ooked with
compassion on us, and brought us plenty of boiled corn and goats' milk
to drink. This refreshed us greatly, and we continued our journey in
anxious expectation of the fate for which we were reserved.

On crossing a small river, which appeared to be the boundary of two
different states, a multitude of Negroes approached, and seemed disposed
to take us from our present masters, but after a conference, they agreed
among themselves, and a party of them joined with those who had
previously conducted us. We soon came to the edge of a desert, and
there we halted till the Negroes had filled several calabashes and
gourds full of water, and collected a quantity of boiled corn. As soon
as this was done, we set off again, and entered the desert. We were
astonished and terrified when we looked around us, not a single vestige
of herbage, not a blade of grass was to be seen--all was one wide waste
of barren sand, so light as to rise in clouds at the least wind, and we
sank so deep in walking through it that at last we could hardly drag one
foot after the other. But we were repaid for our fatigue, for when we
halted at night, no fires were lighted, and to our great delight we
found that there were no mosquitoes to annoy us. We fell into a sound
sleep, which lasted till morning, and were much refreshed; indeed, so
much so as to enable us to pursue our journey with alacrity.

In our passage over the desert we saw numbers of elephants' teeth, but
no animals. How the teeth came there, unless it were that the elephants
were lost in attempting to cross the desert, I cannot pretend to say.
Before we had crossed the desert, our water was expended, and we
suffered dreadfully from thirst, walking as we did during the whole day
under a vertical sun. The night was equally painful, as we were so
tortured with the want of water; but on the following day, when our
strength was nearly exhausted, and we were debating whether we should
not lie down and allow the spears of our conductors to put an end to our
miseries, we came to the banks of a river which the Negroes had
evidently been anxiously looking for. Here we drank plentifully, and
remained all the day to recruit ourselves, for the Negroes were almost
as exhausted as we were. The next morning we crossed the river, and
plunged into a deep wood: the ground being high, the mosquitoes did not
annoy us so much as they did down on the low marshy land near the
sea-coast. During our