80 AFRICAN -SVANDERINGS.

2lst March.— On starting on our excursion this morning, we had felt pretty well, but now we sudtleiily felt as ill and downcast as ever, but the cannon-shot re-echoed through the wood, and all must mount again. At first steppes that threw back the sun's rays most dreadfully on us; we drove before us herds of thirty or forty gazelles, the Fascha and Turks setting off in chase of them.

Ere lonfT we again approached the river, where the most luxuriant vegetation was visible, also many Dom-palms, cut across under the crown (pollarded), the more easily to get at their branches for mats and ropes, though this kills the trees. Large fields there were none, but merely cultivated patches, and the green turf extending under the trees on the river's banks, as in Germany. The soil was dark, and seemed of similar quality to that of the Nile banks, cut up like it also, but in smaller polygons. A considerable deposit of slime was to be seen on the rough bark of the lower part of the trees; and were the height of these slime-marks carried out in a horizontal line over the land, the river's overflow would seem to reach to the stony ridges of the invariably higher desert land.

Riding was most perilous, partly from the thorny trees with reversed hooks, strong enough to tear clothes from the body, or eyes out of one's head (and eyes were lost by some), partly from the crowding, when all had to make, in the dark, their way a?

well as they could, and then, from the ground being saturated with water, falls were many and severe. At last, at midnight, after a march of ten hours, a halt was made, not one of half an hour's duration having, until now, been allowed. In the Pascha's neighbourhood, a fire was kindled, but we sought out a dark spot behind a bush on the river's bank, and at once lay down, and so wearied was I, that I would not even drink the coffee which the old Deli Mustapha, the Pascha's kawedschi, brought us. One must have experienced what that weariness is, which, brought on and conjoined with illness, goes so far as to lead him to despise the choicest food rather than arouse himself to partake of it, to judge of my state.

22nd March.— The river's course here is from south-east to nortli-west, though as yesterday, any current is hardly perceptible.

Tlie banks are distant from each otlier, and tlie river is yet some 150 or 200 paces in width,— the bed sandstone, the country