as ordinary mice. This species is
also small, three inches and a-half long, and the tail is double the
length of the body. The hind legs are nearly as long as the body, and
the fore legs not half an inch. Near the tip of the tail there is an
inch of black. Many young jerboahs were caught, all of the same
description. The Haussa people call it a mouse, but have besides a
special name.

We are now about the middle of the Sahara, including the radii of the
western and northern coasts, and we here find an immense plateau,
stretching many days north and south, east and west. So far Le Brun's
conjecture is right, that the central parts of Africa are plateaux, or
one vast plateau. But more of this hereafter. This plateau extends to
the Bornou route, and how much further east is yet to be ascertained. In
the west we yet also want information. North and south it extends along
the territory of Aheer some eight days, or about one hundred and sixty
miles. Overweg reckons the height of the plateau, above the level of the
sea, at some fifteen hundred feet.

_31st._--The last day of the year! One year gone in Africa this tour!
How many more are to pass? Alas! who can tell?--We came to-day nine
hours, always south, over a perfect desert-plain, mostly sandy. A cold
north-east wind was blowing all the day. The people dread it as death
itself; as well they may, for they are nearly naked. Their Soudan cotton
clothes afford them little or no protection against such a bleak
north-easter. Europeans are astonished to see these people shivering
with cold in this bleak weather, and forget that they themselves are
well clothed. This remark is very applicable to the northern coast,
where hundreds of the poor are seen shivering, with only a thin blanket
thrown around them in the coldest day of winter. When they see a
European well covered with tight cloth clothes, and flannel underneath,
they may well call out _sega_, "cold," as they often do; and we are
ready to laugh, and forget they are naked.

In this part of the desert birds of prey abound. We passed to-day some
twenty large vultures, feeding on a dead camel. When the caravan filed
by they all took wing, and perched themselves in a row on a rising mound
of sand, and there waited until we had passed before them, like so many
soldiers. These were black vultures, and of enormous breadth of wing.
Many wild oxen, or what are so called, were seen, and everywhere the
footprints of ostriches and g