2 AFRICAN WANDEKINGS.

gratulating friends, and especially my particular ally, Von Salis, from Switzerland, could do, though the latter, with warm tears of sympathy, exerted liimself by pledging and jingling glasses with

us, to arouse our cheerfulness and enable us to rally. In a short

time, however, we got on better.

I now quitted the village of Tura, lying in a waste, although on

the Nile, and some three miles (German, equal to twelve English)

further up it than Cairo, and where I had retired to do penance, and finish ray work on the White Nile, leaving also my dear friend

Dr. Scheldehaus, from Osnabriick, the professor of the military

school there Cnow Director of Military Hospitals in Alexandria),

with whom my brother had been a fellow-student at Bonn, and

hired for Jose{)h and myself a small house on the Eshekir Place,

in Cairo. After undergoing an examination of some half hour, Joseph Avas appointed surgeon-major, with the rank of Saku-

lagassi (oldest Juffbaschi or captain) to the central hospital, Kasr-

el Ain, with a monthly salary of 1000 piastres (or about 10/.) and the allowances of the rank—rations for one horse and four

servants. But our gaze was directed on Central Africa and

its interior. I had already heard, when in Alexandria, from Achmet Capitan, the former frigate ca[)tain, Baumgartner, from

Switzerland, and there an honest tailor of high skill, that prepara-

tions were making to fit out an expedition to explore the source of

the Nile (tliough gold was the spring sought); but, until this came off, we lived in the happiest brotherly unity in the ancient city of the

Caliphs. Our love of travelling was aroused ; my office in the

Prussian Consulate at Alexandria was sacrificed to the love of

adventure, and Joseph was appointed surgeon to the 1st regiment

in Sennaar, in addition to his olhce as surgeon of the Central

Hospital at Chartum. Our friends were alarmed for us on account

of the dangerous climate; but, full of high heart, we sailed past

the fair Isle of Rodii, with pleasing remembrances of the happy

hours spent on it, and up the Nile, feeling more and more rejoiced

as, free from the tumults of the city, we advanced to fresh views and new places. In Tura our stout Dr. Schledehaus awaited us, along

with the kind-hearted Schley, from Hamburgh, who, as instructor,

was quartered with his regiment in tiie camp near. The sorrows

of parting, like the joys of meeting, were drowned in wine. These