16 TKAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



anxious to complete the business as speedily as pos- 

 sible (for to succeed in Africa one must do everything 

 one's self), I followed the envoy across one of the 

 waves that diversify the face of the country, de- 

 scended into a well-cultivated trough-like depression, 

 and mounted a second wave six miles further on. 

 Here at last, by dint of perseverance, we had the 

 satisfaction of seeing the palisadoed royal abode. We 

 entered it by an aperture in the tall slender stakes 

 which surround the dwellings and constitute the 

 palisadoing, and after following up a passage con- 

 structed of the same material as the outer fence, we 

 turned suddenly into a yard full of cows a substi- 

 tute for an anteroom. Arrived there, the negroes at 

 once commenced beating a couple of large drums, half 

 as tall as themselves, made something like a beer- 

 barrel, covered on the top with a cow-skin stretched 

 tightly over by way of a drum-head. This drumming 

 was an announcement of our arrival, intended as a 

 mark of regal respect. For ten minutes we were kept 

 in suspense, my eyes the while resting upon the milk- 

 pots which were being filled at mid-day, but I could 

 not get a drop. At the expiration of that time, a 

 body of slaves came rushing in and hastily desired 

 us to follow them. They led us down the passage 

 by which we entered, and then turned up another 

 one similarly constructed, which brought us into the 

 centre of the sultana's establishment a small court, 

 in which the common negro mushroom huts, with 



