28 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRIC I.

of the night our men tracked the boat slowly forward, smging cheerily as they tugged at the long tow-rope. The Asian spread on the deck his Albanian capote, the European his ample travelling cloak, and the representatives of three Continents, travelling in the fourth, lay on their backs enjoying the moonlight, the palms, and more than all, the perfect silence and repose. With every day of our journey I felt more deeply and gratefully this sense of rest. Under such a glorious sky, no disturbance seemed possible. It was of little consequence whether the boat went forward or backward, whether we struck on a sand-bar or ploughed the water under a full head of wind; every thing was right. My conscience made me no reproach for such a lazy life. In America we live too fast and work too hard, I thought : shall I not know what Rest is, once before I die ? The European said to me naively, one day : " I am a little surprised, but very glad, that no one of us has yet spoken of European politics." Europe ! I had forgotten that such a land existed : and as for America, it seemed very dim and distant.

Sometimes I varied this repose by trying to pick up the language. "Wilkinson's Vocabulary and Capt. Hayes's Grammar did me great service, and after I had tried a number of words with Ibrahim, to get the pronunciation, I made bolder essays. One day when the sailors were engaged in a most vociferous discussion, I broke upon them with : " What is all this noise about ? stop instantly ! " The effect was instantaneous ; the men were silent, and Seyd, turning up his eyes in wonder, cried out : Wallah ! the Howadji talks Arabic!"

The two copper-faced Fellahs thought it very amusing, and every new word I learned sufficed to set them laughing for half