some service or other he had done our fleet in those waters; and a large gold medal of Queen Victoria, given him by the English, hung down on a thick chain between his knees.  His son—­who lived close to the landing-stage in a big hut with a hoarding round it, like what you see in Paris round pulled-down houses, on which was written, instead of the usual warning, “Petit Denis, Fils du Roi” (Little Denis, the King’s Son) in letters a foot high—­was anxious to come too.  He had a Hussar uniform, but not knowing how to put it on, he sent at the last moment to ask for somebody to go and help him to get into it.  I lost no time in detailing the midshipmen of the frigate for this duty, which they performed with the greatest gusto, dressing up “Petit Denis” just as the tailor’s assistants dress up M. Jourdain in the Bourgeois Gentil-homme.  But the scamps tightened him up to such an extent in his jacket and belts that he was more dead than alive, and on the brink of an apopletic attack, by the time he got on board.  We gave the royal family the best welcome at our command.  My bandmaster, M. Paulus, entertained them with his noisiest tunes; but whenever the band stopped the king cried “Encore! encore!” When the bandsmen got tired out I shut his majesty up in a little cabin with the three ship’s drummers, and told them to keep rolling till he had enough of it.  But the drummers gave out in their turn, and I had to send the insatiable melomaniac and his family on shore at last, whether he would or no.

In return for my handsome behaviour to him he invited me to join him in an elephant hunt.  These animals were very numerous in the vicinity, and were devastating the plantations.  But the season was particularly unhealthy, everybody was ill; we should have had to spend the night in pestilential marshes, where we were certain to get fever, and as I had hardly got clear of that we had caught in the Cazamanze River, I had to refuse the tempting offer.  We spent several days in the Gaboon, amongst a race of negroes who struck me as being more intelligent and more easy to civilise than any others on the coast.  The women, too, had better features than most negresses.  Aquiline noses were to be seen among them and lips of moderate size, and some had an almost European look.  Their necks and arms and waists were loaded with necklaces and bracelets of shells or metal, which rattled every time they moved, a somewhat idle precaution, inspired, so it was said, by the excessive jealousy of their lords and masters.  On the whole I carried away a very good impression of the future possibilities of the Gaboon, both naval and colonial.