ardly a dialect of
Bambouk, Fool-adoo, Jallonkadoo, Timbuctoo, and all the other tribes
of Senegal and beyond, but he could deceive the wiliest natives in it.
Moreover, as a professional guide he found it paid to keep a wife in
every petty state. At the worst she served to exercise the tongue; at
the best she was provisioner, geographer, and spy. Never tired, never
sick, never at a loss, Isaaco was simply indispensable to the European
merchants trading in Senegal. So, indeed, was he to Mungo Park, that
doughtiest of Scotsmen, who dared on through Bambarra and Haoussa
where no white-face had ever been. Without Isaaco's genius and
gigantic strength, it is unlikely that the second expedition (in 1805)
would ever have reached the Niger. It was Isaaco who nursed the forty
brave men who one by one sickened of dysentery; supported them on
their mules, even in delirium, when they cried like children for their
homes; and buried them at the last with saphies or charms from the
_Koran_ over their unmarked graves. It was he who watched, while the
others slept the dead sleep of exhaustion; piled up the camp-fires to
scare off the lions and wolves, and, worse than the wolves, those
thieves and murderers (the scum of Senegal) who ever dogged their
steps. None like Isaaco could placate each chieftain with the gift
that his soul desired (be it cowries, beads, looking-glasses, muskets,
or multi-colored waistcoats); nor when these failed, could any but
Isaaco win passports with the mere honey of his tongue. Nothing could
swerve him from honesty or the performance of his task. He was tied to
a tree and flogged in the presence of his local wife, set upon by the
very white men he was serving, stung all over by a swarm of bees, and
mauled in both thighs by a crocodile; but each time he turned up
smiling and ready to go on. Nothing could stop him, for did he not
keep the solemn ritual of the guides, sacrificing a black ram at the
threshold of every country they entered, drawing the magic triangles
and hieroglyphs on the sand of every desert they had to cross, and
keeping fast in his scrip that lock of a white man's hair, which added
all the knowledge of a European to the African natives who possessed
it?[2]

II

The agreement of Isaaco was to guide the expedition to the Niger,
whence it was to proceed under the direction of Amady Fatouma, another
guide. Accordingly, when Sansanding was reached, Isaaco's work was
accomplished. Some days he