when a troop of fifty men came near in a threatening manner, but did not
attack us. After dark, they increased to about a hundred. They consisted
of the sheikhs of the districts, with their followers and lawless men
scraped together from various quarters. Meanwhile our escort, who were
anxious for their own safety as well as ours, had sent on to the City of
Marabouts, Tintaghoda, and had prevailed on several of these holy men to
protect them and us. The night was spent in conference instead of in
repose. The hostile Sheikhs told our marabouts that they did not come to
harm us, but to oblige us to become Muslims, for no infidel had ever, or
ever should, pass through their country. This proposition was at once,
as a matter of business and profession, approved of by our protecting
marabouts. What priest ever shrunk from the prospect of a conversion?

Matters having come to this point, our escort, camel-drivers and
servants, could not but communicate to us the demand made--namely, that
we should change our religion or return by the way we had come. This
time, likewise, even our own servants prayed that we would accept the
proposition, or seem to accept it, if only for a few days, to deliver
ourselves from present danger. My colleagues, and particularly Dr.
Barth, indignantly and passionately resisted. For my part, I looked upon
the affair with a little more calm, the same thing having occurred to me
on a former occasion in these deserts. I told our people that we would
pay the tribute imposed by the Mahometan law on infidels, or for our
passage through the country, or else that we would take our chance and
return. Upon this our servants exclaimed, with tears in their eyes, "To
return would be certain death!" There was now nothing left for me to do
but to say, with my colleagues, that we would wait patiently for death,
but that to change our religion was impossible.

Although, of course, the threats that were made against us could not but
produce considerable uneasiness, I always felt pretty sure that the
Sheikhs did not exactly mean what they said, and would come at last, as
had the others, to a money compromise. Yet, during the absence of our
people, who took the message that we were ready to die for the honour of
our country and religion, I passed, as did my friends the Germans, a
most distressing half hour. Every sound we heard seemed to be that of
people approaching to attack us. At length we heard voices, through the
d