216 FROM THE NIGER TO THE NILE 



with a prismatic compass after every 500 yards traversed. 

 My method was to turn down a finger at each hundredth 

 yard and later on in the expedition, when I had thus fingered 

 some hundreds of miles, the habit had become so deeply 

 ingrained upon my mind that my boy, Quasso, told me I 

 would often work my fingers and count for hours in my 

 sleep. 



I found that this part of the route on the Ordnance map 

 had been very correctly done, which I cannot say for the 

 mapping of most of the way I had come. In the earlier 

 days of colonisation this was a branch of the work that was 

 very imperfectly carried out ; no doubt many of the mappers 

 knew Httle of their work, while others were lazy and rode 

 over the route, guessing at the average pace of their horses 

 and writing down the first names that met their inquiries 

 without corroboration. But the question of African names 

 is always a most heartrending one to the careful mapper. 

 When a chief dies, his village is called after his successor, and 

 very often the latter, if he happen to be the first of a new 

 succession, takes the people off and founds his village on a 

 fresh site. Or in the case of rivers, there is a name for 

 each part, according to the villages of the different tribes 

 along their banks. Thus a new map of Africa, however 

 carefully done, becomes obsolete in a year or two. 



At Goram I was received very kindly by the king, who 

 sent me a large " dash," consisting of several sheep and a 

 cow. Having made him a present of cloth, large enough to 

 show my appreciation of his generosity, I begged him to 

 take back the cow. Sometimes, when one is not in need of 

 such big quantities of food, or has not the means when doing 



