UNTRAVELLED DESERT. 
171 
CHAPTER XI. 
start from Ghat — Reflections — Beautiful valley of Berket — Last Date- 
palms — The Kailouees — Dr. Barth lost again — Meet our Guides — 
The Akourou Water — Ghadeer — Soudan Influence on the Tuaricks 
— Wataitee leaves us — Oasis of Janet — Kailouee Character — A sick 
Slave — Rocky Desert — Gloomy Scene — Servants— Egheree Water — 
Ajunjer — A threatened Foray from Janet — Sidi Jafel Waled Sakertaf 
— ^We have no Money — Region of Granite — Dr. Barth' s Comparisons 
— A Slave Caravan — Granite Rocks — Beating Women — The Bird of 
the Desert — Desolate Region — Our Relations with the Kailouees. 
The departure from Ghat was, for most of us, 
an exciting moment. So far I had considered 
myself comparatively on familiar ground ; for al- 
though I had followed different routes, the great 
points of Mourzuk and Ghat were well known to 
me. Kow, however, we were about to enter upon 
a region totally unknown, of which no authentic 
accounts from eye-witnesses — unless we count the 
vague reports of natives — had ever reached us : 
valleys unexplored ; deserts unaffronted ; countries 
which no European had ever surveyed. Before us, 
somewhere in the heart of the Sahara, raised into 
