Dakar

“ Senegal is bounded N. by the Territory of Mauretania, W. by the Atlantic, S. by Portuguese Guinea and French Guinea, and E. by the Faleme, which separates it from Upper Senegal and Niger. Wedged into Senegal and surrounded by it save seawards is the British colony of the Gambia. Senegal colony proper consists of the towns of Dakar, St Louis, Goree and Rufisque, a narrow strip of territory on either side of the Dakar-St Louis railway, and a few detached spots, and has an area of 438 sq. m. with a population (census of 1904) of 107,826. ”

“ Polygamy is generally practised. Slave raiding has been stopped and domestic slavery is not recognized by the French. (See Berbers, Fula, Wolof, Mandingo, &c.)
Towns.—The chief towns of Senegal are St Louis, pop. (1904) 28,469, Dakar (23,452) , Goree (1500) (all separately noticed) and Rufisque. Rufisque (12,446; including suburbs, 19,177) is a seaport 14 m. E. of Dakar and is on the railway connecting that town with St Louis. It is the chief place in the colony for the export of groundnuts. Portudal and Joal are small places on the coast south of Rufisque. ”

“ The island is now the only port, the headquarters having suffered from the sand-bar at the mouth of the Senegal. Here our quondam rivals have made the splendid harbour of Dakar, whose jetties accommodate 180,000 tons of shipping at the same time. This powerful and warlike colony, distant only twelve hours' steaming from Bathurst, has her fleet of steamers for river navigation; her Tirailleurs du Sénégal, and her large force of fighting native troops. Fortified stations defend the course of the river, even above the falls, from the hostile and treacherous Moors. ”

“ In the presence of all these different races, who are still in the same period of historic development and social organisation as the Europe of mediaeval times, the modern epoch with its new ideas and advanced institutions is represented by the few whites who are settled at Saint-Louis, Gorée, and Dakar on the coast, and who visit the riverain stations or make exploring journeys into the interior. ”

“ From Constantine, in Algeria, another line of rails is crawling southward via Biskra into the Sahara, with Lake Tchad as its objective, thus opening up to European commerce the great protected states of Kanem and Wadai. From Dakar, on the coast of Senegal, a combined rail and river service is in operation to the Great Bend of the Niger, so that one can now go to the mysterious city of Timbuktu by train and river steamer, in considerable comfort and under the protection of the French flag all the way. ”

“ She spends her money freely in making ports and roads and in opening communication through adjacent countries. She lately sent a cruiser to Madeira, proposing to connect Dakar by telegraph with the Cape Verde islands. She is assiduous in forming friendly, or rather peaceable, relations with the people. She begins on the right principle by officering her colonies with her best men, naval and military. In England anyone is good enough for West Africa. She impresses the natives, before beginning to treat, by an overwhelming display of force ”

“ Having fallen asleep in a railway carriage on your departure from Paris, you awake six weeks later on a canoe-barge upon the Niger. The steamer lands you at the entrance to the Senegal, in a country which has belonged to France for centuries. The port of Senegal is Dakar, the finest harbour on the west coast of Africa, and from thence there is a railway to St. ”

“ As you are doubtless aware, the climate of Senegal is exceedingly unhealthy. I fell ill with a fever and was obliged to return to France where I was assigned to the office of the General Staff Major in Paris. At the opening of the war with Dahomey in 1892, I was sent in command of the Engineers of the Corps Expeditional, and on the 17th of November of that year was severely wounded at Dakar in Dahomey, having received a spear cut through the lungs. ”

“ El Hassan's personal entourage numbered exactly twenty persons. Of these, five were his immediate English-speaking, Western-educated supporters, Cliff, Isobel and the new Jack and Jimmy Peters and Dave Moroka. Rex Donaldson had been sent south again to operate in Senegal and Mali, to take over direction of the rapidly spreading movement in such centers as Bamako and Mopti and later, if possible, in Dakar. ”

“ JNorth of the Senegal there are no perennial rivers in the territory politically assigned to France. Nor are there now any streams for a stretch of 180 miles south of the bar, until the Salum is reached. Eut according to a well-founded local tradition, the Senegal itself seems to have formerly continued its southern course parallel with the coast under the shelter of the Cayor dunes as far as the Bay of Dakar, below Cape Verd. ”

“ Last night they changed from one means of steering to another, for practice, in the Suvaroff. Something in her was not adjusted, and she very nearly rammed the Orel. Thank God all passed off successfully.
9 p.m.—The wardroom officers bought some birds at Dakar, but did not buy food for them. They [46] fed them with anything they could find, and now they are beginning to die.
Usually the band plays at lunch on holidays. To-day they suddenly began playing at dinner.
At meals we drink more than we eat. ”

“ The first part of our journey was along a picturesque native path, just wide enough to allow two people to ride abreast, and bordered on either side by open bush country. About half-way between Bapure and our next halting-place at Gerin-Kuka, however, we crossed a river, the Dakpe, which forms the boundary between the Sokode and the Mangu districts, and immediately found ourselves on a broad, well-kept Government road. I didn't like it at all. The tortuous native tracks, winding in and out, may not be so good for quick or easy travelling, but they possess the charm of the unknown. ”

“ Dakhla Oasis differs somewhat from Kharga in that the villages are less scattered and, so to speak, more closely packed together. Owing, too, to the better water supply it is very much more fertile. Dakhla, too, is more favourably situated than Kharga, as it nestles at the foot of a great east and west cliff, three or four hundred feet in height, that protects it to a great extent from the prevailing northerly winds. Kharga, on the other hand, runs from north to south, with the result that the tearing desert gales sweep down upon it from the north with their full force. ”

“ In addition some of the trade carried by the great north and south road, from the Central Sudan through Tikeru to Kufara, might also have been brought into Dakhla by reopening this old route. As the railway from the Nile Valley into Kharga could easily have been extended into Dakhla, that oasis might have supplanted Kufara as the main caravan centre of the Libyan Desert, and a comparatively large entrepôt trade might have been developed there, the merchandise being distributed by means of the railway into Egypt. ”

“ By-and-by, no doubt, the Brindisi mail, speeding in connection with the Khartoum express, will make the run in seven or eight days. From England to Port Said is now but a matter of four days by the new Peninsular and Oriental service. It took me six days from Cairo to reach Dakhala. The officials prefer to know the place as "Atbara Camp." There is no absolute rule for the bestowal of proper names, or at least no practice one need care about in the Soudan, so I prefer to dub the locality by its native title of Dakhala, or Dakhelha. ”

“ Louis, until a woman with a basket on her head could travel unmolested from one place to the other. It was to no purpose I endeavoured to convince him that such an improbable arrangement had never been entered into between any European governor of Senegal and his enemies; and I likewise as ineffectually brought forward to support my assertion the friendly intercourse which had so long subsisted between the several English governors of Senegal and himself, and the very handsome and rich presents he, as well as his predecessors, had received from them and the vessels trading in the river. ”

“ The country generally is flat; there are a few hills down by the Zimboya and Lutuisi rivers to Wankie’s, on the river, conical and flat-topped. But this part is out of Khama’s territory. All east of Panda-ma-Tenka now belongs to the Matabele king. Wankie’s people and town are now on the north side of the Zambese. To the west of that station is the Lechuma Valley. South of Daka the land rises gradually from the Victoria Falls, the falls being 2580 feet above sea-level, and the land south of Daka is 3900 feet at the highest point. ”

“ News as to the doings of the leaders amongst the Senussia living in the wilds of the Libyan Desert has always been very difficult to obtain; but at that time they were reported in Dakhla to be somewhere in the neighbourhood of Tibesti, which lay to the south-west of Dakhla Oasis, in [110] the direction of the road we had been following, and it seemed likely, if they were really contemplating a descent upon Egypt, that they might attempt, if water existed upon this road, to make their way along it into Dakhla, and so on to the Nile Valley. ”

“ It is quite clear that these Daggera inhabit all the northern line of Bornou, from Zinder to Kuka; skirting, in fact, all the left of our route. They join the Damerghou territory, and thus extend from that province west to Kanem, and the route of Bornou east. The Tuaricks are ever located on the confines of the desert. Here they roam free, and rob and plunder where they have opportunity, or when the princes of Bornou and Soudan cannot check them.
Our people gnaw the doom fruit, but it is just like gnawing the bark of a tree, slightly flavoured with some aroma. ”

“ Going along the bank means, at high Nile, leading the troops upon a course half to a full mile from the river so as to avoid creeks and overflows and, at same time, secure the advantage of moving upon the more open ground beyond the zone of cultivation, out upon the edge of the bare desert. It was also early in August that the last of the fourteen double-decked iron barges, designed for the conveyance of troops, was finished at Dakhala. ”

“ To the poor and needy they never turned a deaf ear, and whenever an opportunity presented itself they were always ready with their handsome entertainments in honour of the Lieutenant-Governors or any other great people who visited Dacca. We wish them long life and prosperity. But we must reluctantly put an end to the record of those many pleasant days which we spent in Dacca, nearly twenty years ago, with this imperfect acknowledgment of how much was due to the kindness of our Hindoo and Mahomedan friends there. ”

“ To increase the unpleasantness of our situation, some of the Kaartans who had gone on before set fire to the grass, which, being to windward of us, made rapid progress towards the spot where we had halted. [299] It providentially did not reach us, and we had only to complain of a restless night, and much anxiety, to say nothing of our labour in clearing the ground around our bivouac.
Four o’clock on the morning of the 22d again found us moving to ENE. At seven we passed the Kolle-m-bimee, or black creek, nearly dry and running south; it joins the Senegal a little above Feloo. ”

“ A true Arab will defend his "dakhiel" with his life. The law of "dakhal" is, however, only in full force among those tribes who are, by their strength or geographical position, independent of the Turkish government. Among tribes in which the law is maintained, a man who proved false to his dakhiel would be disgraced for life! ”

“ The old road that I surveyed to the south-west of Dakhla Oasis for some 200 miles unquestionably leads to Owanat; but it is very doubtful whether it is practicable with camels at the present time. The distance from Dakhla to Owanat in a straight line is some 375 miles, or at least fifteen days’ hard travelling by caravan. A small well-mounted party travelling light, even in the most favourable part of the year, would find this an extremely formidable journey, without the use of some sort of depot or relay system. ”

“ Yet the explorers Cailliaud and Russegger accepted the theory of the natives that the oases derive their supplies from the Nile. But Dakhel being at a much higher level than the main stream under the same latitude, the source of its springs must in any case be sought in the upper reaches of the Nile. They probably come from the southern regions lying within the zone of the tropical rains. But, however this be, the high temperature attained by the current during its imdergroimd passage shows that it must flow at a depth of several hundred yards below the surface of the ground. ”

“ The former seems to be resident in Dakhla all the year round; but the latter are migrants, coming into the oasis in March and returning in the autumn after the date harvest. They take somewhat the place in Dakhla that the cuckoo does in England, their advent being regarded as a sign that the winter is past and the summer close at hand. The palm groves of the oasis, [285] when the hot weather comes on, swarm with these pretty little birds, whose soft cooing as they sit swaying in the palm tops is a most melodious sound—extremely pleasant and soothing after a long hot desert journey. ”

“ The arrival of the French trading fleet from St. Louis, at Galam, commanded by an officer whom I had the pleasure of knowing at Senegal, and who, on his way to Boolibany, had called to see me, also tended, in a great degree, to give new vigour to our proceedings. The idea alone of having near, if not with us, people of our own colour, [165] with whom we may occasionally associate, affords a pleasure which none but those who have experienced the absence, can duly appreciate. ”