At my request he sent us the female blacksmith of Bokar Wandieïdiu, to whom I have already alluded, to help us to complete our Tuareg vocabulary. She was accompanied by a marabout named Tayoro, a Fulah from Wagnaka in Massina, a very distinguished and refined-looking old man, with a white beard, who came from Konnari in the same district, and whose name was Modibo Konna. [Illustration: TAYORO AND MODIBO KONNA.] He spoke _bozo_, or the dialect of the Niger fishermen near Mopti, and this enabled Baudry to draw up an elementary vocabulary of that language. This lady blacksmith, with Tayoro and Modibo Konna, were our guests for some days, and we were really quite fascinated by their manners, and the way in which they behaved to us. We had certainly not been accustomed to meet with tact such as theirs amongst the natives, and they finally removed all my prejudices against their master Galadio. So I sent to ask him whether, as he was too old to visit me, I should go to see him, for were we not friends like two fingers on one hand, or, to use the native simile, like two teeth of one comb? If he would see me, when should I come? It would only take me three days to go, I reflected, and it was of importance for us to let the whole country see that Galadio was our friend, and that when we broke up our camp we should leave behind us an ally devoted to our interests, in fact so compromised that he must remain true to us. It would be very important to us to have such a helper when it came to the organization of the district, and he might be made its ruler as a protected native chief. My messengers returned a few days later, bringing horses with them for me to make the journey, and assuring me that their master would be delighted to receive me. While waiting for the envoys to come back, we worked very hard at our vocabularies. All went well with them, and we completed them in a few days. Between whiles Tayoro turned our knowledge of his dialect to account, by telling me the following charming story about the time of the Fulah reformation in Sokoto. When the great reformer, Othman Fodio, who, by the way, was a noted robber and slave-hunter, preached the so-called reformation, that is to say, the revolt against the chief of the Haussa Fulahs, he was followed by a great many disciples, as of course all prophets are. One evening when Othman was preaching and expounding the truth, his eyes suddenly fell upon a venerable-looking old man who was sobbing. “Look!” cried the reformer, “look at that old man weeping; follow his example, for Allah has touched his heart.” Then the poor old fellow, the tears still rolling down his cheeks, said in a choked and broken voice, “No, Modibo, no, you have read my heart wrongly; when I saw you holding forth so vehemently, and shaking your grey beard, you reminded me of my old goat which I left at home in my hut to follow you. That is what made me sob,” and he went on weeping.