_Monday, April 13._—We finished the repairs of the _Aube_. She still let the water in like a strainer, but, as we always said, we were used to that. This expression, “used to it,” was perpetually employed by us all, and it enabled us to bear with philosophy all our troubles. It is, in fact, the expression which gilds the bitterest pills to be swallowed on an exploring expedition, and no one need dream of starting on such a trip as ours if they cannot adopt what we may call the philosophy of use and wont on every occasion. Have twenty-five of us got to pack into a boat about the size of my hand? What does it matter? go on board, you’ll get used to it. Have we got to find place for provisions and things to exchange with the natives when there is no more room? Never mind, ship them all, we shall get used to them when we settle down. Are you in a hostile district? Do rumours of war, of approaching columns of thousands and thousands of natives uniting to attack, trouble you? Never mind, they will turn out not to be so many after all; you are used to these rumours now. You have some dreadful rapids in front of you; you have got to pass them somehow. There are so many, you can’t count them. Shall we draw back? Shall we allow them to check our onward march? No, no, we shall get used to them. If you take them one by one, you will find that each fresh one is not worse than the last, and that the hundredth is just like the first. You get quite used to them, at least if you do not lose your boats and your life too. Which would be the final getting used to things, the last settling down! A _diavandu_ and his sister one day presented themselves at the camp. These _diavandus_, who are the guides and confidants of the people, are everywhere met with amongst the Fulahs. I don’t know what trade the sister followed, but this _diavandu_ came to offer us his services. He offered to perform all the usual duties of his office on our behalf, and was ready either to sell us milk, or to act as a spy for us. He was a little fellow, of puny, sickly appearance. We made him drink some quinine dissolved in water, and our people told him that the bitter beverage contained all the talismans of the infernal regions. Certainly the witches in _Macbeth_ never made a philtre nastier than our mixture. Our _diavandu_ swore by the Koran, without any mental reservations, that he would be faithful to us, and our spells and the _grisgris_ we had given him would, he knew, kill him if he were false to us, or betrayed us in any way. Then we sent him to see what was going on in Amadu’s camp. I do not know what eventually became of him, but perhaps if he was false to us the quinine killed him by auto-suggestion; perhaps he was simply suppressed by our enemies, or he may have died a natural death; anyhow we never saw either him or his sister again.