90 AFRICAN WANDERINGS.

2lst March.— On starting on our excursion this morning, we had felt pretty well, but now we suddenly felt as ill and downcast

as ever, but the cannon-shot re-echoed " through the wood, and all

must mount again. At first steppes that threw back the sun's

rays most dreadfully on us ; we drove before us herds of thirty or

forty gazelles, the Pascha and Turks setting off in chase of them.

Ere long we again approached the river, where the most luxuriant

-Vegetation was visible, also many Dom-palms, cut across under

the crown (pollarded), the more easily to get at their branches for mats and ropes, though this kills the trees. Large fields there were none, but merely cultivated patches, and the green turf ex-

tending under the trees on the river's banks, as in Germany. The

soil was dark, and seemed of similar quality to that of the Nile

banks, cut up like it also, but in smaller polygons. A considerable

deposit of slime was to be seen on the rough bark of the lower part

of the trees ; and were the height of these slime-marks carried out

in a horizontal line over the land, the river's overflow would seem

to reach to the stony ridges of the invariably higher desert land.

Biding was most perilous, partly from the thorny trees with re-

versed hooks, strong enough to tear clothes from the body, or eyes

out of one's head (and eyes were lost by some), partly from

the crowding, when all had to make, in the dark, their way as

well as they could, and then, from the ground being saturated

with water, falls were many and severe. At last, at midnight,

after a march of ten hours, a halt was made, not one of half an

hour's duration having, until now, been allowed. In the Pascha's

neighbourhood, a fire was kindled, but we sought out a dark spot

behind a bush on the river's bank, and at once lay down, and so

wearied was I, that I would not even drink the coffee which the

old Deli Mustapha, the Pascha's kawedschi, brought us. One must have experienced what that weariness is, which, brought on and con-

joined with illness, goes so far as to lead him to despise the choicest

food rather than arouse himself to partake of it, to judge of my

state.

22nd March.— The river's course here is from south-east to

north-west, though as yesterday, any current is hardly perceptible. The banks are distant from each other, and the river is yet some

150 or 200 paces in width,— the bed sandstone, the country