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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.
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."
We were soon in the Cazamanze, after having very nearly been lost on the sandbanks obstructing the entrance to the river, on which the sea breaks furiously. The river is a fine one, wide and deep. I steamed up it for about a hundred miles. After the few villages near the mouth we came to a desert country, covered with impenetrable forest and jungle.
For want of game we brought something else back with us from this expedition up the Gambia and Cazamanze rivers fever. Not a soul escaped it, and in spite of the care of the surgeon-major of the Belle-Poule, who was particularly skilful in treating the malady, we took a long time to get over it. I went back to Goree, where I was to see another sad sight.
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.
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