Benjamin listened and questioned, never satisfied.  “How are you installed there?” he asked.  “How do you live?  What are your habits?  What is your work?”

Dominique began to laugh again, conscious as he was that he was astonishing, upsetting all these unknown relatives who pressed so close to him, aglow with increasing curiosity.  Women and old men had in turn left their places to draw near to him; even children had gathered around, as if to listen to a fine story.

“Oh! we live in republican fashion,” said he; “every member of our community has to help in the common fraternal task.  The family counts more or less expert artisans of all kinds for the rough work.  My father in particular has revealed himself to be a very skilful mason, for he had to build a place for us when we arrived.  He even made his own bricks, thanks to some deposits of clayey soil which exist near Djenny.  So our farm is now a little village:  each married couple will have its own house.  Then, too, we are not only agriculturists, we are fishermen and hunters also.  We have our boats; the Niger abounds in fish to an extraordinary degree, and there are wonderful hauls at times.  And even the shooting and hunting would suffice to feed us; game is plentiful, there are partridges and wild guinea-fowl, not to mention the flamingoes, the pelicans, the egrets, the thousands of creatures who do not prey on one another.  Black lions visit us at times:  eagles fly slowly over our heads; at dusk hippopotami come in parties of three and four to gambol in the river with the clumsy grace of negro children bathing.  But, after all, we are more particularly cultivators, kings of the plain, especially when the waters of the Niger withdraw after fertilizing our fields.  Our estate has no limits; it stretches as far as we can labor.  And ah! if you could only see the natives, who do not even plough, but have few if any appliances beyond sticks, with which they just scratch the soil before confiding the seed to it!  There is no trouble, no worry; the earth is rich, the sun ardent, and thus the crop will always be a fine one.  When we ourselves employ the plough, when we bestow a little care on the soil which teems with life, what prodigious crops there are, an abundance of grain such as your barns could never hold!  As soon as we possess the agricultural machinery, which I have come to order here in France, we shall need flotillas of boats in order to send you the overplus of our granaries. . . .  When the river subsides, when its waters fall, the crop we more particularly grow is rice; there are, indeed, plains of rice, which occasionally yield two crops.  Then come millet and ground-beans, and by and by will come corn, when we can grow it on a large scale.  Vast cotton fields follow one after the other, and we also grow manioc and indigo, while in our kitchen gardens we have onions and pimentoes, and gourds and cucumbers.  And I don’t mention the natural vegetation, the