328 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

water from their nostrils, entertained us with a peculiar grunt« ing sound, like the lowest rumbling note of a double-bass. The concert was continued by others, and resumed from time to time through the night. This was Central Africa as I had dreamed it — a grand though savage picture, full of life and heat) and with a barbaric splendor even in the forms of Nature.

As the new moon and the evening star went down together behind the mimosa forests on the western bank, we reached the island of Hassaniyeh, having sailed upward of one hundred and forty miles since the evening before. I had every prospect of reaching my destination, the island of Aba, in the archipelago of the Shillooks, before noon the next day, or in two days from Khartoum — a distance of more than two hundred and fifty miles ! Better sailing than this was never made on the Nile. Four more days of such wind would have taken me to the Bahr el-Grhazal, in lat. 9° — the land of lions, elephants, and giraffes, where the Nile becomes a sea of grass. It became more difficult for me to return, the further I advanced. At nine o'clock we passed the island of Hassaniyeh, and saw the fires of the Shillook negroes burning brightly on the western bank. The wind blew more briskly than ever, and I dashed onward in the starlight with the painful knowledge that I was fast approaching the point beyond which I dared not go.