pectful distance.

The pair exercised very great caution, and soon grew to understand the
signs of this immense swamp, which they now endeavoured to skirt in a
northerly direction, and upon the dismal edge of which they camped again
that night.

The days that followed were days of anxiety, not to say despair, for the
very ground on which they trod would often shake and quiver beneath
their tired feet, and the whole party scarce knew whether each step that
was taken might not prove to be their last; and it was only after they
had manfully struggled northwards for close upon a hundred miles that
they were once more able to plant their feet on firm ground, and to
breathe freely, with the knowledge that the treacherous swamp lay, at
last, behind them.

After expending a couple of days in a much-needed rest, an experimental
trip was made in a south-easterly direction, with the object of
ascertaining if it were possible to force the slaver's supposed position
by an advance in that quarter, but something less than three miles again
brought the party into the dreaded swamp, from which they beat a hasty
and undignified retreat.

For a whole weary day our friends marched due east, and then had the
luck to fall in with a hunting party of friendly-disposed natives, from
whom Kenyon learned that they must compass another two days' journey
towards the rising sun, ere the swamp would permit them once more to
travel southwards.

This quivering, quaking morass was known to the natives by an awful
name, the nearest English equivalent for which appeared to be "the Mouth
of Hell itself;" and a truly awful tract of country it was, and of a
certainty merited most thoroughly this infernal denomination.

These people knew nothing of any way through the marsh, and ridiculed
the very notion of such a path existing, so that it was quite clear to
our friends that many days of weary travel must elapse ere they could
regain the eastern end of the kloof which they so eagerly sought to
reach.

To add to the troubles of the little band, first Leigh and then the
whole of their bearers, one after another, succumbed to swamp fever, and
Kenyon, who entirely escaped its influence, had--as may well be
imagined--his hands full for the next ten days. The American ascribed
his own immunity from fever, to his having choked off the malarial
microbes by almost incessant smoking, but if this view of the case were
correct, Leigh should also have been let d