ACROSS LAKE CHAD 223 



us, for the time being, insensible to the sharp, scratchy 

 burrs ^ which adhered to our clothes and spiked our 

 persons, and made life a burden to us and to the 

 zakis. 



We camped beneath a tree on a slope of the shore, 

 in default of any firmer ground. Had a wind arisen 

 the tents must have collapsed, for our tenure was no 

 more secure than a house of cards, as the pegs had 

 no purchase in the thick sand. 



Behind us lights flickered, showing where the town- 

 ship lay, but stillness was over all, and even the head- 

 men who came down to give us welcome seemed more 

 like shadows than human beings. 



The following morning we awoke to see a sand-dune, 

 some 60 feet in height, above us. It took us by sur- 

 prise, for we had pictured the islands as a dead level 

 of flatness, over which the waters were driven by 

 the force of the wind. The view it enabled us to 

 obtain showed, however, a similar rise and fall in 

 the surrounding islands, and on the rare occasions 

 when the lake floods the towns, retreat is always 

 possible to one of these eminences. 



Little else but grass, asclepia, the native salt-bush, 

 and the karraka is seen in these long stretches of 

 sand. The latter, though scrub in character, is the 

 largest tree that is found in the islands of Lake Chad, 

 and is worshipped by the Buduma, probably on account 

 of the shade it affords them from the heat of the sun. 

 They will neither cut nor burn it, and its leaves are 

 used to make important medicines. When a man 

 wants either wives, children, or cows, he gets the 

 medicine man to grind some corn in a bowl, to which 



1 Cenchrus. 



