22 
MEET A SLAVE-CARAVAN. 
and a single chameleon did not fade into sand- 
colour in time to escape notice. No animals of the 
chase were seen ; but our blacks picked up the 
dung of the ostrich, and a horn of the aoudad. Here 
and there we observed the broken columns of Ro- 
man milestones, some of them covered with ille- 
gible inscriptions. The sockets generally remain 
perfect. We saluted the memory of the sublime 
road -makers. 
About noon, as we were traversing these soli- 
tudes in our usual irregular order of march, a 
crowd of moving things came in sight. It proved 
to be a slave-caravan, entirely composed of young 
girls. The Gadamsee merchants who owned them 
recognised me, and shook me by the hand. Our 
old black woman was soon surrounded by a troop 
of the poor slave-girls; and when she related to 
them how she was returning free to her country 
under the protection of the English, and wished 
them all the same happiness, they fell round her 
weeping and kissing her feet. One poor naked 
girl had slung at her back a child, with a strange 
look of intelligence. I was about to give her a 
piece of money, but could not ; for, the tears burst- 
ing to my eyes, I was obliged to turn away. The 
sight of these fragments of families stolen away to 
become drudges or victims of brutal passion in a 
foreign land, invariably produced this effect upon 
me. This caravan consisted of some thirty girls 
and. twenty camel-loads of elephants' teeth. They 
