244 
TEAVELS IN CENTEAL AFEICA. 
lengthy seeing they could come to no satisfactory arrangement 
among themselves^ I deputed Poncet^s agent to interfere,, and to 
select and accord to each man one cow^ and,, thus deprived of 
choice,, general content resulted. They consigned their cattle to 
the charge of two negroes,, who had accompanied them for the 
purpose, and they were forthwith driven hack to their new homes 
towards Agar. 
An hour’s continued march, through open hush studded occasion- 
ally with nohle trees of the fig family, brought us unexpectedly to the 
brink of a precipice some hundred feet high, above an extensive and 
lovely valley, into which a steep descent, compelling us to dismount, 
conveyed us. The prospect from this height, to us, who had laboured 
so long and wearily through a flat, marshy, and most monotonous 
district, was enchanting and beautiful in the extreme. The broad, 
winding valley that presented itself before us, contains in its centre 
a noble and tranquil river, the Nam, flowing about north-west, and 
in the opposite direction it lost itself to our view by winding round 
a richly wooded height, which formed the background of the land- 
scape. The river seems from two to three hundred yards wide, but 
mostly overgrown with green reeds ; in one place only clear water 
is discernible. Eastwards the ground is undulating, and a thickly 
wooded elevation in the distance encroaches, in its southern course, 
on the valley before us. The guide pointed out our route in a 
south-easterly direction, towards several distant groups of delaeb 
palms which, with other fine trees, studded the verdant valley. 
Scrambling over and sometimes sliding down the rough declivity 
— the bare rock was red coarse-grain sandstone, containing about 
its centre a stratum of nodulated, and, probably from decomposition, 
friable limestone. After having reached the valley and journeying 
through partially wooded and stony ground, we rested half an hour 
