attire and now wore an Arab haick and
white burnouse, the gang of chattering men soon got their loads of food
and merchandise together--for the Grand Vizier had apparently been
purchasing a quantity of guns and ammunition in England--hammocks were
provided for all three of us if we required them, and after a good meal
we at length set out, turning our backs upon the sea.

After descending the crest of a sand-hill we found ourselves fairly in
the desert. As far as we could see away to the limitless horizon was
sand--arid, parched red-brown sand without a vestige of herbage. The wind
that was blowing carried grains of it, which filled one's mouth and
tasted hot and gritty; again, impalpable atoms of sand were blown into
the corners of one's eyes, and, besides, this injury inflicted on the
organ of vision was calculated by no means to improve one's temper.
However, Omar told me that a beautiful and fruitful land lay beyond,
therefore we made light of these discomforts, and, after a march of three
days, during which time we were baked by day by the merciless sun and
chilled at night by the heavy dews, we at last came to the edge of the
waterless wilderness, and remained for some hours to rest.

My first glimpse of the "Dark Continent" was not a rosy one. As a
well-known writer has already pointed out, life with a band of native
carriers might for a few days be a diverting experience if the climate
were good and if there was no immediate necessity for hurry. But as
things were it proved a powerful exercise, especially when we commenced
to traverse the almost impenetrable bush by the native path, so narrow
that two men could not walk abreast.

Across a great dismal swamp where high trees and rank vegetation grew in
wondrous profusion we wended our way, day by day, amid the thick white
mist that seemed to continually envelop us. But it required a little more
than persuasion to make our carriers travel as quickly as Kouaga liked.
At early dawn while the hush of night yet hung above the forest, our
guide would rise, stretch his giant limbs and kick up a sleeping
trumpeter. Then the tall, dark forest would echo with the boom of an
elephant-tusk horn, whose sound was all the more weird since it came from
between human jaws with which the instrument was decorated. The crowd of
blacks got up readily enough, but it was merely in order to light their
fires and to settle down to eat plantains. At length the horn would sound
again, b