After a quiet night we resumed our voyage, but the never-ceasing enervating wind forced us to anchor soon, and we were presently joined by a canoe in which was an unfortunate man in chains, a brother of Sakhib, who had been out of his mind for five years. He is quiet enough, they told me, when he is rendered powerless for harm by being bound, but directly he is released he becomes furious, and strikes and abuses every one about him. Taburet prescribed for him as best he could, shower-baths and strait waistcoats being out of the question in these parts. We passed the village of Agata, where lives Hameit, a sheriff to whom we had a letter from Abiddin, and where we saw some fifty canoes drawn up high and dry on the banks. In the evening we halted near a little village on an islet, the chief of which had had his arm broken by a blow from the spear of an Igwadaren, whom he had refused to allow to carry off his store of rice. There is no doubt that the natives on the right bank of the river behave better than those on the left, and—which it is rather difficult to understand—it is the negroes, that is to say the Songhay, who, though more numerous and as well armed as their oppressors, allow themselves to be ill-treated in this way without making any attempt at defence. Their cowardice prevents me from feeling as much sympathy as I otherwise should for their miserable condition. [Illustration: THE VILLAGE OF GUNGI.] We started very early the next morning, but our guide got confused, and did not know the way to Gungi. Some men in a canoe, however, directed us, and we had to go up-stream again beyond Agata, and get into another arm which we had passed on the left. We then, though not without some difficulty, succeeded in reaching the village, passing several artificial dykes, beyond which stretched rice-fields now inundated. Gunga, a wretched little place, is peopled by slaves taken in war by the sheriffs of Agata. Mohamed’s rice was handed over to us, but it was all still in the husk, and it would take us the whole of the next day to get it shelled. During the night a Kel es Suk arrived, who, in a very important manner, informed me that he had very serious news to communicate. The whole of the tribes of the Sahara, he said, had combined against the French, and were advancing upon Timbuktu. Awellimiden, Hoggars and all the rest of them were up, and Madidu himself was at Bamba at the head of his column. This was really too big an invention, and the narrator overreached himself by going so far. Without losing my _sang-froid_ for a moment, I thanked my informant, Father Hacquart acting as interpreter, for my visitor spoke Arabic well, and begged him to take my best compliments to Madidu. The old rogue then turned to the subject he really had most at heart, and tried to make me give him a garment of some kind as a present, but I was too deep for that, and sent him off empty-handed. [Illustration: OUR PEOPLE SHELLING OUR RICE AT GUNGI.]