After going about twenty-two miles further down the river, we anchored near enough to Say to make out the trees surrounding it, and the next day we reached the town itself, which had for so long been the object of our desires. Say is a comparatively big place, but not nearly as important as it is often made out to be. It is made up of straw huts with pointed roofs, and is surrounded by palisades also of straw. Only one house is built of mud, and that forms the entrance sacred to the chief. The river flows on the east of the town, and on the west is a low-lying tract of what are meadows in the dry season, but mere swamps in the winter. We anchored at once, but the stench from the rubbish on the banks of the river was so great that we soon moved to the southern extremity of the village, where the shore was cleaner. Our passengers meanwhile had gone to announce our arrival, and old Abdu, who is in command of the prisoners of the chief of Say, soon came to see us. Baud and Vermesch had had some dealings with him, and had spoken well of him to us, while Monteil also alludes to him. He seemed a very worthy sort of fellow. After the customary exchange of compliments, I asked to be permitted to pay a visit to his master, Amadu Saturu, generally known under the name of Modibo, or the savant, and Abdu went off to make my request known at once, but we waited and waited a very long time before any answer was vouchsafed. We were simply consumed with impatience, and I augured ill from the delay. I remembered of course that Modibo had signed treaty after treaty with Baud, Decœur, and Toutée, only I could not help also remembering how little a diplomatic document such as a so-called treaty really ever binds a negro, and that made me hesitate to trust him. Most Mussulmans, at least most of the Mahommedan chiefs and marabouts, are liars and deceivers. They have a hundred ways, not to speak of mental reservation, of swearing by the Koran, without feeling themselves bound by their oath. If they respected a promise given as they ought to do, would their prophet have taught that four days’ fasting expiated the violation of an oath? If they cheat like this when they know what they are about, how are they likely to behave when everything is strange to them? and they attach no moral value to the terms of an agreement, especially of an agreement of many clauses such as is the fashion for the French to make with native chiefs. To pass the time whilst waiting for the return of our messenger we chatted with a Kurteye marabout, who came to give us a greeting. He read Madidu’s letter with some difficulty, but great interest. I asked him whether Modibo generally kept his visitors waiting like this, and he replied, “Yes, it makes him seem more important, but you will see him when it gets cooler.” So we waited with what patience we could, and at about five o’clock Amadu Saturu sent for me. Oh, what a series of preliminaries we still had to go through!