ars the sensorium; the lightning burns
out the eyes; the rain is a cataract; the hall is a continued volley of
ice; the clouds stoop to earth, and bury the daylight like a shroud; the
rivers become torrents; the dry plain becomes first a swamp, and then a
sea. Tents and tarpaulins are useless to keep out the deluge from above,
or are beaten down by its weight on the heads of the unfortunates who
trust to them for shelter, until at length the caravan, stripped of all
covering, has no resource but to bide the pelting of the pitiless storm,
and, shivering and shelterless, wait until the hurricane has howled itself
away.

At length they reached the city of Furri, loaded, for the thirty-fifth
time, with the baggage of the British embassy. The caravan, escorted by a
detachment of three hundred matchlock men, with flutes playing, and
muskets echoing, and the heads of the warriors decorated with white plumes,
on the 16th July entered the frontier town of the kingdom of Efat.
Clusters of conical-roofed houses, covering the sides of twin hills, here
presented the first permanent habitations that had greeted the eye since
leaving the sea-coast--rude and ungainly, but right welcome signs of
transition from depopulated waste to the abodes of man. The African seems
a robber by nature, and the sight of the bales and boxes excited the
national propensity in a most violent degree. Even the royal ministers and
courtiers seem to have felt a passion for looking into those prohibited
treasures, which evidently tempted their virtue in a most perilous degree.
Meanwhile a special messenger arrived, bearing reiterated compliments from
the Negoos, (king,) with a horse and a mule from the royal stud, attired
in the peculiar trappings which belong to majesty. Those animals awoke all
the loyal curiosity of the people. At the sight women and girls, enveloped
in blood-red shifts, who had thronged to stare at the strangers, burst
into a scream of acclamation. A group of hooded widows thrust their
fingers into their ears and joined in the clamour. The escort and
camel-drivers placed no bounds to their hilarity. A fat ox, that had been
promised, was turned loose among the spectators, pursued by fifty savages
with their gleaming _creeses_, and hamstrung by a dexterous blow, which
threw it bellowing to the earth in the height of its mad career, and
tribes of lean curs commenced an indiscriminate engagement over the
garbage.

The neighbouring nations look