Chap. LVI. 
TEDIOUS NIGHT'S MARCH. 
131 
agitated by numbers of men and animals that had 
preceded our party from the town ; and we were 
therefore very fortunate in having provided ourselves 
with some excellent clear water from the well close 
to our place of encampment. The pond was in 
the midst of the forest, which towards its outskirts 
presented a cheerful aspect, enlivened by a great 
number of sycamore trees and even a few deleb palms, 
but which here assumed the more monotonous and 
cheerless character which seems to be common to all 
the extensive forests of Negroland. 
The beginning of our march, after we had watered 
our animals and filled our water-skins, was rather 
inauspicious, our companions missing their way and 
with their bugles calling me and my people, who 
were pursuing the right track, far to the south, till, 
after endeavouring in vain to make our way through 
an impervious thicket, and after a considerable loss 
of time, anything but agreeable at the beginning of a 
desperate march of nearly thirty hours, we at length 
with the assistance of a Piillo shepherd regained the 
right track. We then pursued our march, travelling 
without any halt the whole day and the whole 
night through the dense forest, leaving the pond 
called tebki-n-Gundumi at some distance on our 
left, and not meeting with any signs of cultivation 
till a quarter before eleven the next morning, wdien, 
wearied in the extreme and scarcely able to keep 
up, we were met by some horsemen, who had been 
sent out from the camp at Gawasu to meet us, pro- 
E 2 
