CELEBRATED DESERT WELLS. 409 



slaves who have accompanied the caravans and who, 

 after dragging their wearied limbs to the borders of 

 these fetid waters, have there breathed their last. As 

 an example of the first of these cases we may mention 

 the pool of " El Moorahd, " or " the bitter well " in 

 the Nubian Desert, which we have already described, 

 on the route between Korosko and Abou Hammed, 

 another which we may also refer to is the " Fountain 

 of Meschrou," in Fezzan, on the Tibesti caravan route 

 described by the German traveller Dr. Gustav Nachtigal. 

 In the French translation of his work there is an 

 engraving of this desolate and repulsive spot, the 

 mouth of a small well appearing in the midst of the 

 barren sands; two Arabs are seen drawing up water 

 from it by a native water skin, attached to a rope; 

 the sands all round are thickly strewn with the relics 

 of mortality. 



" The ground, " the Doctor says, " near it, was scattered 

 over with human bones, and the skeletons of camels. I 

 remarked also, not without a shudder, half covered by the 

 sand, the mummified bodies of several children, to which the 

 rags of some Indian blue remains of clothing still adhered. 

 Doubtless these were little negroes, forming part of a slave 

 caravan, who had succumbed to their sufferings during their 

 long desert journey, for it is the custom when they are unable 

 to continue their journey to abandon them, and leave them 

 to perish miserably under the torrid rays of a tropical sun. 

 No tomb shelters these victims of man's barbarity: it is the 

 desert air which is left to slowly mummify them and reduce 

 them to the condition of skeletons."* 



The losses sustained by caravans during a long 

 march across wide areas of waterless territory (in South 



* Sahara et Soudan, by Dr. Gustav Nachtigal, translated from the 

 German by Jules Gourdault, published, Paris, 1881, Vol i.. p. 128. 



