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One sees more different kinds of black people in Sierra Leone than in any other port along the Coast; Senegalese and Senegambians, Kroo boys, Liberians, naked bush boys bearing great burdens from the forests, domestic slaves in fez and colored linen livery, carrying hammocks swung from under a canopy, the local electric hansom, soldiers of the W.A.F.F., the West African Frontier Force, in Zouave uniform of scarlet and khaki, with bare legs; Arabs from as far in the interior as Timbuctu, yellow in face and in long silken robes; big fat "mammies" in well-washed linen like the washerwomen of Jamaica, each balancing on her head her tightly rolled umbrella, and in the gardens slim young girls, with only a strip of blue and white linen from the waist to the knees, lithe, erect, with glistening teeth and eyes, and their sisters, after two years in the mission schools, demurely and correctly dressed like British school marms.
Again, the big howitzers led the infernal orchestra pitting the face of no man's land with jet black blotches. The puppet figures we watched began to waver; the Senegalese were torn and scattered. Once more these huge explosions unloading their cargoes of midnight on to the evening gloom. All along the Zouaves and Senegalese gave way.
The Senegalese Regiments 1, 2 and 3, stationed in Senegambia, are hardly enough to replace and complete the Senegalese troops quartered in the other African colonies of France. Although there is no doubt that France is in a position to raise a strong black army, the probability that black divisions will be available for a European war is still remote.
By the time we had passed along the whole of the French second line and part of their front line trenches, I had had about enough. So took leave of these valiant Frenchmen and cheery Senegalese and pushed on to the advanced observation post of the Artillery where I met General Stockdale, commanding the 15th Brigade, R.F.A., and not only saw how the land lay but heard some interesting opinions.
There they were made fast, and three Kroo boys knocked the spike out of each log, warped a chain around it, and made fast that chain to the steel hawser of the winch. As it was drawn to the deck a Senegalese soldier, acting for the Customs, gave it a second blow with a branding hammer, and, thundering and smashing, it swung into the hold.
They were intending to make their way up that stream to the nearest Abyssinian post, and thereafter, striking through Menelik's country, hoped to arrive on the East African coast at Djibutil. Their sick comrades they entrusted to the Egyptian military authorities to send home by the Nile through Lower Egypt. The invalided Frenchmen and Senegalese in question reached Cairo at the end of the year.
Their incentive was to forestall and annoy Great Britain and render worthless the blood and treasure our country might spend in smashing the dervishes. Major Marchand set out from the west coast or French Congo in 1896, with a small body of Europeans and about 500 Senegalese troops.
"Alors," said Madame, "quatre sont morts" four dead four tall, strong sons dead for France sons like the sweet and blue-eyed daughter who was hiding her brave smile in the dusk. It was a tiny stone house whose front window lipped the passing sidewalk where ever tramped the feet of black soldiers marching home. There was a cavernous wardrobe, a great fireplace invaded by a new and jaunty iron stove. Vast, thick piles of bedding rose in yonder corner. Without was the crowded kitchen and up a half-stair was our bedroom that gave upon a tiny court with arched stone staircase and one green tree. We were a touching family party held together by a great sorrow and a great joy. How we laughed over the salad that got brandy instead of vinegar how we ate the golden pile of fried potatoes and how we pored over the post-card from the Lieutenant of the Senegalese dear little vale of crushed and risen France, in the day when Negroes went "over the top" at Pont-
This smoldering resentment suddenly burst into flame, a day or so before we reached Salonika, when a Senegalese sergeant, whose request to be sent home had been refused, ran amuck, barricaded himself in a stone outhouse with a plentiful supply of rifles and ammunition, and succeeded in killing four officers and half-a-dozen soldiers before his career was ended by a well-aimed hand grenade.
Graham, the more deliberately judicial for the stirring emotions he felt, asked if there had been any fighting. "A little," said Ostrog. "In one quarter only. But the Senegalese division of our African agricultural police the Consolidated African Companies have a very well drilled police was ready, and so were the aeroplanes. We expected a little trouble in the continental cities, and in America.
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