Slow through the reaches of the oily stream, Unshapely, huge, and heap’d with cumbrous freight, The steamer drags along its ponderous weight, And panting, breathes a cloud of eddying steam; Upon the deck the wearied negroes dream, In sleep’s fine thraldom—humble, candid, great,— While overhead the moon in regal state Trails robes of gauze enmesh’d with astral gleam. The misty night exhales a poisonous balm From vague-spread margins, where the shadows lie, Of softly-tufted bush and tropic palm; Then from the silence, echoless, on high Mounts through the torpor of the deadly calm, To ethereal plains the siren’s piercing cry. [Illustration: ON THE SENEGAL.] [Illustration: EN ROUTE.] CHAPTER II FROM KAYES TO TIMBUKTU On October 10, 1895, we finally left Kayes. Our packages had been piled up the evening before in three railway wagons, and our party now took their places in the carriages. Baudry, Bluzet, and Sauzereau our engineer, who were to go up in the _Davoust_, remained, and the rest of my staff were the following: the second master pilot, Samba Amadi, generally called Digui, a man of colossal height and herculean strength, but more remarkable still for his zeal, his fidelity, and his nautical skill; the native interpreter Suleyman Gundiamu, who had been to Timbuktu with Caron as one of his coolies; the Arabic translator, Abdulaye Dem, a cunning and intelligent little Toucouleur, more cultivated than most of the negro marabouts; and twenty coolies, or native sailors. We reached Bafolabé in the evening without incident. A ferry-boat took us across the Bafing, one of the two rivers which unite to form the Senegal. A road some two feet wide starts from the right bank of the Bafing, and follows the course of the other affluent, the Bakhoy, to the village of Djubeba, where we camped on the evening of the 13th. Thus far our journey had been effected by the aid of very civilized means of transport. On leaving Djubeba, however, our difficulties were to begin. [Illustration: LEFEBVRE CARTS UNHARNESSED.] The carriage, or rather cart, which is used in the French Sudan for taking down provisions and other necessaries to our different stations on the Niger is of the kind known as the Lefebvre, about which there was so much talk during the Madagascar expedition. It consists of a big case of sheet iron mounted on a crank axle, and provided with two wheels. It is drawn by a mule.