296 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA. 
to drink but very sparingly, and travelling bare- 
foot on a hard and broken soil, covered with 
long dried reeds and thorny underwood, may be 
more easily conceived than described. One 
young woman who had (for the first time) be- 
come a mother two days only before she was 
taken, and whose child, being thought by her 
captor too young to be worth saving, was 
thrown by the monster into its burning hut, 
from which the flames had just obliged the mo- 
ther to retreat, suffered so much from the swol- 
len state of her bosom, that her moans might fre- 
quently be heard at the distance of some hun- 
dred yards, when refusing to go on she implored 
her fiend-like captor to put an end to her exist- 
ence ; but that would have been too great a sa- 
crifice to humanity, and a few blows with a lea- 
thern horse fetter, soon made the wretched 
creature move again. A man also lay down, 
and neither blows, entreaties, nor threats of 
death could induce him to move. He was 
thrown across a horse, his face down, and with 
his hands and feet tied together under the ani- 
mal's chest, was carried along for some dis- 
tance. This position, however, soon caused 
difficulty of breathing, and almost suffocation, 
which would certainly soon have ended his 
miserable existence had they not placed him in 
a more easy posture, by allowing him to ride 
