to4 TRAVELS IN 
not have accomplifhed the objeO: of their miC 
fion for want of interpreters 5 and if accom- 
panied by Houzouanas, the inconvenience of a 
clifagreeable prepoffeffion ftill fabfifted. While 
under this uncertainty, I had only one courfe 
to purfue : to give up all thoughts of difpatch- 
ing any one before me — which was the plan I 
adopted. About nine in the evening we ar- 
rived in fight of the horde ; and, without any 
preliminaries, I immediately encamped at the 
diftance of about two hundred paces. 
An arrival fo abrupt was likely to fill them 
tvith alarm, and perhaps inftantly to difperfe 
them. But, whatever might be their fear, they 
had been rendered incapable of flight by a very 
melancholy misfortune. A great number of 
them had already fallen a facrifice to a pefti- 
lential diforder ; and thofe who remained were 
ftill attacked by it as v/ell as their cattle. Co- 
vered with ulcers from head to foot, they lay 
extended in their huts, and exhaled a cada- 
verous fmell that was fcarcely fupportable. 
This pefdlence, they faid, had firfh broken 
out in the countries towards the eaft, where its 
fpread had been attended with dreadful ravage ; 
and it was there they had caught the infedion. 
' . A few; 
