How many, aye, some even greater men than he, have fallen thus! Alas! it has been with the dead bodies of our countrymen that the soil of the French Sudan, which we hope will some day yield so rich a harvest, has been fertilized! Dare we add, that those who went there in the hope of winning gold braid and crosses, got “crosses” indeed, but they consisted only of two bits of wood clumsily nailed together by some comrade, and set up in the corner of a field of millet, beneath the shade of some baobab tree; poor ephemeral crosses, soon eaten up by white ants, incapable even of preserving the memory of the brave fellows buried beneath them. But we must not bemoan too much the fate of these noble dead. We must honour them and follow their example. Well then, Davoust being dead, without having accomplished his task, I vowed that a boat bearing his name should descend the river. This promise I made in 1888, but it was not until 1896 that I was able to redeem it. Now I have fulfilled my vow. There is no doubt that it would have made all the difference in the political results of my mission, if it could have been undertaken eight or ten years earlier. For instance, in the negotiations which took place in 1890, and were so inauspicious for our influence on the Lower Niger, our plenipotentiaries would have been able to assert, that the rapids at Burrum existed only in the imagination of Sir Edward Malet, a fact not without its importance. But we will not trouble ourselves with what the expedition ought to have done—we will merely record what it did do. My project, adopted by M. Delcassé, was that of Davoust, slightly modified. Instead of employing gunboats drawing about three feet of water, I found it best to employ barges of very slight draught worked with oars. An attentive study of Dr. Barth’s narrative reveals how very great were the difficulties of navigation, at least on those parts of the river he himself explored; for it must be remembered that he never spoke by hearsay. Of course a boat drawing a foot or so only of water would easily pass over rapids, where such vessels as the _Mage_ and the _Niger_ must inevitably come to grief. Moreover, a steam-boat needs fuel, and that fuel would have to be wood. Then we must go and cut that wood, which would give the natives opportunities for hostility. Moreover, the machinery might get out of order. Of course, rowing is slower than steaming, but it is much safer. Then, too, we had the current in our favour; we had but to let ourselves go and we should certainly arrive at some goal, if not at a good port. The stream would carry our barges down, with us on or under them, as Spartan mothers would have said.