258 HUMAN SKELETONS IN THE DESERT. 



brought to our mind ; and, although its horrors are not 

 equal to those of the European trade, still they are sufficient 

 to call up every sympathy, and rouse up every spark of hu- 

 manity. They are dragged over deserts ; water often fails, 

 and also provisions scantily provided for the long and dreary 

 journey. The Moors ascribe the numbers destroyed to the 

 cruelty of the Tibboo traders : there is, perhaps, too much 

 truth in this accusation. Every few miles a skeleton was 

 seen through the whole day ; some were partially covered 

 with sand, others with only a small mound formed by the 

 wind ; one hand often lay under the head, and frequently 

 both, as if in the act of compressing the head ; the skin and 

 membranous substance all shrivel up and dry, from the state 

 of the air. The thick muscular and internal parts only decay." 

 Ranges of hills were seen to the south and east. In the 

 evening the party halted near a well, within half a mile of 

 M eshroo. Around this spot were lying more than one hun- 

 dred human skeletons, some of them with the skin still re- 

 maining attached to the bones, — not even a little sand 

 throvsoi over them. The Arabs were amused at the horror 

 expressed by the travellers at this sight, and said, they were 

 only blacks ; and began knocking about the limbs with 

 the butt-end of their firelocks. " Our camels," says Den- 

 ham, " did not come up until it was quite dark, and we 

 Divouacked in the midst of these unearthed remains of the 

 victims of persecution and avarice, after a long day's jour- 

 ney of twenty-six miles, in the course of which one of our 

 party counted 107 of these skeletons." They continued 

 journeying until the 21st, partly through sand and among 

 sandstone hills, some of which were 600 feet high. On the 

 22d, they moved before daylight, passing some rough sand 

 hills mixed with red sandstone^ to the west, over a plain of 

 fine gravel, and halted at the matten called El Hammar, 

 close under a bluff-head, which had been in view since 

 quitting their resting-place in the morning. During the 

 last two days they had passed, on an average, from sixty to 

 eighty or ninety human skeletons each day ; but the num- 

 bers that lay about the wells at El Hammar were countless ; 

 those of two women, whose perfect and regular teeth be- 

 spoke them young, were particularly shocking ; their arms 

 still remained clasped round each other as they had expired, 

 although the flesh had long since perished by being exposed 



