bussa would do all we wished.

I reminded him of a proverb current in his native place : "It is no good to put the fish back in the water after it is cooked." I had often been to that monarch's court, I added, and I had no time to begin all over again, probably in vain, the palavers of yesterday and the day before that. I had had enough of it now.

The river was falling too ; we had noticed a decrease of some four inches in the depth of the water during the last twenty-four hours, and although all the natives agreed in declaring that it was only temporary, I was not going to run the risk of finding our passage blocked.

Amongst the crowd I noticed a diavandii from Igga, who was trying to incite the natives against us. There