ast experienced gratification at finding the
peril past, and myself standing at the foot of the great precipice.

"Well?" asked Omar, approaching me quickly. "How did you fare?"

"Badly," I answered with a smile. "A dozen times I gave myself up for
lost."

"Care and courage may accomplish everything," he said, laughing. "Few,
however, would care to risk the perils of the Thousand Steps without a
guide, or even if they did, and succeeded in accomplishing the journey to
this point, they could not enter our land."

"Why?"

He turned towards the flat, bare face of overhanging rock opposite, and
gazing up to its towering summit, answered:

"Because our land lies yonder. We must, after resting, ascend."

"How?" I inquired, noticing that the wall of the great cliff was
perfectly smooth.

He smiled.

"Be patient, and you shall see. Only friends can enter Mo; an enemy
never."

At that moment Kona desired to consult him regarding our camping
arrangements, and turning I left them and wandered a little way along the
valley. Presently, although its fertility was pleasant, I noticed that
the air had a strange foetid odour, and, shortly afterwards, while
walking in the long rank grass my feet struck against something, which,
on examination, I found to be the decomposing body of a man. He wore a
burnouse, and from the long-barrelled musket that lay by his side I
concluded it was an Arab. As I went forward I discovered bodies scattered
in twos and threes over the grass-plain. Great grey vultures were tearing
the rotting flesh from the bones, feasting upon the carrion. Broken guns,
bent swords and blunted daggers lay about in profusion, while the further
I went, the more numerous became the hideous bodies which the long grass
seemed to be striving to hide. This was assuredly the battle-field
whereon the army of the Great White Queen had defeated the expedition
sent by Samory. Truly the slaughter must have been appalling, and little
wonder was it that the survivors whom we had met and annihilated should
have fought so desperately for their lives.

Judging from the great pile of corpses, the stand made by Samory's Arabs
must have been a dogged and stubborn one, for traces of a most desperate
battle were everywhere apparent, yet their defeat must have been
crushing and complete, for hundreds of the invaders had apparently been
mowed down where they had stood. Others had fallen in hand-to-hand
encounters, their limbs slashed an