camels' backs is prodigious, for nothing would be
more awful than to run short of water in the middle of the desert, and
to be surrounded by a number of wild beasts, maddened with heat and
unquenchable thirst. The principal food for the young elephants and
rhinoceroses on the way home is a fruit called nabeck, that is, a kind
of cherry of which they are very fond. Giraffes and antelopes and
ostriches are provided with the doura corn that grows in the interior.
All these bigger animals walk, and as they jog along my people feed
them occasionally with hard ship biscuit, which appears to sustain
them well through the journey. At four o'clock every morning the
caravan strikes its tents and begins its march. They go plodding along
till ten o'clock, when the day becomes too hot for further progress."

[Illustration: KARL HAGENBECK.]

"But do the animals never attempt to escape?" said I.

"Well, not often," replied Karl Hagenbeck; "but," he added, with a
hearty laugh of recollection, "I remember that once, in that very year
1870, of which I have just been telling you, the whole of the
ostriches, twenty-six in number, ran away just as we were getting them
into the railway station at Suakim. Away they went, heading straight
for the desert. I never was in such a dreadful fix in my life. At last
it struck me that it would be a good plan to drive all the goats and
camels towards them; we did so, and, when the ostriches saw them
advancing, they formed themselves into a flock, and we drove the whole
lot into the station. The birds were caught one by one and put into
the cars. That was the last transport, by-the-by, that poor Casanova
ever brought over. Indeed, he died at Alexandria in the very midst of
the whole business, and we buried him on the evening of his death. It
was a dreadful time, and everything appeared to be against us, for at
the very moment of his death, just as we were getting the animals on
board ship, a fearful earthquake shook the whole land. I thought there
was something about to happen, for the animals were very uneasy, the
birds were twittering, the monkeys were chattering and trembling, the
lions were roaring constantly, the elephants were deafening with their
long trumpetings. Suddenly I felt the steamer quivering from stem to
stern. The sea was tossing, the sun was hidden behind a thick yellow
mist. I looked toward the land where the minarets were toppling down,
and where the greatest horror and confusion a