894 JOURNEY TO CENTRAL AFRICA.

look forward to the prospect of leaving my bones in thia accursed land." He then embraced me, mounted his dromedary, and was soon lost to my sight among the sand and thorns Little did I then imagine that his last words were the unhappy prediction which another year would see verified ! * We halted for the night near the village of Gerrari. I slept but indifferently, with the heavy head and gloomy spirits I had brought from Khartoum ; but the free life of my tent did not fail of its usual effect, and I rose the next morning fresh, strong, and courageous. We were obliged to travel slowly, on account of the nature of the road, which, for the greater part of the distance to El Metemma, lay in the Desert, just beyond the edge of the cultivated land. For the first day * Dr. Constantine Reitz died about a year after my departure from Soudan, from the effects of the climate. He had been ill for some months, and while making a journey to Kordofan, felt himself growing worse so rapidly that he returned to Khartoum, where he expired in a few days. He was about thirty-three years of age, and his many acquirements, joined to a character of singular energy and persistence, had led his friends to hope for important results from his residence in Central Africa. "With manners of great brusqueness and eccentricity, his generosity was unbounded, and this, combined with his intrepidity and his skill as a horseman and a hunter, made him a general favorite with the Arab chieftains of Ethiopia, whose cause he was always ready to advocate, against the oppressive measures of the Egyptian Government. It will always be a source of satisfaction to the author, that, in passing through Germany in September, 1852, he visited the parents of Dr. Reitz, whose father is a Forstmeister, or Inspector of Forests, near Darmstadt. The joy which they exhibited on hearing from their son through one who had so recently seen him, was mixed with sadness as they expressed the fear that they would never see him again — a fear, alas ! too soon realized.