As we were steaming out of the Gambia I saw the commander of the Galibi on his bridge, in a state of violent excitement, with all his crew mustered before him, and appealing in the most vehement manner to his capitaine de riviere (river captain), the title borne by the chief of the negro crew. I joined him, and he said, "I've just been mustering the men. I can't recollect all the fellows' names, so I count heads. I've done it over again four or five times, and there is always one man too many." And then he began to yell again, "Capitaine de riviere! What's the meaning of this? There's a man too many!" The capitaine de riviere, who had stationed himself well forward, pretended not to hear, but, driven at last from his refuge, he came aft, pulling off his bell- crowned hat, the distinctive sign of his authority, and, uncovering his shock of gray hair, like a woollen travelling cap, murmured in his gentlest tones, "Please, sir, he's a LITTLE PRESENT I was given at Bathurst!"

We were soon in the Cazamanze, after having very nearly been lost on the sandbanks obstructing the entrance to the river, on which the sea breaks furiously. The river is a fine one, wide and deep. I steamed up it for about a hundred miles. After the few villages near the mouth we came to a desert country, covered with impenetrable forest and jungle. We steamed along between two walls of green, and our only excitement as we went was to watch the numerous hippopotami, who seemed very much put out by the passing of the Galibi. As we neared our station at Sedhiou, which I was going to inspect, we noticed several villages, the inhabitants of which greeted us with yells. The jungle had been cleared around the houses, over which the great trees stood like huge parasols. So gigantic was the growth, that sometimes a whole village was sheltered by one and the same tree. The post of Sedhiou—a brick-built fort, with a little bastion armed with a gun at each corner—is placed at a point of great importance on the caravan line from the interior. I was received by an infantry captain, M. Dallin, who had done the most excellent service there, but ruined his health, and by two white soldiers, both wasted by fever. The rest of the garrison consisted of black soldiers, splendid fellows, brave and faithful, and excellent workmen, who had done, and were still doing, all the work on the station.

Thinking of those fine soldiers, and then casting back my memory to the services recently rendered by their successors, the Senegalese Riflemen- -first-class troops, useful anywhere, like our Algerian Turcos, who have already proved what they are worth—I ask myself why we should not utilise the considerable recruiting opportunities Western Africa offers us to raise a number of negro battalions. They might if properly enlisted be most usefully employed, especially in those unhealthy countries where we now squander so many invaluable lives. I will even go further, for it is my conviction that in thus acting we should be preparing for the future, and outstripping the march of events. The state of armed preparation which now exists in Europe—with every man a soldier, and forced to be a soldier, with every man's career interrupted, and each man's existence hanging on the chance of an electoral surprise or a parliamentary incident—cannot possibly last. It is unhappily to be feared that to escape from this insane condition of things some violent shock will be necessary, which will make a clean sweep of the false notions dressed up in fine names which we have been accumulating for the past century. When that crisis is over, people will want to be free, as Americans are free—free to do and to be WHAT THEY CHOOSE, and, especially, free not to be soldiers UNLESS THEY CHOOSE. There can be no doubt at all that those inventions of revolutionary tyranny, conscription and compulsory service, will become the object of universal horror, and that the first person who dares to take the initiative in abolishing them will be saluted by the blessings of the entire human race. Wherefore every government will perforce have to come to what is right and just—to armies consisting of volunteers and auxiliaries. And who knows whether we shall not then find the real strength of our army in our black regiments, just as Russia would in her yellow-skinned ones and Great Britain in her Indian troops? But I must bring this digression to a close.

As we steamed down the Cazamanze we ran aground, and while the ship was being got off I went ashore, in a creek, where at the very outset I disturbed the slumbers of a couple of crocodiles sleeping on a stone. A moment later I was nearly knocked over by a big boar with reddish bristles and up-curved fangs, a "wart hog." Then I got into the brush, tall grass much higher than myself, above which hung the green roof of the giant trees. Pushing my way along I came to a place where the ground was trodden and the branches broken, and on which I saw the traces and fresh tracks of a herd of elephants. Close to me, too, I heard the crackling caused by the passage of some big animal which I could not see. We followed the elephants' path, but hindered by the grasses they had trodden down, and our feet catching in the holes made in the damp soil by their huge feet, we were soon forced to beat a retreat. Another wild beast's track led us to an immense glade, like a small plain, hemmed in by the woods, where we saw herds of antelope quietly feeding. We started in pursuit of them, but like the ducks on the ponds, the creatures seemed to have a very correct appreciation of the distance our guns would carry and the impotent fire we poured on them disturbed them not. Not a single beast even left the plain to take shelter in the woods, where we could hear the greater wild ones howling. Ah! if we had possessed long-range weapons, what a shoot we should have had, and what a paradise of sport that virgin country was! But one victim only fell to our rifles, a big monkey, which one of our sailors killed, and which he and his comrades eat. It was, so it would appear, a dish to lick your lips over!

For want of game we brought something else back with us from this expedition up the Gambia and Cazamanze rivers—fever. Not a soul escaped it, and in spite of the care of the surgeon-major of the Belle-Poule, who was particularly skilful in treating the malady, we took a long time to get over it. I went back to Goree, where I was to see another sad sight. One of our gunboats had come in from a river-station with only four healthy men out of seventy-five. Typhus fever was decimating the crew. I had to present the Cross of the Legion of Honour to the lieutenant in command, M. de Langle, who had behaved like a hero. I went alongside his ship to see him in the lonely creek to which the infected vessel had been relegated. A crowd of spectral figures crept to the ports to look at me. It was a pitiful scene.

I had by this time gone the round of nearly all our possessions along the West Coast of Africa, and the impression I was carrying away was far from being a good one. On this coast, as elsewhere, France originally outstripped all other nations, and the first European expeditions to the Black Continent were sent out from Dieppe during the fourteenth century. The principal merchandise they brought back consisted of ivory, and the branch of industry occupied by working this substance still exists in that town at the present day. Up to the eighteenth century all the important factories on the coast were in our hands. After that date, just as in India and America, where also we had been the earliest colonists, everything began to go to ruin, and our possessions dwindled to the unimportant posts I had just been to see. Since my visit an effort has been made to recommence some extension of our factories and trade in the locality. The question is whether it will be successful, and, above all, whether, amidst the vicissitudes of our politics and the constant state of provisional arrangement in which we live, we possess the coherence and connectedness of design and system necessary to that success. I pray it may be so! But there are two insurmountable obstacles which will always prove stumbling-blocks to us—the unhealthy climate, deathly indeed to white men, and the black population, a childish race, who may be disciplined into being good soldiers, but who will never work except when made to by force, and that brute force.

Before continuing our cruise along the African coast, the squadron (the Belle Poule and Africaine, frigates, and Coquette, corvette) went to the Cape Verd Islands, both to give the crews change of air, to test the speed of the various vessels, and to take in fresh provisions. This last object was defeated, in consequence of a curious circumstance. A Portuguese station in the Bissago Archipelago had been attacked by the negroes, and when reinforcements had been asked for, the government at Lisbon had answered by sending two transports to fetch troops from the Cape Verd Islands,—from Porto-Praya, where we had anchored, in particular,—and to convey them to the threatened spot. But before embarking troops they had to be found, and there were none, or rather they existed on paper only. To supply the want and respond to the pressing appeal made to him the governor could devise no better plan than to set an ambush at the gates of the different towns, seize the country people as they came in, and send them away as soldiers. Of course, when once wind of this got about, nobody came in, the markets were deserted, and the towns were famine-stricken. Although the Cape Verd Islands appear from sea to be nothing but arid mountains, with bare rocks and rugged slopes, they really are furrowed with delightful valleys, covered with leafy woods, where innumerable monkeys peacefully dwell, and in which the flocks of guinea-fowl inhabiting the open spaces on the islands take refuge from pursuit. There is no more curious sight to be seen than these mobs of birds, two or three hundred of them together, tearing along like a contingent of Arab horsemen, at such a rapid pace that it is impossible to come up with them, on that rocky soil, even with the best of horses. A native of the island gave us a luncheon in one of the valleys of which I speak. His house, which was reached through an avenue of cocoa-palms, stood in the middle of a grove of enormous orange-trees, over sixty feet in height. We were waited on at table by handsome negresses, slaves; and these, according to our host, were the conditions of their life. Their time, except on Sundays, belonged to their master, who, in return, gave them their food, and, when necessary, an occasional beating. They dressed themselves out of the money they earned—Heaven knows how!—lodged where they best could, and were given a bonus whenever they had a child—a young slave to add to their owner's stock. It was a simple arrangement enough. On my return to the African coast, I was to tumble headlong into all the questions contingent on the slave system, the suppression of the slave trade, which still existed, and the whole future of the negro race.

Sierra Leone, our first port, differs from the rest of the invariably flat African coasts by reason of its background of high mountains, and the green hills which run down right to the seashore. Between these hills lies the mouth of a great river, forming an excellent haven, and a first-rate military and commercial station. But the place is terribly unhealthy. To give us a taste of local colour, we were surrounded, before we got into the river, by hosts of sharks, and in a few minutes we had hoisted five of the huge fishes on board. Then no sooner had we cast anchor before Freetown, than a gentleman of a certain age, in a blue coat and white nankeen trousers and a top hat, appeared, asking speech of the captain. He was sent to me. "Captain," said he, "I've come to know how many ladies will be wanted for the frigate?"

"Why, sir," I replied in some astonishment, "I don't know; I've not thought about it yet."

"You see I make it my business, sir, when a man-o'-war comes into port, to come and offer my services."

"Well, sir, I'm much obliged to you, I won't give you any special order; I'll leave the business completely to itself."

I never heard why he was so anxious to make sure of a monopoly in his line of business. Apart from this little incident, our stay in this port, during which we were treated in the most friendly manner by the kindliest of governors and his lady, was in no way different from any other.

Yet Sierra Leone was interesting as being the headquarters of the British naval station, established to suppress the slave trade, and as being the place where the slave cargoes found on board the captured slavers were landed. Freetown and its neighbourhood was full of these poor wretches, who were denominated, somewhat hypocritically, liberated Africans; but the government took good care not to liberate them, and there indeed it was right. To have turned out these human cattle, swept up in distant raids, now far from home and country, would have been to cast them infallibly into the clutches of cruel and pitiless native masters, who would keep back what they could not sell for human sacrifices or cannibal banquets. It was mere common humanity therefore, to keep them safe, once they had been caught. But to avoid feeding useless mouths, the finest men were enrolled as soldiers—the British government, ever in advance of others, applying a law of compulsory service, unlimited in period, to their case. The recruiting service once satisfied, the rest of the poor devils were turned, willy-nilly, into "free labourers," and the greater part of them were sent as such to the British Antilles. The ship that bore them thither was no longer called a slaver, and her cargo were not slaves. But if the names were changed, the things themselves were terribly alike. Yet philanthropy and sentimentality were satisfied. And so were the captains and crews of the British cruisers, for hunting slavers is a lucrative business, and the prize money earned made them forget the unhealthiness of the climate and the monotony of the blockade.

The passion for lucre excited on both sides gave rise to actions which bordered on sheer piracy, concerning which many a tale fell on my ear all along the Guinea coast. Thus one Frenchman I met had been in command of a Spanish slaver, which was lying becalmed. He victoriously repulsed the attacking boats of a British cruiser, and killed the lieutenant in command of her, who was the first to board the slave-ship, with his own hand. A slight breeze and the fall of night enabled him to make good his escape. But no more of this. The negro trade and the suppression of it, the abuses on both sides, are all of them bygone things, bereft of interest. Slavery is the one thing that remains. It always has existed in Africa, and the steady progress made in that part of the globe by the Mohammedan religion, which admits slavery, as the basis of the social system, will no doubt still further help to perpetuate it. Should all the black tribes merge into one huge Mussulman body, stirred at once by religious fanaticism and by a passion for slavery, a formidable difficulty will be added to those which already confront European action in the continent inhabited by the sons of Ham.

From the liberated Africans of Sierra Leone we came to another category. A negro republic, with all the necessary impedimenta—elections, assemblies, newspapers, and the most exaggerated form of Protestant Puritanism to boot. This Liberian Republic, founded by an American religious body, is a sort of El Dorado for the exclusive benefit of freed negroes from the United States, and is absolutely forbidden ground to the white race. After great difficulties to begin with, after being abandoned and repopulated more than once, after times of scarcity during which the miserable freed men bitterly regretted their lost servitude, the republic has ended by taking root. There were about ten thousand inhabitants, doing nothing at all, for the free negro thinks and says, like his slave brother, "Work no good!" What did they live on then? First of all, on the sunshine, and then by doing a kind of broker's work between passing ships and the natives. They vegetated in fact, and if they did not actually rot in idleness, they owed it to a tall Virginian mulatto, a very intelligent fellow, extraordinarily like Alphonse Karr in appearance, "Governor Roberts," with whom I had several long and interesting talks. He had been sharp enough to get hold of the key of the cashbox, and by that act had become the sole representative of the sovereign people. In spite of the constitution, in spite of laws and regulations, all power was concentrated in his hands, and, save for the name, his republic was transformed into a tidy little dictatorship.

Leaving Liberia, we slipped away down the Ivory Coast and the Gold Coast, driven gently along by a scorching wind called the Harmattan. Our charts were primitive and incomplete, the information they gave quite inadequate. We had to steer by soundings, very cautiously. The coast was uniformly low and green, with no distinctive signs upon it. If we wanted to know where we were, we had to go after some canoe full of fishermen, and ask our way, hat in hand, as one does in the street. It was a funny sight to see the great black hull of the Belle-Poule, with her white sails scarcely filled by the light breeze, hugging the land, amongst a crowd of canoes full of noisy stark naked savages, hung with necklaces, and with arrows stuck in their heads of fuzzy hair, looking like handfuls of horse-hair pulled out of a mattress and clipped into any number of different shapes. A regular market went on alongside. Our sailors would pass down a biscuit or some other thing in their caps, and haul them up again with pineapples, or bananas, or fish, or perhaps a gray parrot. Thus we sailed along till we came to some great forts, whose white walls bristled with cannon—Axim, Elmina, Cape Coast Cattle- -the two first flying the Dutch, the last one, the British flag. All along the Gold Coast and the Slave Coast we were to come upon these forts, originally constructed to ensure the humane management of the slave trade, nowadays become very burdensome stations, of no value but as marts for the barter of palm oil, oleaginous nuts, and ivory on the one part, against gunpowder, brandy, glass beads, matches, and the blue cotton cloth known as "guinea cloth" on the other. I went from Elmina, where the Dutch officers were most friendly, to Cape Coast, by land, in a palanquin. My companions travelled in baskets shaped like Egyptian mummies, which tall negroes carried on their heads, without putting their hands to them. It was not safe to stir! At Cape Coast, I found yet another mode of locomotion. Governor Maclean took me for a long expedition along the road towards Coomassie, the Ashanti King's capital. We travelled in a small victoria, to which was harnessed a four-in-hand of splendid negroes, whose backs bore the marks of terrible floggings. In spite of the sandy road, the team went gaily along full trot, urged forward by the Governor's incessant cry of "Get on faster, boys!" Then I went back on board and steered for Accra, another group of forts. Thence to Crevecoeur, a Dutch fort, and Christianborg, a Danish one, the governor of which, a charming young fellow, came off to see me. Living as he did alone amongst the blacks, he was delighted to find himself amongst people of his own kind again, for a few minutes.

The following day we landed in canoes, for the bar was rough, and I had been charitably warned not to put my arm or hand into the water. Only a few days previously an unlucky French sailor, who had wanted to get back his hat, which had fallen into the water, had had an arm seized and taken off by a shark. I did as I was bid; we plunged into the surf, and got through without any drawbacks. Just as I reached the shore a tremendous fusillade began. It was a reception after the local fashion, which had been prepared for me: over three thousand dancing natives doing a sort of Arab fantasia on foot. They wore shell necklaces and bracelets on their arms and legs. Some had caps made of wild beasts' skins, or circlets of turkey's feathers on their heads; others again had gold horns on their foreheads. Everybody was shouting and writhing about and firing off guns; the elders of the tribe pressed round me with dancing attendants behind them, who held huge coloured parasols over their heads. The women exerted themselves as much as the men, performing the most extravagant and peculiar dances to the sound of twenty or thirty tomtoms, or great drums, six feet long. The whole thing made the most extraordinary clatter and uproar. When we got near the fort, the crowd executed a sham assault on it, the big gun in the citadel was fired, and I made my triumphal entry between two rows of soldiers in red Danish uniforms. Nothing could have been more picturesque.

The governor gave us a splendid lunch, in the European style, in a big room in the fort. The only thing that was African about it was the waiting, which certainly did not lack local colour; for it was done by a score of young negresses, selected for the irreproachable beauty of their forms, which no veil, not even the very tiniest, concealed. There they stood, plate in hand, and napkin under arm, without the smallest shyness, seeing indeed they wore the dress(!) of the country. Imagine the bronze caryatidae round the new Paris Opera House come down off their pedestals, and handing round the dishes at a big Parisian dinner- party! All these young ladies' coquetry had gone to the dressing of their woolly hair, which was clipped, like garden shrubs, into the most fanciful shapes, and to the fineness of their skins, which were as soft and shiny as satin. This resulted from the daily baths they were in the habit of taking, rubbing themselves also with fine sand. But, unluckily, the rubbing could not get rid of the negro scent. I have never been able myself to endure the odour of negroes of either sex; but I have known people whom it quite intoxicated, and who were always trying to get reappointed to Senegal, so as to get back to it, in spite of having had their health shattered by African fevers. It is said, too, to attract sharks, and that if a white man bathes with a negro where they swarm, the negro is always seized first. I have no personal experience of this fact.

A hundred miles west of the forts of Accra we found ourselves opposite Widah, the chief mart of the kingdom of Dahomey. From the sea we looked on a sort of sandy dyke, on which the waves broke furiously. Behind the dyke lay a wide lagoon, some of it a mere marsh, and beyond the lagoon the flags of France, Spain, and Brazil floated over some forts and large white European houses. It was the first time we had seen our flag waving on any spot on the coast since leaving Senegal, and we were very eager to go and see the station it sheltered. Landing was no easy matter, and I waited a long time in a big canoe, manned by twenty paddlers kneeling forward, before the old negro in the stern decided the attempt to be possible. He never stopped invoking every fetish under the sun, and sprinkling the sea out of a brandy bottle, keeping his eye the while on the waves as they came rolling in. Then all at once he gave a great shout, loudly responded to by the twenty paddlers, who yelled in cadence, while the canoe flew before the united and frenzied strokes of their paddles. Two enormous waves passed, leaving us undamaged; but a third approached, huge and threatening. Should we get to the shore before it? Would it rise upright and capsize us, or would it break on us and swamp us? Neither. It did reach us, indeed, but the old steersman had calculated well; it lifted us up unharmed and carried us on to the beach, where a hundred negroes laid hold of the canoe and dragged it high and dry. I was seized myself before I had time to collect my ideas, and put into a hammock hung upon a long pole, which five or six tall negroes held horizontally, with arms outstretched above their heads, during the time it took to cross the lagoon, where the water was waist high. They set me down at last, at the gate of the French fort, in the middle of an immense crowd, much excited at the arrival of a French squadron—there were three ships.

Widah had been, and still was, a very important slave station. France, England, and Portugal had in former days possessed forts there, and had successively abandoned them. The Portuguese, Spanish, and Brazilian factories alone remained in possession of the trade in that country. They sold European goods to the King of Dahomey, taking slaves, of whom they had formerly exported large numbers, in exchange, and this was a source of great riches. But at the time I speak of, with the British cruisers about, hardly one slaver got through out of every ten. The King of Dahomey had a glut of slaves on his hands, and cleared them off by massacring them as human sacrifices at idol feasts. One Frenchman, M. Provencal, of the firm of Regis, at Marseilles, had lately rehoisted the national colours at the French fort, rebuilt the dwellings, and set to work to do legitimate trade, offering his goods to the King of Dahomey, and taking nothing in exchange but palm-oil and similar produce. If the slave trade is put down—and when I was on that coast its days seemed already numbered—that enterprising and plucky Frenchman will have done more to civilise those countries than all the more violent measures have accomplished. I was very glad to notice his action, and gave him the heartiest encouragement to persevere in it. The courtyard of the station was already full of casks of palm-oil, which augured well.

Immediately on my arrival I received a visit from the Avogal, the King of Dahomey's governor at Widah, a big healthy-looking negro, with whom the only conversation I had was of the most commonplace description. He was accompanied by two other blacks, with intelligent faces and sharp eyes, who sat on each side of him without speaking a word, and departed equally silently. "Those are the censors," said M. Provencal. "Each of the King's officials is always attended in that fashion to report all he says and does. If the King should be dissatisfied with him he has his head cut off." If this habit was universal there would be fewer office seekers. This king ruled after the antique pattern. He had kept all his seignorial rights. If any of his subjects married a wife the lady had first to be presented to him, and if he liked her he kept her. His authority was unlimited in fact; nevertheless, powerful though he might be, he was likely to find it hard to change his subjects from slave- hunters into oil growers.

After the Avogal's visit I went to pay one in my turn to a strange individual, more of a king in Widah than the King of Dahomey himself, who could not do without him,—for he supplied him with guns and gunpowder for his wars, and brandy wherewith to intoxicate his Amazons. This personage, a Brazilian of the name of Don Francisco de Souza, but known invariably as Cha-Cha, had been settled at Widah for forty-three years. He was a veteran slaver, from whom the British had captured thirty-four ships, two of them quite recently. A little old man, with quick eyes and an expressive countenance, he was credited with having two thousand slaves in his barracoons, and with being the father of eighty male children—the girls had never been thought worth reckoning up. All his sons had been properly brought up. I saw them walking about in all directions, uniformly dressed in white suits, and wearing Panama hats. Most of them were very handsome mulattoes.

The state of the surf, which was impassable, prevented me from getting back on board, so it was settled that I should dine with Cha-Cha, and sleep at the French fort, where I installed myself in the former quarters of the governor, which I shared with M. Provencal. Rather a comical adventure befell me there. A very aged negro, formerly gatekeeper of the fort, when M. Dagneau commanded it for the King of France, had been to pay his respects to me in the morning, and I had caused him to be given a present for himself and his family in the shape of a demijohn of brandy, which they first danced round and then carried off, with great rejoicings. Well, the enthusiasm increased in measure as the contents of the demijohn disappeared, and towards evening the courtyard within the fort was invaded, to a great beating of tomtoms and clucking of women's tongues, by a huge crowd of Dahomeyan negroes, preceded by a sort of corps de ballet of young negresses, wriggling themselves about in every conceivable manner. At their head marched the ci-devant porter in a great state of excitement. He began a fresh harangue in negro French.

"Croire Anglais tues tous Francais. Voir Francais. Trouver pere. Contents, tous contents. Envoie commandant a nous. Pitit-Roi. Contents, tous contents. Tous femmes, tous filles a toi, tous contents!" "Think English killed all French. See Frenchman. Find father. Glad, all glad. Sent captain to us. Little king. Glad, all glad. All women, all girls for you. All glad!" And the young ladies smiled still broader, and contorted their bodies still more violently, while the tomtoms crashed louder than ever. It was clear the crowd expected something, and as it did not see any sign of what it desired, the old negro became yet more explicit both in speech and gesture. The populace actually expected me to provide them with a scion of the royal race! And the commander of the Favorite, Larrieu, flew at me instantly. "Come, Monseigneur," he cried, "here's a chance of distinguishing yourself. Noblesse oblige!"

"My dear fellow," I replied, "I leave you to represent me," and I beat an ignominious retreat, which the crowd did not misunderstand, to judge by the grunts of disappointment I overheard.

That night I dined with Cha-Cha off silver plate, under the light shed by church candelabra and candlesticks; and the toasts of the King and Queen, and Prosperity to France, were each saluted by twenty-one guns, for Cha-Cha's factory and harem, in which he was said to keep a thousand women, formed a real fortress, bristling with cannon, and with the additional natural defence of the lagoon before it. Most of Cha-Cha's children were present at the dinner, and several captains of slave ships, brimful of stories of their adventures. Cha-Cha made me a present of a box of Havanas, the like of which the King of all the Spains had never smoked. I handed it over to Larrieu, and the next day I returned on board my ship, not without having one or two encounters.

The first of these was with the freshly-landed crews of the slavers which had been captured the week before, about fifty determined-looking men of all nationalities, who stopped me and requested in the most arrogant manner to be taken to some port where they might reengage—an impossible thing for me to do.

The second encounter was more painful. A crowd of lame or sickly slaves escaped from the barracoons and threw themselves at my feet, clinging to my clothes, wailing and beseeching me to buy them. The poor wretches, who had no market value, and whom therefore the King did not care to feed, expected to be sent shortly to Abomey for human sacrifices. There were hundreds of them—a most distressing sight.

After Widah our cruise took on a different aspect. We had come to that part of the coast called the Bights, consisting of the Gulfs of Biafra and Benin, between which lies the huge Niger Delta. The weather, which continued as scorching as ever, became excessively oppressive. The sky was always dark and the rain never ceased. Sometimes a rift was seen in the clouds in the distance, it would rapidly increase in size, taking a funnel shape, and then a tornado would burst, like a tempest in miniature, lasting only three or four hours, but of extraordinary violence. During one of these the Belle-Poule had to scud along under bare poles at the rate of twelve knots an hour. The weather was excessively unhealthy, but in the whole course of this long cruise I never lost but one man, who was carried off by a violent inflammation of the liver. I attribute this good fortune in the first place to the undoubted cleverness of our surgeon-major, Dr. Loze, whose whole career had been spent in tropical waters. His theory was that quinine was only absolutely efficacious if administered at a very fleeting moment in the course of the fever, between the hot and cold fits, and he always sat up with his patients himself, so as to catch the favourable opportunity. In the second place we took quite exceptional hygienic precautions, especially against the night damp. The crew wore their winter kit from sunset to sunrise. No man was allowed to lie down on deck during the night watches, especially while the dew was falling. They had to walk up and down the whole time, under an awning, which was always kept up over the deck. In order to carry this out, we never had more than half watches on duty at night. We had to navigate carefully and slowly, being short of hands, but the result was well worth the temporary departure from the usual regulations for life on board a ship of war.

I went up one of the arms by which the Niger pours it waters into the Gulf of Guinea on board the Fine, a schooner belonging to the station, commanded by Captain Lahalle. This arm, known as the Bonny River, is the trading branch, the one down which passes all the produce which the mighty Niger—a completely navigable river, with neither cataracts nor rapids, the great future artery of Equatorial Africa—brings from the interior of the continent. A negro king of the name of Pepel, more intelligent than his fellows, had constituted himself broker to this important trade. The European merchantmen coming up the river anchored before his town, made over their cargoes to him, and shipped palm-oil, the chief riches of the country, in their stead. The drawback was that anything you do with negroes is slow work. Whether it was that the palm- oil, which came in canoes, and very irregularly, from high up the river, did not arrive in sufficient quantities, or whether it was deliberate delay on Pepel's part, a year would sometimes elapse before the return cargo was completed, and sickness was meanwhile decimating the crews. Some cases there had been in which everybody had died, in others, ships had set sail in despair, without completing their full cargo, and Pepel had triumphed in his bad faith, until a man-of-war came and made him disgorge. Several times already the authorities oft the French station had had to chastise him, and it was a service to the trade of every nation to go and show him one's teeth now and again. This object it was, together with a certain amount of curiosity, which had brought us to the Niger River.

When we got to Pepel's town we found eight large Liverpool merchantmen, partly dismantled, and covered with roofs made of plantain leaves, surrounded by canoes going incessantly to and from the shore, where hundreds of negroes loaded them with casks of palm-oil. There was a stir and commercial activity such as I had not yet seen anywhere on that coast. The whole trade was exclusively English. To avoid the mortality to their crews, the English captains had their ships dismantled as soon as they got into the river, roofed the decks over, and sent their sailors back to England. The unloading and loading of the ships were then done by negro labour, as soon as a ship's cargo was completed, she was manned and sent back to Liverpool with the crew of some new arrival, and so on ad lib. It was very sensible, very well suited to the circumstances of the case; but to carry out such a plan the commercial houses must have had a great many ships, very large capital, and a spirit of consistency in business affairs no longer existing in our country. What with our unstable regime, and the invariably provisional conditions under which we live, we could never think of such a continuous struggle.

As soon as we had anchored and were preparing to go ashore, a great uproar attracted my attention, and caused me to hurry out of my cabin on deck. An unhappy negro who had been bathing close to us, with numerous companions of both sexes, had just been seized and carried off by a shark. We could still see the eddy above the spot where the monster was devouring him. It was the second time I had witnessed such a scene. These horrible creatures are "fetish" at the mouth of the Bonny, where its waters join those of the new Calabar River, and human sacrifices are offered to them. In other words, on certain days of the year, the people go in procession to the river bar and throw in some wretched children, who have been told they were being taken to a festival. The sharks have a fine feast, to the joy of the onlookers, and amid much beating of tom- toms. This Jew-Jew, or shark-worship, is one of the most abominable superstitions I have ever met with. At Widah the snakes were "fetish." Here at Bonny it was the lizards, which is less cruel. Yet they are hideous enough, those Bonny lizards, huge creatures over a yard or a yard and a half long. They have temples of their own, where they are fed, and whence they sally out for walks, constantly waving their rose- coloured forked tongues, and walking all sideways, so as not to set their feet on their huge bellies, like great bags, which they drag after them like trawl nets. One has to go about with lanterns at night, for to step on these "fetish" gentry would excite the population into taking the law into its own hands.

During a visit to the English sea-captains, we heard that a French ship, the Julie of Bordeaux, had just sailed in despair, without having completed her cargo, paid for in advance, after waiting nine months in the river, and that Pepel, thinking that we had come on that account, was shaking in his shoes. But on making inquiries we could find no trace of any complaint, official or semi-official, having been made, and further, the Julie was accused of having tried to dabble in the slave trade. Here was a puzzle for us. What were we to do? Say nothing to Pepel? Then he would laugh us to scorn, for his conscience pricked him, we knew. All his canoes had taken to flight when we arrived, and not a single negro had boarded us. Threaten him? But with what? And why? To tell how we got out of this hole would be to betray... a professional secret. All I can say is, that the next morning, in a huge straw hat, and with a big striped parasol in my hand, I performed the functions of dragoman to his Excellency Commander Lahalle, full lieutenant, representing France and the French navy.

We began by crossing a swamp, covered with huge mangrove trees, through which small canals had been cut to allow of the canoes getting up to the houses. Under the dark mangrove shadows the long canoes, full of fierce- looking stark-naked blacks, looked like huge crocodiles, ready to fly at us. After a time we came alongside Pepel's house, a sort of labyrinth of clay and straw-built huts. I announced his Excellency the Commander to a negro who spoke Spanish. We were invited to sit down, a crowd of blacks assembled, and the elders of the tribe arrived. Lastly appeared a tall young man wearing a blue cotton shirt and trousers, with amulets strung round his neck, and a sceptre covered with a tigerskin in his hand. This was Pepel himself. He understood English and spoke it a little. We had what is called in those parts a palaver with him. I spoke very slowly, and the King answered me. We went over a great many subjects. We were severe—but just! Nothing concerning the result of this conference ever transpired, but the diplomatic action of France made itself felt. Something else made itself felt as well, and that was the horrible smell in Pepel's town, a filthy place, inhabited by a numerous and hideous population.

When I got outside it I stopped short before a striking sight—a semi- circular clump of trees so huge that men looked like pigmies beneath them, giving me much the same impression as the mosque of St. Sophia at Constantinople had formerly made on me. The trunks of these trees were like the pillars of some strange cathedral, and it was as dark beneath them as in some ancient church. The bare sandy soil swarmed with women, some naked, some clothed, and all tattooed and painted and striped in various colours, scraping up the earth to find fresh water, the rarest of all commodities on the African coast. It was a picture worth painting.

On leaving the Niger (which is British, irrevocably British), fierce tornadoes drove us swiftly to Fernando Po, a lovely island covered with forests, over which rises a huge peak, much like the Peak of Teneriffe, and like it too, almost always lost in the clouds. I anchored close in shore in an excellent haven, and seized the opportunity to send my crew to amuse themselves and do their washing on shore. A pretty stream, which tumbled in one waterfall after another through the masses of tropical growth, was soon the scene of numerous laundry operations, in which all the negresses in the neighbourhood insisted on joining, incited thereto no doubt by the desire of seeing how my four hundred strapping fellows set about their work.



From the top of the hill to its foot there rose one great Africo- European shout of laughter and shriek of delight, which it was a downright pleasure to listen to.

Officially speaking, Fernando Po was a Spanish possession But not a single Spaniard lived on the island, and no Spanish flag floated over it. The English indeed had landed several cargoes of their "liberated Africans" on it, and an individual, whether official or not I cannot tell, had also come to govern them. He had built himself a comfortable house, before which he had planted a flagstaff, from which the Union Jack waved. After a time he had assumed the style and title of governor, and I was requested to call on him as such, which I absolutely refused to do. On my return to Europe, chancing to meet Comte Bresson, our ambassador in Spain, I mentioned the state of matters at Fernando Po to him, and soon after received a letter from him from Madrid, in which he told me the Spanish Government had just despatched a warship to retake possession of the island. It was well worth while, for if the British Niger, the German Cameroons, and the French Gaboon are some day to develop commercially and colonially, as they seem to give promise of doing, Fernando Po, with its insular position, its comparatively healthy climate, and its excellent anchorage, lying as it does at an equal distance from the three centres of activity, cannot fail to become a most important place both from the commercial and the military point of view.

I speak of the FRENCH Gaboon. It was not French at the time of my visit, but it was soon to become so. We had important commercial interests there, and the idea of forming a colonial station was already entertained.

Commander Bouet, who had preceded me on the coast, had taken his gunboat up the river, and had earnestly pressed me to do the same thing with the Belle-Poule, so as to prove its navigability for the largest ships, which, once acknowledged, would stamp it as a first-class naval station. I resolved to make the attempt, though I had no charts, no levels nor surveys, and the low shores offered no landmarks nor distinctive signs, not even a tree to guide one. Bouet had merely warned me that there were dangerous sandbanks to be avoided. "Pooh! you'll find your way amongst them all right." And so we did indeed, but it was a regular voyage of discovery.

While we were creeping along with all due caution, a fleet of canoes joined us from the right bank of the river, where Libreville now stands, with Qua-Ben, king of the right bank, and his suite, on board. The chief boarded us, came and greeted me, and then with a self-important air, established himself, accompanied by the whole of his suite, on the poop of my frigate. He was a small deformed man, with a countenance betraying all the spitefulness usual among dwarfs and humpbacked people. He was huddled into a British naval officer's uniform. Taken up as I was with the management of my ship, I paid no attention at all to him. Presently a top man just come down out of the mizzentop approached me and whispered, "Captain, that king is an awful rascal. I was here last year with a ship from Nantes, and he stripped us of everything."

"Are you quite sure?"

"Perfectly, sir, it's Qua-Ben. I know him quite well"

"Very good, call the master-at-arms...Master-at-arms, take that king over there, and put him in irons!"

Four pairs of sinewy arms lifted up his sable majesty, under the orders of the master-at-arms, the police officer of the ship, and thus carried, and followed by his dismayed attendants, the king disappeared below. He yelled like a dog who has had his paw trodden on, and I fancied I heard the words "Bouet! Bouet!" here and there. That was indeed the name he was invoking. When he had once been laid out on his plank couch, we extracted a complete confession of his misdeeds through the medium of several interpreters, and we learnt also the fact, which a summary investigation confirmed, that Commander Bouet had already chastised him and made him disgorge his plunder once. So I had him set at liberty, and advised him to meditate on his second warning, and behave accordingly for the future.

He lost no time in taking himself off, while the Belle-Poule cast anchor near the left bank of the river, before a town belonging to another native king known as Denis. This Denis was by no means an ordinary individual. Some of his predecessors, too, had been illustrious in their way. His father, who had been kidnapped when very young and taken to Europe, had played the Chinese bells in a military band under the first Napoleon's empire, had returned to his own country, and had finally been called to the highest place in the State. His son had inherited his father's honours. He was a fine-looking negro, with grizzled woolly pate, who spoke French fairly well, and seemed much inclined to come to an understanding with us and open up his country to trade and civilisation. He came to call on me in great state, dressed in the handsome uniform of a general of the French Republic, the cast-off garments of some performer at the Cirque Olympique. He had a tricolour plume in his hat, a gold laced coat with lapels turned back on the chest, white breeches, and top boots. He wore the decoration of the Legion of Honour, which he had been given for some service or other he had done our fleet in those waters; and a large gold medal of Queen Victoria, given him by the English, hung down on a thick chain between his knees. His son—who lived close to the landing-stage in a big hut with a hoarding round it, like what you see in Paris round pulled-down houses, on which was written, instead of the usual warning, "Petit Denis, Fils du Roi" (Little Denis, the King's Son) in letters a foot high—was anxious to come too. He had a Hussar uniform, but not knowing how to put it on, he sent at the last moment to ask for somebody to go and help him to get into it. I lost no time in detailing the midshipmen of the frigate for this duty, which they performed with the greatest gusto, dressing up "Petit Denis" just as the tailor's assistants dress up M. Jourdain in the Bourgeois Gentil-homme. But the scamps tightened him up to such an extent in his jacket and belts that he was more dead than alive, and on the brink of an apopletic attack, by the time he got on board. We gave the royal family the best welcome at our command. My bandmaster, M. Paulus, entertained them with his noisiest tunes; but whenever the band stopped the king cried "Encore! encore!" When the bandsmen got tired out I shut his majesty up in a little cabin with the three ship's drummers, and told them to keep rolling till he had enough of it. But the drummers gave out in their turn, and I had to send the insatiable melomaniac and his family on shore at last, whether he would or no.

In return for my handsome behaviour to him he invited me to join him in an elephant hunt. These animals were very numerous in the vicinity, and were devastating the plantations. But the season was particularly unhealthy, everybody was ill; we should have had to spend the night in pestilential marshes, where we were certain to get fever, and as I had hardly got clear of that we had caught in the Cazamanze River, I had to refuse the tempting offer. We spent several days in the Gaboon, amongst a race of negroes who struck me as being more intelligent and more easy to civilise than any others on the coast. The women, too, had better features than most negresses. Aquiline noses were to be seen among them and lips of moderate size, and some had an almost European look. Their necks and arms and waists were loaded with necklaces and bracelets of shells or metal, which rattled every time they moved, a somewhat idle precaution, inspired, so it was said, by the excessive jealousy of their lords and masters. On the whole I carried away a very good impression of the future possibilities of the Gaboon, both naval and colonial.

When the Belle-Poule had finished her cruise along the Guinea Coast she had orders to go to Brazil; so we set sail for Rio de Janeiro. On our way thither we touched at He du Prince, a Portuguese possession entirely covered with coffee plantations, the produce of which connoisseurs reckon to be the best in the world. Almost the whole of the island belonged to one lady, who did all in her power to induce our purser to give up his profession and come and manage her immense property for her. Failing in this endeavour she sent him a keepsake, in the shape of a pair of braces embroidered by her own fair hands, just as we were departing. We took in water at Ile du Prince, and as we had used up all our stores during our long cruise, I shipped a boat-load of yams to take the place of potatoes, and completed my victualling, during a stay of a few hours at Ascension, by taking a large number of turtle on board. They weighed about six hundred pounds each, and did us quite well instead of fresh meat.

A sudden change came over my life at Rio de Janeiro, one which my parents had long desired. I married. My bride was the second daughter of the Emperor Dom Pedro, Princess Francoise, whose acquaintance I had made some six years previously, during my first visit to Brazil. The official request for the princess's hand was made in the King's name by the Baron de Langsdorff, who was sent over as ambassador extraordinary for that purpose in the Ville de Marseilles. The wedding was celebrated at the San Cristofero Palace, and a few days afterwards we started for Brest, which place we reached after a slow passage of seventy-two days against contrary winds.

On my arrival I had to give up the command of the Belle-Poule, and I did not part from the old ship, which had carried me so well and safely through so many adventures, without a pang of emotion. I felt, when I clasped my officers' hands in hearty farewell, that I was sure (THEN, at least) of meeting them again in the course of my professional career. The painful leave-taking was when I had to say good-bye to my brave crew, a happy family, in which discipline had been so strictly established from the very outset of the voyage, that punishment had become unknown, and whose universal sense of duty had engendered that mutual affection between officers and men which is the foundation of true professional zeal and self-sacrifice.

The fine body of fighting men which four years of care and unvaryingly consistent management had brought to the highest pitch of perfection, all the brave fellows of whom I felt I could ask anything and be certain it would be performed, were to be scattered, every man to his own home. I was never to see them again, except a few, one here and one there. Nowadays even, after the lapse of fifty years, if chance takes me anywhere upon the seacoast, I sometimes see some old sailor's eye fixed on me, altered as I am, as though he were searching the far depths of his memory. All at once one hand goes up to his cap, and the other is stretched out to me with a friendly look, and the words "Do you remember such a one, topman of the maintop—such a storm—such an escape?"

Then my heart swells, and I say to myself, as I could go on saying for ever, "There is nothing you cannot do with Frenchmen when they are once saturated with the spirit of obedience, discipline, and duty!"



CHAPTER XI

1844

I had hardly got back to Paris when I was shot on to the Admiralty Board. A great honour it was, no doubt, for a junior like myself to be associated with such veterans in the profession as numbers among its members were. But this gathering of experienced men was merely a body of advisers placed at the disposal of the Minister of Marine, to assist him with its counsel on any questions he chose to submit to them. The committee possessed no initiative of its own, and I felt myself misplaced upon it. I had indeed, and always have preserved, the deepest respect for its eminent qualities. It has contributed not a little, by its consistent action and permanent character, to the preservation of our naval organisation—the worth of which has been proved everywhere, in the Crimea, on the battlefields in 1870, in Tunis, and in China—from the results of the conceited ignorance of mushroom politicians. But in the year 1843 we were on the brink of the inevitable revolution worked in naval matters by the introduction of steam. The great object for us was to create, and that rapidly, under pain of being outstripped by others, a new naval force, more appropriate, perhaps, than our former one, to our national genius and resources. Passionately interested as I was in the greatness of my country, having leisure time to dispose of, since nothing called on me to plunge into the paltry bargain-making of electoral politics in which that country was wallowing, having no love of red tape nor excess of experience to hold me back, I was ardently anxious to be employed where I could actively assist in creating a powerful element in the national strength. I therefore merely passed through the Admiralty Board.

My only recollection of it is of having been present at some very long sittings in a room in the Ministry of Marine, the windows of which look on to the Rue Royale, which apartment one of my colleagues, Admiral de Bougainville, had turned into a sort of stovehouse by means of hot-air pipes, sandbags, screens, and foot muffs. We all nearly died of the heat, and when another colleague of mine, Baron Charles Dupin, made us long speeches, I had the greatest difficulty in keeping myself awake.

The Minister of Marine decided, at my entreaty, to appoint a special naval commission on steam, of which I was a member. The chief commission did nothing, or scarcely anything—but a sub-commission did good work. There were five of us—a captain in the navy, M. de Verninac (who was afterwards Minister of Marine under General Cavaignac); a very clever engineer, formerly Superintendent at Indret, M. Rossin; an artillery colonel, M. Durbec; M. Touchard, a naval lieutenant; and myself. I will not give the full story of our work, and of the constant battle we had to fight with obstinate habit and dread of responsibility. All those early attempts of ours at transforming our navy seem almost childish, looked at from the distance of the half-century which has since elapsed. And indeed, though my recollection of them is clear enough, I have no means of verifying it, all my notes and reports, and all my correspondence relating to the undertakings in question, having passed out of my hands, in the following manner:—

Some months after the Revolution in 1848, while I was residing in England, at Claremont, a visitor's name was brought up to me. The name, de X., was that of a good family, well known in Normandy and in the political and scientific world. But instead of one of the faces I was prepared to see, I beheld that of a most unsatisfactory member of the family, whom I instantly remembered having seen in Algeria, wearing a Belgian uniform, and acting as reporter for the Constitutionnel newspaper. He entered the room and said:

"Do you remember me?"

"Perfectly."

"Well, I've just arrived from your part of the world."

"What do you mean?"

"After the Tuileries were captured, on February 24th (you were in Algiers just then), I took up my quarters in your rooms. They are very comfortable rooms. I stayed in them for two months. They were rather upside down, as you may fancy. Everything worth taking had been carried off, but the floor was littered with books and papers and a whole heap of things that everybody had trodden upon. I amused myself by settling them all up, especially your letters and papers, which I sorted. I arranged them into several classes. Everything referring to your missions and to political matters I sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and everything touching the navy to the Ministry of Marine. In fact, I disposed of everything. But I put aside a few documents regarding the Princesse de Joinville's business matters in Brazil and your own private journals of your sea-voyages, and brought them with me here."

He smilingly showed me a packet he held in his hand, then went on:

"But my journey has cost me a lot of money." "Then say how much you want, in plain English."

"A hundred louis."

I went and fetched the money, and then showed him the door without another word, though I could hardly resist kicking him through it. Thus it was that I learnt what had become of my papers on naval subjects. I greatly regretted the loss of my private correspondence, and more especially that of my letters from M. Dupuy de Lome, a most talented young engineer, much in advance of his times, with whom I had been in daily intercourse.

Our commission did its best. It made a modest beginning by altering the fighting armament of our existing ships, placing their guns fore and aft, so as to permit of their developing their artillery power to the utmost possible extent, while at the same time exposing the propelling machinery to as little danger as possible. We turned out ships of various types, such as the Descartes, the Cuvier, the Pluton, &c. Then came the turn of the fabric of the ships themselves, and we had a series of experiments made on the practising ground at Gavres, near Lorient, to test the penetration of projectiles on every sort of substance—wood, coal, gutta-percha, iron plates, and finally on iron plates superimposed one on the other—in other words armour-plating. It was ten years before the armour plating was actually brought into use, so great was the delay caused by political agitation in the country.

At Lorient, too, M. Labrousse, a post-captain in the navy, made experiments to find out the best form to give to the rams of warships, while a literary man, M. Jal by name, was hunting all the old books and archives for everything touching the manoeuvres and tactics of ancient rowing ships and galleys.

Then from paddle-ships we passed on to those with propellers which were submerged, and therefore much more easy to protect, and I went to watch the first trials of the newly-invented improvements at sea—that of our first screw-ship, the Napoleon, a name which was afterwards exchanged for that of Corse, under which she served as a despatch-boat for over forty years—of our first ironclad, a screw-ship, too, the Chaptal, built at Asnieres by M. Cave—and of the Pomone, the first frigate we built with auxiliary engines, which was fitted with a screw-propeller designed by a Swedish engineer, Mr. Erickson. But the most interesting of all these trials was that of the Napoleon, first, because, as I have already stated, she was our first screwship, and also because that particular mode of propulsion is of French invention.

An organ-builder at Amiens, of the name of Dallery, was the first person to think (in 1803) of building a boat driven by a screw. He ruined himself over it, and broke up all his machinery in his despair. The idea was taken up again later by M. Sauvage, a shipbuilder, who made some progress with it. I had known Sauvage, in 1835, in connection with another invention called a physionotype, by means of which a mathematically correct impression could be taken of the features of any face. But as everybody made an appalling grimace before putting their face into the instrument, the result, though strictly exact, was monstrously ugly.

There was more future promise about Sauvage's work on the screw- propeller than about his physionotype, but he himself did not reap the benefit accruing from it. It became public property. The English built a trial ship, the Rattler, and the Americans another, the Princeton. But the Napoleon was earlier than these, and besides was more successful than either of them. She was originally ordered as a mail steam-packet, from a private shipyard, by the Ministry of Finance, which was much bolder as to introducing innovations than the Ministry of Marine, and her construction was confided to two eminent men—M. Normand, of Havre, for her hull, and an Englishman, Mr. Barnes, for her engines and propeller. Each of these gentlemen was equally successful in his first attempt.

During the summer of 1843 I was in command of a flotilla, formed for the purpose of making experiments to compare ships of the old-fashioned type with this little vessel, which we tested in every imaginable way. At every change in the condition of the sea, M. Normand, Mr. Barnes, and I myself, who were all three of us escorting the Napoleon on board the Pluton, used to rush on deck to watch her behaviour. M. Normand would give us a lecture on her lines and her displacement wave, or the degree of her rolling or her pitching. Mr. Barnes, a great big Englishman, said never a word, but pulled a slide-rule out of his pocket and mumbled algebraic formulae. The ship was commanded in first-rate style by a very efficient naval lieutenant, M. de Montaignac, who since that time has acted as Minister for Marine Affairs.

As nobody had ever seen a screw steamer before, we aroused general astonishment wherever we went. In the course of our cruise we entered the Thames, and ascended the Medway from Sheerness to Chatham. It was in the morning, there was a slight fog. The authorities were informed of our approach, and were preparing to receive us, only delaying assembling for that purpose till they had been warned the ship was close by, either by her being caught sight of, or by the sound of her paddle-wheels striking the water. But the Napoleon, running swiftly up through the fog, making no noise whatever with her screw, took them all by surprise. When the dockyard authorities hurried up they saw her stop, and then, thanks to her screw, she turned almost in her own length, and brought up alongside the jetty—a novel proceeding over which the commodore, an old salt, was still gasping when I went ashore.

During this visit to the Thames the little flotilla went up to Woolwich, where we were welcomed by the English authorities with that frank cordiality with which they have almost always received me. We were shown both the arsenal and the dockyard. In the dockyard basin a steam corvette with paddle-wheels was lying, which had a new arrangement of which I had heard a great deal. The sponsons formed great rafts which could be lowered into the water by an ingenious mechanical contrivance, and which, in case of its being necessary to land troops, would carry a large number at a time, and even save the crew in a case of disaster. This, indeed, did occur in the Crimea and elsewhere, after our ships had all been equipped with the invention.

Commodore Sir Frederick Collier was good enough to have these rafts experimented with at my request. I turned my opportunity of seeing them to good account. When I was back in Paris, some two or three months later, the English naval captain (his name escapes me, I fancy it was Smith), who had invented this raft system, asked me to receive him. He came, so he told me, to offer his plan to the French navy, and on the strength of the interest with which I had followed the trial of his boat at Woolwich, he begged me to recommend it to the minister for that department of affairs. Further, he offered to bring me a model of it.

"Wait one moment," I replied.

I rang the bell, and sent for an old workman who was in my employment. He came, with a model of my visitor's boat and lowering apparatus in his hand, constructed on drawings I had made on my return from England. The inventor stood as though petrified at the sight. The only word he said was "Wonderful!" It appears I had caught the likeness at once. What it is to know how to draw!

Let me add, by the way, that the old workman to whom I have just referred had been a ship's carpenter with the fleet commanded by Villaret de Joyeuse in the naval engagement which we call the Battle of the 13th Prairial, and the English that of the 1st of June. At my house he often met an academician, as old as himself, of the name of Dupaty, who had also been a sailor, and present at the same battle. The two old warriors would interchange recollections, which amused me much, and often interested me deeply as well.

From them I learnt that before the fleet sailed from Brest to fight the British it was "purified" (epuree). The captain and two lieutenants of the flag-ship, the Cote d'Or, were guillotined, and the ship's name changed into the terrifying one of the Montagne. The captain of another ship, the Jean Bart, had also been beheaded. Thousands of sailors and seasoned marines, whose opinions were not trusted, were drafted into the land-forces, and replaced by others who were pure Republicans, but who did not know their work. POUR ENCOURAGER LES AUTRES, Jean Bon St. Andre, commissary of the republic with the fleet, and afterwards prefect of Mayence under Napoleon (his very name marked him out for the post!), had caused a guillotine to be erected on board every ship. It was set up forward at the foot of the foremast. Yet all these terrorising measures and this revolutionary disorganisation did not bring us victory. They brought indeed nothing but defeat, attended by downright carnage. The valour of our crews often amounted to actual heroism. But they had no skill. They were killed, but they could not deal death themselves. Every English shot told. Every French one flew wide. It is most distressing, on consulting the annals of the two navies, to notice the enormous losses on board the French ships compared with the insignificant number of men killed or wounded on the English ones. True it is, that at sea, just as on dry land, extemporised arrangements are disastrous things, and that, as I have already asserted, nothing can ever replace professional skill and the long established habit of obedience to superior orders and general discipline.

That wonderfully dramatic, if sometimes contested episode, of the Vengeur going down into the waves with all her crew, sooner than surrender, is supposed to have taken place at the close of the battle of the 13th Prairial. I have often heard the story attributed to Barrere, who, being obliged to give an account of the lost battle to the Convention, endeavoured thus to gild the pill. I questioned my two old sailor friends eagerly concerning this incident of the struggle wherein they had both played their part.

On another occasion I made personal inquiries of one of the last survivors of the Vengeur, to whom I had been commissioned to convey the Cross of the Legion of Honour. Putting together what I gathered from these various individuals, and what I collected elsewhere, I believe the exact truth concerning the episode in question to be as follows:

Towards the end of the fight, after having grappled for a long time, at close quarters, with the British warship the Brunswick, the Vengeur, riddled with shot on every side, and utterly dismasted, was shipping water through her ports with every roll of the sea. In this condition she must have sunk before long. The engagement was over—it was six o'clock at night. The English warships Alfred and Culloden, and the Rattler, cutter, came to the Vengeur's assistance, and set to work, with the few of their boats which had not been smashed during the fight, to save Renaudin, her plucky captain, and his son, first of all, and then take off the crew. The Alfred took off two hundred and thirteen men, the Culloden and Rattler almost as many more; but the work of rescue was still going on when the ship foundered, carrying with her not only all the most seriously wounded men, but about forty unwounded sailors, who seeing death was inevitable, bravely greeted its approach with shouts of "Vive la Nation! Vive la Republique!" The story is such a splendid one as it is, that it needs no imaginary embellishments whatever.

Let me return for a moment to my excellent academician friend, M. Dupaty, whose acquaintance I had made in the most absurd fashion. In the palmy days of the warlike enthusiasm of the Citizen Guard the worthy Dupaty was a captain in the 1st battalion of the 2nd Legion, commanded by Commandant Talabot. One evening, when he was on guard at the Palais Royal, he had been reciting some verses in my father's drawing-room, and, somewhat intoxicated perhaps by poetic enthusiasm, he begged the King to put one of his sons into his company. His Majesty burst out laughing and said:

"There's Joinville, he knows all his rifle-drill very well; he has had one of the old Invalides to teach him. He'll do for you."

So I was put into a National Guard's uniform, with a knapsack stuffed with hay on my back (in the ardour of that moment the chic companies all wore knapsacks), and was sent to drill with my company on the Rue de Londres drill ground, where the Quartier de l'Europe now stands. A more ridiculous proceeding cannot be imagined, but old Dupaty was perfectly enchanted. He was still more delighted when he succeeded in getting one of his works, a comic opera called Picaros et Diego given at the theatre in the Chateau of Compiegne, in honour of the marriage of my sister Louise and the King of the Belgians. But lo! at the climax of the piece, the principal performer came forward, before the newly married couple, the Royalties, and all the great personages forming the audience, and burst forth with a gag couplet, which nobody expected.

Oui, c'en est fait, je me marie, Je veux vivre comme un Caton. Il fut en temps pour la folie Il en est un pour la raison! [Footnote: Rough translation:— Yes! all is o'er, I'm going to wed, Like Cato I'm resolved to live. The time for youthful folly's sped, My life to Reason now I'll give!]

As King Leopold was not reckoned to have led a life quite devoid of love affairs, the appropriateness of the remark had a wonderful effect. All the grandees hung their heads in a row, and the rest of the audience struggled with a violent desire to burst out laughing.

But this long digression has carried me far away. I must get back to England and my little flotilla's stay there. My brother Aumale, who had accompanied me on my cruise, went with me to Windsor, where we paid our respects to Queen Victoria. Although in the course of my various voyages I had touched at several English ports, this was the first time I really saw England, hospitable England, and the first impression it made on me was very deep. Though the gray and smoky tint of both sky and water and buildings, and everything I passed as I went up the Thames to London Bridge, looked singularly dreary to my eyes, the immense commercial stir and general activity I saw exceeded anything I had ever expected to behold. And the ineffaceable impression of this greatness and power was quickly succeeded by another, no less profound, and which my long life has only confirmed, that here was a nation which had known how to pass through a revolution without permitting it to encroach on its social discipline, nor allowing democratic jealousies to destroy its traditions and sow discord between the different classes of its population.

I thought Windsor quite superb. The old castle, surrounded by its ancient trees, with its foundations lapped by the waters of the Thames, the national river, and seeming to stretch out its protecting arm over Eton and the picturesque college—whither the flower of the nation comes to receive the healthiest and soundest of educations at the hands of a purely clerical body—is a true symbol of the calm strength and steady permanence of the English Monarchy.

I had met Prince Albert several times already, in Paris; but I had never seen Queen Victoria before. Bright and witty, with an arch and pleasant smile not always quite devoid of mischief, the young sovereign was in all the freshness and brilliance of her youth and the radiance of her happiness. She and her royal husband gave us a welcome of which I preserve the most grateful recollection, and from that day forward I conceived a profoundly respectful affection for her Majesty, which has increased with my advancing years.

Our visit to Windsor was short and devoid of striking incident, beyond the acquaintance I made there with men of eminence in war or state craft, such as the Duke of Wellington, Sir Robert Peel, and Lord Aberdeen. It was at this time that the Queen of Great Britain's journey to the Chateau d'Eu was decided on. I went with my flotilla as far as Cherbourg to meet her.

When she got there, she invited me on board her own vessel, the splendid yacht Osborne, commanded by a son of the late King William IV., Lord Adolphus Fitzclarence, a very good fellow, but a somewhat rubicund specimen of the old-fashioned British sailor, with an eye he had some difficulty in keeping open; which failing earned him the following reply to his chaffing remark, made to a little schoolboy, already somewhat sensitive about his personal dignity. "Oh, WHAT a bad hat you have!"

"And you, what a damned bad eye!"

Lord Aberdeen, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, was also on board the yacht, besides Lord Liverpool, Lord Charles Wellesley, Colonel Wylde, and the ladies-in-waiting—that charming Lady Canning whom we had known in Paris as a child, and who died in India, after having shown great courage during the terrible Sepoy mutiny, and a not less charming Miss Liddell, who afterwards became Lady Bloomfield.

The Queen's entrance into Treport was favoured by splendid weather; the little wet dock, crammed with fishing boats, and the old church, were gilded by the rays of the setting sun, while opposite us, on the rock overlooking the port, rose the great cross before which the fishermen's wives go and pray in stormy weather. We went ashore to the firing of cannon and the rattle of thousands of sabots on the shingle, among a good-humoured crowd of sailors, short-petticoated fishwives, and white- capped Normandy peasant women, all making their comments aloud, while here and there appeared a gendarme's cocked hat, or the broad-brimmed headgear of some country cure. It was a picturesque sight, so gay and noisy, and so thoroughly French, and the young sovereign seemed delighted with its novelty. There was no cavalry escort nor lining of the road from Treport with troops; but the splendid squadrons of the 1st Cuirassiers, in their copper breast-plates, were drawn up in echelon at regular distances apart in the open fields, and saluted with their trumpets as we went by; while at the chateau itself the Guard of Honour was furnished by a battalion of riflemen drawn up in close order, their dark uniform and military air causing Lord Charles Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington's son, and a thoroughbred soldier himself, to exclaim, "Oh, what splendid little fellows!"

My father had put the Queen into a huge open vehicle, with room for twelve people in it, like a boat in shape, drawn by a team of eight horses, harnessed in the French style, with an outrider, coachman, footmen, and grooms all dressed in red. The postilion, who wore great boots as in a Van der Meulen picture, was the only servant in a blue livery. This contrast in colour arose out of a tradition which had been kept up in the royal stables, that the postilion, being supposed to have taken off his jacket for the sake of being cool, must always be dressed in the same colours as the other servants' waistcoats. The Orleans livery being scarlet with a blue waistcoat, the postilions wore blue. The Conde livery being chamois-colour, with amaranth waistcoats, the postilions must wear amaranth, and so on.

The royal waggon with its eight horses was anything but easy to manage on the narrow Norman roads. And one slight accident occurred of which I was the unlucky cause. I was riding beside the carriage door, and I got in the way when it was turning a corner, so that it got locked, and remained so for some minutes. My father stormed, and the Queen went into a fit of laughter; but the poor old coachman, a veteran belonging to the old state stables, cast a look at me that must have been like Vatel's glance before he ran himself through with his sword. I had brought disgrace on him at the most solemn moment in his life!

The next day a fresh bit of local colour was provided for the royal guests. The Queen was taken out driving with posters in the forest. The postilions, with their clubbed and powdered hair and gaily beribboned hats, started at a fairly steady pace, but once they were clear of the crowd they went off at full tear, with loose reins and a great cracking of whips. The pace was so severe that it was as much as I could do, with my horse at full gallop, to keep my place beside the carriage door. The fun was flavoured with a touch of uneasiness, which increased its charm. The whole period of the Queen's visit was thus spent in drives and excursions, from which we did our best to banish any touch of official formality and constraint.

In the evenings there would be a concert, with the artists from the Conservatoire to sing the chorus from Armide, "Jamais en ces beaux lieux," the orchestra performing the symphony in A, and a solo on the horn by Vivier; or else Auber would bring the Opera Comique troupe, Roger, Chollet, and Anna Thillon; or else Arnot played L'Humonste with Mdme. Doche. There were Cabinet Ministers there as well. Lord Aberdeen and M. Guizot held conversations, during which they may or may not have confided political secrets to each other. Marshal Soult, the President of the Council, spoke but little, and when he did, the words that fell from his lips were not always of the most good-tempered sort, as one unlucky general found out to his cost. This worthy man, no longer young, who was in command in a neighbouring department, held the grade of brigadier-general, and, feeling the moment of his retirement was approaching, he was passionately anxious, before it struck, to make sure of the three stars that mark the rank of lieutenant-general. He had been watching his opportunity to try and get the marshal to look favourably on his request, and he fancied he had found it one morning when he met him after luncheon, at the entrance of the Galerie des Guise. The marshal was walking along, limping from an old wound, with one hand behind his back, and plunged in a meditation which was the reverse of rose-colour, to judge by the pouting under-lip, which he always wore when this was the case.

The general approached him, and he stopped short, knitting his brows.

"I am very lucky, Monsieur le Marechal, to have this opportunity of paying you my respects."

"Pooh!" said the marshal, but the poor wretch went on:

"And as I have this lucky chance, Monsieur le Marechal, I take advantage of it to inform you of the satisfactory state of the public mind in my department, and the good results of my work there. Do you know that only the day before yesterday I had sitting at my own dinner table, with several people who are devoted to the present order of things, a Legitimist and ... a Republican!"

"Oh, had you indeed? Then let me tell you you asked them to dine to meet an idiot!"

And off the marshal went, leaving his unlucky interlocutor aghast at the sudden collapse of his hopes. I have even heard it said he died of it!

On her return from Eu, the Queen landed at Brighton, whither I had the honour of accompanying her, and where she was received with that general enthusiasm which has never failed to greet her. I remained for a day as her Majesty's guest in that hideous Pavilion at Brighton, in those days a royal residence, where nobody could move about or open a window without being exposed to the fire of all the opera glasses in the houses opposite This masterpiece of bad taste has been turned into a casino. It is the one thing it was fitted to be. Then I took those of our ships which had escorted the Queen to Brighton back to Treport to act as guardships while the King remained at Eu.

Some years previously a comical scene took place on board one of these guardships. The King had gone, according to his usual custom, to inspect the ship in question and her crew, accompanied by the then Minister for Marine Affairs, a gallant officer who shall be nameless, but who was better fitted for giving words of command than for extemporising speeches. Once on board the... Pelican (I will use that name, though it is not the real one), and the inspection of the crew being over, the King told the minister he desired to commemorate his visit by the bestowal of at least one Cross of Honour. The idea was quite unexpected, but after some consideration it was decided to give the decoration to the surgeon-major, who had behaved with great devotion during a recent cholera epidemic. The crew was still assembled, the King took up his position aft, but the minister, being perfectly ignorant as to the course the ceremony should take, did not open his lips. So the scene opened thus:

"Come, Admiral!" said the King. "Tell the drummer to ouvrir le ban."

The admiral in stentorian tones: "Drummer! Ouvrez le ban!"

A silence. Then the King in a whisper: "Say something, Admiral! Tell them I am going to decorate an officer."

The admiral made a sign of acquiescence, stepped forward, and began again, in the same stentorian tones:

"Officers and men of the Pelican!"—another pause "His Majesty"—another pause—"The cholera!"—yet another pause. "Your gallant surgeon," pointing to him, "your gallant surgeon, I say. The King desires to reward the officers and men of the Pelican for the cholera!" (He fired off the word cholera like a cannon shot.) "Appoints you Legionary" ("Knight," whispers the King very low). "Yes, Knight Legionary" (the King bent his head in despair). "Knight Legionary of his Majesty's r-r- royal order of the Legion of Honour! Drummer! Fermez le ban!"

This was done by the only drummer on board; the gallant surgeon-major came up to receive his cross, which the King, whose gravity never forsook him, presented to him with a few kindly words, while all the spectators made superhuman efforts to control their inclination to laugh. What dozens of scenes of that kind I have witnessed!

I wound up my term of service at Eu. All there were still full of the Queen of England's visit, the episodes of which Isabey, Eugene Lamy, Alaux, and Simeon Fort were very busy transferring to canvas. At last my little naval division was paid off. I went back to Paris and re-entered the world, not of politics, but of social intercourse. I even went to Chantilly Races, a meeting which my brothers had just established, and which has now become a standing institution. These races were very different when they first began to what they are in the present day. There was the same beautiful turfy racecourse, opposite the ancient castle of the Condes; the horses, too, and the trainers and jockeys were much the same; but the general public was very different. There were no railways then to bring huge crowds in numberless specials and return them to Paris the same evening. The company was less numerous, but it was more select. People migrated to Chantilly for the race-week, content with what lodging they could find, and ready to put up with all the inconveniences of a sort of huge picnic, and spend every hour both of the day and night amusing themselves as best they could. It was a kind of summer carnival, with country excursions, dinners, balls, and merry- makings of every description, at which the great world and the demi- monde, both of them in considerable force, sometimes mingled in somewhat noisy fun.

I recollect one extra riotous ball, at which the worthy mayor of Chantilly, M. Jaquin, thought it his duty to interfere, with the gendarmerie, to restore order. The worthy magistrate entered, and commanded the noise to be stopped in the name of the law, at the same time inquiring who was the proprietor of the house. "Brochet is!" chorused a hundred voices.

Now Brochet was the surname of a certain fascinating cocotte. "Well," said the good mayor paternally, "I should like to speak to M. Brochet."

"That's me!" shouted the same hundred individuals at once. Then there was a shout of "Long live Jaquin!" and the worthy man was carried round in triumph, while the fair ladies hastened to exert their blandishments upon the gendarmes. How could anybody be angry? The representatives of law and order fraternised with those of—the other thing! and it all ended in smoke!

So much for our evenings. In the daytime there was hunting. Everybody followed in merry parties, on horseback, in carriages, or on foot, to the sound of the horns of the red coated piqueurs of the Orleans family hunt. The whole thing was full of "go," and I remember seeing one very pretty woman, out of patience with the slowness of her carriage, entreat a friend to lend her his horse, and start off on it astride, not in her riding habit, but in ordinary outdoor costume. The fair lady's name was Lola Montes, and she later on attained some considerable celebrity in the kingdom of Bavaria.

After this fashion the lovely month of May was spent. But June brought me more serious occupation. I was appointed to the command of a squadron ordered to the coasts of the Empire of Morocco, where we were on the brink of important events, affecting alike the consolidation of our Algerian conquests and our relations with other Great Powers Driven to extremity by the blow given to his prestige by the capture of his smalah, Abd-el-Kadir was playing a last and desperate card. He had once more kindled all the Mussulman fanaticism and hatred of the foreign invader against us We had to fight in every direction. While my brother Aumale had several sharp engagements, in one of which my younger brother, Montpensier, was wounded, on the Constantine side of the country, General Bugeaud was carrying on a daily struggle with the warlike tribes of the Province of Oran. These tribes, whenever they were repulsed, crossed the River Moulouia, which was the frontier line of Morocco, at which our troops had to stop short on account of European susceptibilities, and thus escaped all chastisement.

The enemy concluded, from the cessation of our pursuit, either that we did not dare to brave the displeasure of the Emperor of Morocco, or else that the European Powers, and especially the Power whose flag floated over Gibraltar, protected the soil of that empire from any violation. It thus became a sort of citadel, whence any attempt on us might safely be made without fear of reprisals. There were consequently perpetual irruptions into our territory, not only of the fanatic Moorish element, but, covertly, of the Emperor of Morocco's own troops, whom he had massed, on pretence of keeping watch, close to our frontier, and in the long run these attacks, which had to be ceaselessly repulsed at the cost of precious lives, had grown intolerable. This state of things could not go on The French Government resolved to put an end to it, and its first step was to despatch the squadron I had the honour to command. I was to call on the Emperor of Morocco to withdraw the protection he had given Abdel-Kadir up to that period; not to allow our enemies to organise expeditions against us on his territory; and, finally, to reduce the considerable collection of troops he had amassed on the frontier—the number and attitude of which both amounted to a threat—to a mere police force. Failing his prompt acquiescence with my demands, I was to use force at sea, in concert with General Bugeaud on land, to force Muley Abderrahman to submit.