510 



SUFFERINGS OF THE AUTHOR. 



sometimes on foot, and at others on horseback or ox-back, 

 over upward of a thousand miles of country, parts of it emu- 

 lating the Sahara in scarcity of water and general inhospi- 

 tality. Tongue is too feeble to express what I suffered at 

 times. To say nothing of narrow escapes from lions and 

 other dangerous beasts, I was constantly enduring the crav- 

 ings of hunger and the agonies of thirst. Occasionally I was 

 as much as two days without tasting food ; and it not un- 

 frequently happened that in the course of the twenty-four 

 hours I could only once or twice moisten my parched lips. 

 Sometimes I was so overcome by these causes, coupled with 

 bodily fatigue, that I fainted. Once both my steed and my- 

 self (as seen in the sketch below) dropped down in the midst 

 of a sand-plain, where we remained a long time in a state 



Aij^ilOa AND STEED BEOKEN DOAVN. 



bordering on unconsciousness, and exposed to all the injuri- 

 ous effects of a tropical sun. I would at times pursue my 



