Chapter V: Jenne

At the village of Kouakoru we abandoned the Niger for one of those natural channels which carry fertility afar by their floods.

About twelve hours after we had left the main stream, to my sudden astonishment, the Bosos in the bow abruptly ceased plying their long bamboo poles. Sheltered as I was under my thatched hollow, the horizon was completely hidden from me, and I could see nothing but water and raised banks. Unable to understand their sudden inaction, I prepared to blow them up. They turned at my appeal in open-mouthed surprise, silently pointing to some object that was invisible to me; then, with voices barely audible from emotion, they murmured, ‘Jenne!’ They were overwhelmed by the sight of an unknown town; they, who knew great cities like Segu, Nyamina, and Sansanding! Here was something that I had never seen before, either, and shall never see again, namely, a negro surprised and affected, not by some European invention, but by a spectacle of his own country. I hastened forward, and stood astonished in my turn; for the first time in these regions I was astounded by the work of man.

Curious and beautiful sights had not been wanting on my journey, but there was always something lacking to the eye and mind of a cultivated man, some trace of civilisation that should evoke the genius of humanity; for, in spite of all that has been said about the mutilations and sacrileges to which man has subjected the great works of nature, one must confess to finding these great works somewhat incomplete when one has seen nothing else for a long time. The valley of the Loire, clothed solely in its own virgin robe, is a beautiful sight, but set with those precious stones called Amboise, Tours, Chambord, Chenonceaux, it becomes marvellous.

Jenne is the jewel of the valley of the Niger.

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Here is the picture engraved upon my memory as I sat perched in the bow among my Bosos. A vast plain, infinitely flat, without a touch of relief; no villages nor any other sign of humanity, only now and again some trees at long intervals, showing as dark spots upon the yellow-green expanse. In the very midst of this solitude is a circle of water, and within it, rising victorious (like the summit of the palm-tree amidst the sands of the desert), is reared a long mass of high and regular walls, erected on mounds as high, and nearly as steep, as themselves. A forest of projections crowns them with terraced roofs, palms, gable-ends, stairs, and dome-like trees; a whole smiling life salutes me from the height of this little island.

It is sunset, and the violent contrast of tropical light and shade intensifies the effect. It is an impressive scene at this hour, and fully justifies the emotion of my Bosos. The high mass of the town is dark against the sky and the bare immensity of the plain that flames right and left of it; and Jenne stands out without transition from the brilliance of land and sky. It seems as if all there was of life had sought refuge on this mountain isle which rises protectingly and majestically from the distance.

As my boat approaches by the channel that branches at right angles towards the heart of the town, the banks and walls of the city emerge in greater proportions from the encircling water. At their feet I can distinguish a harbour filled with large boats that have nothing in common with the accustomed pirogue. They are large and strange in form, like the city that shelters them.

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When I have climbed the banks and entered the walls, my surprise takes a definite form, and I am completely bewildered and thrown out of reckoning by the novelty and strangeness of the town’s interior. Surely the angel of Habakkuk has suddenly transported me a thousand leagues away from the Sudan. For it is not in the heart of a country of eternally similar huts (childish in their simplicity and confusion) that I should look to find a real town. Yes, a real town in the European sense of the word; not one of those disorderly conglomerations of dwellings which we call towns in this country. Here are true houses; not primitive shelters crowned with roofs that are either flat or in the shape of an inverted funnel. Streets too; not seed-plots of buildings amongst which one wanders by paths that serpentine more than the most serpentining serpent.

The idea suddenly occurs to me, perhaps this is Timbuctoo after all. That would explain everything. But it is impossible; the Bosos say we are still twelve days’ journey distant from there.

What is this town, then, with its wide, straight roads, its houses of two stories (some with a sketch of a third) built in a style that instantly arrests the eye? I am completely bewildered by an apparition so absolutely unexpected in the midst of a barbarous country. Where did this gathering of unknown life come from? What is this civilisation, sufficiently assured to possess a manner and style of its own? My thoughts naturally turn to the culture of the Khalifs: the Arabian countries are those nearest to the valley of the Niger, and Islamism is diffused among them. But logically a creed should be accompanied by its art, and there is nothing Arabic in this style. There is no trace in any of the houses, old or new, of the cupola which is such a characteristic commonplace of Egypt, Syria, and Algeria. These buildings have as little in common with the airy palaces of Cairo and Damascus as they have with the delicate and complicated structures of Cordova, Granada, or Seville. This style is not Byzantine, Roman, nor Greek; still less is it Gothic or Western. All traces of European civilisation cease between the coast and the Niger.

At last I recall these majestically solid forms; and the memory is wafted to me from the other extremity of Africa. Their prototypes rise upon the banks of another great river, but no life is associated with their image. They are dead cities, or rather cities of the dead; for it is in the lifeless towns of the Pharaohs and their hypogeums, it is in the ruins of ancient Egypt in the valley of the Nile, that I have witnessed this art before.

How came it here across the far-off centuries? How is it it adorns a living town to-day? What is this hitherto unnoticed Egyptian colony?

The key to this enigma must be found, and I interrupted my journey, firmly resolved not to resume it before I had unravelled the mystery. I succeeded in fathoming the riddle by means of long talks with the chiefs, notabilities, and marabuts (learned men and Mussulman priests) of the town. Arabic documents supplemented oral traditions, and, above all, I had the good fortune to find a complete copy of the _Tarik é Soudan_ (long coveted by Orientalists), the great chronicle of the countries of the Niger. I completed and elucidated many of its pages by means of the narratives transmitted from father to son; and, little by little, the mystery unfolded. In the next chapter I shall show how the beneficent influence of Egypt, mother of all our western civilisation, penetrated the heart of the negro country; and by what means a reflection of its culture spread and survived unto our day, containing in its afterglow all the glory and vivid charm of the tropical twilight.