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 am-

ple travelling cloak, and the representatives of three Conti-

nents, 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 Gram-

mar 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 instantane-

ous ; 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