358 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

and shrubs some imp of darkness whispered in my ear .

" What a magnificent conflagration this would make ! and then, perhaps, you might have the satisfaction of burning out a brace of lions ! " Without more ado, I whipped out a box of matches, and struck fire in one of the thickest tufts.

The effect was instantaneous, and so was my repentance.

There was a crack and a crash, like the explosion of powder, and a sheet of red flame leaped into the air. In a few seconds it had spread to a broad swath of fire, rolling rapidly before the wind, and leaving the earth behind it as bare as the palm of my hand. The rank grass roared and snapped as the terrible power I had so thoughtlessly awakened, licked it away ; and not the grass alone. It seized on the vines and tore them down, swung itself by them into the boughs of the trees, and found richer aliment in their gums and juices. It spread on both sides and against the wind, and soon the long spires of scarlet flame, twisting in the air, rose high and hot above the dome-like tops of the mimosa forests. Before we left the place, the volumes of smoke reached nearly to the other side of the Nile. As I heard its relentless feet trampling down the thickets, I tormented myself with pictures of the evil which I had perhaps originated. I fancied it spreading from day to day, lapping the woods in coils of flame and flinging their burning boughs from island to island, till of all the glory of vegetation which had filled me with such rapture, there was nothing but a few charred trunks standing in beds of ashes.

I saw the natives with their flocks and herds flying before it, the wild beasts leaping into the flood for refuge from its red fangs, and all that glorious region given up to terror and desolation. As we moved slowly away, against the wind, I watch