“Oh yes, but as soon as they get on shore they instantly sell their things, or give them away to their women, and come back naked.  So I have given it up.”

When it was time for us to start, the captain owned to me that none of the crew had ever known how to steer, except one negro, who acted as his butler, and he could only steer in a river, by keeping the ship at an equal distance from the two banks.  He had never been able to understand anything about steering by the compass at sea.  As we had to go a certain distance at sea before reaching the mouth of the rivers, I took on board a whaler and crew from my frigate, and my men went to the wheel.  But now a fresh difficulty arose.  The single engineer could not stop by his engine for ever, without taking any rest.  Now and then the care of the machinery had to be confided to a negro, whom he had trained after a certain fashion, and I confess I felt far from easy when I saw him handling the levers and taps with all the self-confidence of a monkey showing off a magic lantern.  Besides our negro crew, there was a perfect menagerie of creatures loose on board.  Gazelles, which were inoffensive enough, I must grant, a legion of ill-behaved monkeys, and a tame civet.  The monkeys never stopped playing spiteful tricks on everybody all day long, and at night they all huddled together, clasping each other, with their tails sticking out like the rays of a star or the spokes of a wheel.  If by anybody’s fault or misfortune one of those tails got trodden on, the whole cluster of monkeys yelled for an hour, just as journalists do if a finger is laid on one of their fraternity.  As for the civet, she used to offer her company as bed-fellow to each of us in turn, and it was of the most stinking and disagreeable kind.

We soon reached the mouth of the Gambia River, and, entering it through a labyrinth of sandbanks, we saw a wide stream with flat shores covered with mangrove swamps, behind which aquatic form of vegetation huge trees rose, fantastically tall, and in all the splendour of their tropical growth.  All the rivers of the West African coast present this identically same appearance.  We had hardly entered this one before we were confronted by one of those international questions which swarm on the coast in this part of the globe.  The Gambia is a British river, but on its banks is a territory belonging to us, called Albreda, which I was about to visit.  Had we a right to go there direct, up the English waters of the Gambia, or ought we to stop first of all at St. Mary Bathurst, the capital of the British possessions on the river, to ask permission to do so?  If a merchant vessel, French or otherwise, tried to get up to Albreda, the British stopped her by fair words or force, to maintain their right.  But this we were contesting, and as the business was still in suspense, I passed St. Mary Bathurst without stopping, and anchored at Albreda.  It is not a very important factory.  I was received by four