98 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA. Chap. LXXIIL 
ing a messenger for them, although the place lay 
entirely out of our route, we started late in the 
afternoon, leaving our camels and baggage behind. 
Returning for the first mile and a half, almost along 
the same road we had come, then passing the site of 
a former encampment of the two chiefs named Mush- 
tdba and Rummdn, whom I have mentioned before, 
we entered the swampy ground to the south along a 
narrow neck of land thickly overgrown with diim- 
palms and brushwood, and thus affording a secure 
retreat to the lion. In the clear light of the evening, 
encompassed as the scenery was on either side, by 
high sandy downs towards the south on the side of 
the river, and by a green grassy ground with a 
channel-like sheet of water on the other it exhibited 
a very interesting spectacle highly characteristic of 
this peculiar watery region. 
Having kept along this neck of land, which is called 
Temaharot, for about two miles, and reached its ter- 
minating point, we had to cross a part of the swamp 
itself which separates this rising ground from the 
downs on the bank of the river, and which less than 
a month previously had been impassable, while at 
present the sheet of water was interrupted, and was 
only from three to three and a half feet in depth at 
the deepest part. We then reached the downs, and 
here again turned westward, having the low swampy 
ground on our right, and an open branch of the river 
on our left. 
This whole tract of country is of a very peculiar 
