5o6 THE EXPLORATION OF THE NIGER If we are equally negligent with the Awellimiden, we shall obtain equally melancholy results.

If only an opposite policy could be pursued, how different everything would be !

Whilst waiting for that iron road, and alas ! its completion is very far off! the only means of transit — bearing in mind the impossibility of navigating the second section of the river — is to employ the comparatively cheap and easily obtained ships of the desert, the ugly but useful camels.

Now the camels all belong to the Tuaregs, generally to their Imrad tribes.

Let us imagine that the railway is completed, that boats brought up in sections to Kolikoro have been put together there, and are going down the river as far as Gao, boats sufficiently well armed to make the French respected, and of sufficient tonnage to carry merchandise ; we should at once have either at Gao or somewhere else in its neighbourhood, a centre, so to speak, of transit, to which the Tuaregs could bring their animals to be laden, and acting as convoys to our caravans, would be most useful auxiliaries to the French traders.

Do not let any one urge against this the pillaging instincts of the Tuaregs. To begin with, it is in our power, if necessary, to destroy, or at least to insist, upon the removal elsewhere, of the riveraine negro villages, an excellent way of keeping the natives in awe, for we should then have it in our power to avenge ourselves efficaciously on them in case of their hostility, for it is from these riveraine districts that they obtain the grain which is their only food.

I assert, however, that it would never be necessary to proceed to such extremities as that.

The Tuaregs are alike too intelligent and avaricious of gain to risk raids, the result of which would be uncertain.