The fish we caught in the Niger were much the same as those found in the Senegal. The kind the natives call “captains” and _ntébés_ are very delicate in flavour, and often of considerable size. We once caught a “captain” at Gurao on the Debo, weighing nearly 80 lbs. It took two men to carry it, and when it was hung from a pole it trailed on the ground. But we rarely had such luck as this at Fort Archinard. Another kind of fish, called the _machoiran_, with very flat jaws, was to be found in the mud and ooze of the Niger, but beware of eating its flesh. If, it is said, you cut the fat off its tail (Heaven only knows if it has any), by mistake, at full moon, and then drink some fresh milk, and sleep out of doors for the rest of the night on a white coverlet, and then in the morning drink a basin of water, you will surely catch leprosy. I don’t suppose the lepers of Say had really taken all these precautions to ensure having the disease. I must add that there is one thing which all travellers in Africa will find very useful. I allude to the Prevet tablets of condensed food. We can justly testify to their efficacy, whether they are Julienne, carrots, Brussels sprouts, pears, or apples. They are light, easily carried, and easily divided. To have used them once is recommendation enough, but it is necessary to know how to prepare them, and not to follow Baudry’s example, who one day served us some Prevet spinach, which tasted for all the world like boiled hay. If ever you travel with him, don’t make him chief of the commissariat. In the morning we also worked at making our map, for we should certainly never have been able to finish it in Paris in the limited time we should be allowed for it. We made a duplicate copy of the map, _grosso modo_, from Timbuktu to Say, to guard against the possible loss of one of the barges. Then came the time for taking our daily dose of twenty centigrammes of quinine dissolved in two centilitres of alcohol, which, truth to tell, was anything but pleasant to the taste. Even Abdulaye himself, who could swallow anything, made a wry face at this terrible mixture; but to help us to digest the everlasting mutton and rice boiled in water, and to keep down the symptoms of fever which threatened us all, nothing could be better. [Illustration: FORT ARCHINARD.] I cannot too often insist on the fact that it was, thanks to the daily dose of quinine regularly administered by order to every member of the expedition, that we owe our safe return in good health, and with appetites unimpaired. We owe to it, too, the fact that in spite of many fevers in past days, we actually had gained, on our return to Paris, not only in weight, but in our power of enjoying a joke.