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random, suffering so much from the violence of our hunger that verily we were on the brink of destruc-

tion. 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 con-

cluded 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