.
There it twinkled in the blue heavens like the eye of a friend. It was
the finger of God pointing us onward.

"And onward we went--here creeping around some gaping fissure, that
opened across our track--there wading over a sandy swell--and anon
rolling briskly along the smooth, herbless plain; for the country we
were passing through was a parched and treeless desert.

"We made a good night's journey of it, cheered by the prospect of
escaping from the savages. When day broke, we were twenty miles from
the camp. The rough hills that surrounded it were completely lost to
our view, and we knew from this that we had travelled a long way; for
some of these hills were of great height. We knew that we must have
passed over a considerable arc of the earth's surface before their tops
could have sunk below the horizon. Of course, some intervening ridges,
such as the sandy swells I have mentioned, helped to hide them from our
view; but, at all events, we had the satisfaction of knowing that the
savages, even had they returned to the camp, could not now see us from
that point. We only feared the chances of their discovering our tracks,
and following us. Urged by this apprehension, we did not halt when the
day broke, but kept on until near noontide. Then we drew up--for our
oxen, as well as the horse, were completely tired out, and could go no
farther without rest.

"It was but a poor rest for them--with neither grass nor water--not a
blade of anything green except the _artemisia_ plant, the wild
wormwood--which, of course, neither horse nor oxen would touch. This
grew all around us in low thickets. Its gnarled and twisted bushes,
with their white silvery leaves, so far from gladdening the eye, only
served to render the scene more dreary and desolate--for we knew that
this plant denoted the extreme barrenness of the soil. We knew that,
wherever it grew, the desert was around it.

"It was, indeed, but a poor rest for our animals--for the hot sun
glanced down upon them during the noon hours, making them still more
thirsty. We could not afford them a drop of the precious water; for we
ourselves were oppressed with extreme thirst, and our stock was hourly
diminishing. It was as much as we could to spare a small quantity to
the dogs, Castor and Pollux.

"Long before night, we once more yoked to the oxen, and continued our
journey, in the hope of reaching some stream or spring. By sunset we
had made ten miles farther