that we were close on New Year’s day, and that a perfect rain of honours was about to fall on a heap of theatrical directors who had done special service to the government, and private secretaries, and political writers, who had never been off the Boulevards, the favoured elect of the world of politics—­those odious politics!  The dismal, ill-built, rickety hospital was perfectly well managed at all events, thanks to our naval surgeons, and also to our admirable sisters of charity, whose names I cannot pronounce without indulging in another and an indignant digression.

Can we really have fallen so low as to tolerate that these holy and noble women, who have lightened so much suffering, and so worthily sustained the good name of France all over the world, should be sacrificed in these latter days to a pack of public-house reformers and would-be strong-minded freethinkers?

From the hospital, that ante-chamber of death, I went to the barracks for the living, mere dens, built by St. Routine to sealed pattern, at so much a foot, identically the same in every climate, and absolutely unsuitable for any.  How different from the spacious, airy, comfortable edifices raised by the English for the comfort and well-being of their colonial garrisons!

St. Louis is built beside a river, the flat banks of which are seen stretching away hedged in by masses of green vegetation.  In the mornings the town is usually wrapped in an unhealthy fog.  Yet this is the moment at which the inhabitants are to be seen languidly dragging themselves along the straight sandy streets, between the negro huts and a few white houses with terraces before them.  When the fog lifts the place is nothing but a scorching desert.  I was to have gone up the river to inspect our military stations and their garrisons, but the only available boat was detained outside the bar across the mouth of the river, which was absolutely impassable.  After waiting for it in vain for several days, I left St. Louis for Goree and Dakar.

At Goree I once more saw the pretty signares, a regularly enlisted company of mulatto women, which furnishes our officers, civil and military, with wives and housekeepers during their turn of colonial service.  Then I came again upon my friend the King of Dakar, an old acquaintance of mine, who sent me his compliments by his “general of cavalry,” a perfect giant in stature, excessively thin, who wore a stock and a cocked hat, and no breeches.

At Goree I embarked on board the colonial despatch boat Galibi to inspect our stations on the Gambia and the Cazamanze.  This vessel was herself a curiosity, not indeed as a ship of war, for she was a fine little steam despatch boat, armed with four guns, but on account of the organisation and composition of her crew.  There were only four whites on board—­the lieutenant in command, a poor fellow who was soon to fall a victim to the climate and die at his post, a clerk, an engineer, and a master-gunner.  All the rest of the crew were negroes, hypocritically denominated Government prisoners, whose whole costume, as a rule, consisted of a monkey-skin cap and a string of grigris, or charms, round their waists.  “Haven’t you ever tried to dress them?” said I to the lieutenant.