Thinking of those fine soldiers, and then casting back my memory to the services recently rendered by their successors, the Senegalese Riflemen--first-class troops, useful anywhere, like our Algerian Turcos, who have already proved what they are worth—­I ask myself why we should not utilise the considerable recruiting opportunities Western Africa offers us to raise a number of negro battalions.  They might if properly enlisted be most usefully employed, especially in those unhealthy countries where we now squander so many invaluable lives.  I will even go further, for it is my conviction that in thus acting we should be preparing for the future, and outstripping the march of events.  The state of armed preparation which now exists in Europe—­with every man a soldier, and forced to be a soldier, with every man’s career interrupted, and each man’s existence hanging on the chance of an electoral surprise or a parliamentary incident—­cannot possibly last.  It is unhappily to be feared that to escape from this insane condition of things some violent shock will be necessary, which will make a clean sweep of the false notions dressed up in fine names which we have been accumulating for the past century.  When that crisis is over, people will want to be free, as Americans are free—­free to do and to be what they choose, and, especially, free not to be soldiers unless they choose.  There can be no doubt at all that those inventions of revolutionary tyranny, conscription and compulsory service, will become the object of universal horror, and that the first person who dares to take the initiative in abolishing them will be saluted by the blessings of the entire human race.  Wherefore every government will perforce have to come to what is right and just—­to armies consisting of volunteers and auxiliaries.  And who knows whether we shall not then find the real strength of our army in our black regiments, just as Russia would in her yellow-skinned ones and Great Britain in her Indian troops?  But I must bring this digression to a close.

As we steamed down the Cazamanze we ran aground, and while the ship was being got off I went ashore, in a creek, where at the very outset I disturbed the slumbers of a couple of crocodiles sleeping on a stone.  A moment later I was nearly knocked over by a big boar with reddish bristles and up-curved fangs, a “wart hog.”  Then I got into the brush, tall grass much higher than myself, above which hung the green roof of the giant trees.  Pushing my way along I came to a place where the ground was trodden and the branches broken, and on which I saw the traces and fresh tracks of a herd of elephants.  Close to me, too, I heard the crackling caused by the passage of some big animal which I could not see.  We followed the elephants’ path, but hindered by the grasses they had trodden down, and our feet catching in the holes made in the damp soil by their huge feet, we were soon forced to beat a retreat.  Another