FIRST VIEW OF THE LORIAN 



feelinor warmth and comfort stealino- over one's 

 body again, almost wiped out the recollection of all 

 the previous discomforts. At last my tent was 

 pitched, a strong zariba built, and I was able to sit 

 down to a good supper. 



As soon as it was sufficiently light, we broke 

 camp, and continued our march across the plateau. 

 Except for being somewhat stiff I was none the worse 

 for the experience of the night before, and I felt very 

 happy and contented to think that my goal was so 

 close at hand. For days and weeks I had been 

 thinking of the Lorian Swamp, for months it had 

 been my one desire to reach it ; at times it had 

 seemed as though I should never attain it, and now 

 I knew it lay close by and might see it at any moment. 

 On and on we marched, until at length we reached 

 the edge of the plateau, and here I obtained my first 

 view of Lorian. At my feet stretched an immense 

 shallow valley which lay across our path and 

 disappeared on either side in the blue mist of the far 

 horizon. In the distance, a great way ahead, I could 

 see a thin, white streak amidst the bush, which I knew 

 must be the plains on either side of the Lorian, while 

 still farther a low line of rounded hills showed 

 indistinctly in the early morning haze. To right and 

 left, between the plains and the plateau on which we 

 were, the desert scrub stretched away interminably. 

 It was a lonely and desolate scene ; but the vastness 

 of the view, the mystery that for ever broods over an 

 unknown land, and the faint blue mist in the south 

 where the low hills rose against the sky, gave 

 solemnity and a melancholy charm to a landscape 

 that was otherwise monotonous and tedious. 



20I 



