_ 19 — random, suffering so much from the violence of our hunger that verily we were on the brink of destruction. But that which God willeth cometh to pass, and there is no power nor help but in Him, the High, the Mighty. In the end we saw afar off a tree on a mound, in the middle of the waters, and beneath it we found a large crocodile. This we shot and ate, and recovered some of our strength. Then we turned to go towards the boats, which we reached after an absence of four days. While we had been away lo ! we found that eighteen men had died of hunger, and, when the others had heard of our failure, straightway another died also. The rest, however, positively asseverated that they had seen the smoke every day towards evening. I therefore meditated in my mind awhile, and concluded that there must be land nigh at hand, so I selected twelve of the strongest of our men and put them in a small boat. For the second time we pulled in the direction of the smoke, and there passed but a few hours when we reached a large island containing many people, with cows that could not be numbered. We landed upon the island, and found that the smoke was the smoke of cowdung, which the natives burned every evening in order that they might use the ashes for a bed. There was living in this island a tribe of the Nuers, whose King was named Kureim. Then we landed upon the island, and the people crowded round us, marvelling at our clothes and appearance, and they