112 A MARAUDING EXPEDITION. 



sometimes puzzles the ingenuity of civilized cabinets ; but, like 

 bold border chieftains or honest freebooters, our warlike pigmies 

 always set at nought such empty preliminaries. That moral 

 sensitiveness is not theirs, which must wrap up motives in a 

 cloak, to hide them, if possible, even from themselves ; and as 

 for their neighbours, since it never consorts with their tactics to 

 give notice of an incursion, they cannot to them, of course, 

 attempt to justify the making it. 



It was towards the close of a fine summer's day, that the 

 army of the Rufians, consisting of a large body of infantry, was 

 seen issuing from their capital. Their march soon brought 

 them to an arid sandy plain, strewn with rocky fragments, 

 between which they pursued their way in winding but unbroken 

 files, their polished brown corselets glistening like sparks of fire 

 in the glow of the declining sun. Marching with great rapidity, 

 considering their diminutive stature, they soon traversed this 

 desert-like tract without loss or accident, a matter for no 

 small congratulation, seeing the manifold dangers to wlu'ch their 

 exposed route had rendered them liable. In the first place, 

 that which to our little Amazons appeared, as we have des- 

 cribed it, a rock-strewn plain, was none other than a public 

 causeway, used by the gigantic creatures who consider them- 

 selves the lords of the land, and had one of these happened 

 to pass by during the transit of the Rufian army, his direful 

 footfall would have enveloped whole divisions in awful darkness, 

 to be followed by annihilation. 



