_Sunday, May 3._—The day before yesterday some strange news was brought us by a boy of about fifteen. He had been sent secretly to us by the Kurteye marabout we had seen when we were on our way to Say. A horrible plot was being concocted, he said, for Amadu, remembering the spells of his father, who had been a great magician at Hamda-Allâhi, had made an infallible charm against us. On some copy-book paper, which had evidently been taken off our presents, he had written the most awful curses, imploring Allah seven times over to exterminate the Kaffirs, as he called us, and having washed the paper in water he made a goat drink the decoction thus produced. He then sent that goat to us, thinking we would buy it! But we were warned in time. The awful _grisgris_ did, in fact, arrive in camp yesterday in the form of a black goat. The poor creature did not look as if she were charged with venom. She was plump not too old, and would make a first-rate stew. All our men were, however, afraid to have anything to do with her, for in their eyes she was indeed a _grisgris_ endowed with unholy powers by Amadu. The negroes are all superstitious, and their imagination often quite runs away with them. On the other hand, faith is sometimes wanting amongst the Mussulmans. Putting on an air of very great wisdom, therefore, we generously offered two cubits of stuff, worth about threepence-halfpenny, for the goat filled with spells against us, and when the trader who had brought her looked confused, yet almost willing to let us have her at that ridiculous price, we explained to him emphatically that our own _grisgris_, the _tubabu grisgris_, had revealed to us the black designs of Amadu, and we intended to have him and his goat taken back to the other side of the river, _manu militari_, I very nearly said kicked back. The Kurteye marabout who had warned us, was evidently a friend, unless the whole story was made up to get a present from us. Every evening now regular tornados broke near Say. Up-stream and down-stream, at Djerma and at Gurma, torrents of rain fell constantly, and the lightning flashed from every point of the compass; but, strange to relate, there was no rain at Say itself, and when there is no rain there is no harvest. The report was now spread that we had called down on the village the curse of Allah. The other day Amadu Saturu had publicly recited the _Fatiha_ in the Mosque in the hope of getting rain to fall, and we were told that in the meeting of the notables of the place, the Kurteye marabout had got up and asserted that Say was punished for having given a bad reception to a man sent from God, in other words, to the chief of our expedition, and because Amadu had broken his promise and all his solemn oaths.