sence of mind, went up so near as to thrust the muzzle of his piece into her mouth, and fired, but let his piece fall, and ran for it the very moment he had fired it: the creature raged a great while, and spent its fury upon the gun, making marks upon the very iron with her teeth, but after some time fainted and died. Our negroes spread the banks of the lake all this while for game, and at length killed us three deer, one of them very large the other two very small. There was water-fowl also in the lake, but we never came near enough to them to shoot any; and, as for the desert, we saw no fowls anywhere in it, but at the lake. We likewise killed two or three civet cats; but their flesh is the worst of carrion. We saw abundance of elephants at a distance, and observed they always go in very good company, that is to say, abundance of them together, and always extended in a fair line of battle; and this, they say, is the way they defend themselves from their enemies; for, if lions or tigers, wolves, or any creatures, attack them, they being drawn up in a line, sometimes reaching five or six miles in length, whatever comes in their way is sure to be trod under foot, or beaten in pieces with their trunks, or lifted up in the air with their trunks: so that if a hundred lions or tigers were coming along, if they meet a line of elephants, they will always fly back till they see room to pass by to the right hand or to the left; and if they did not, it would be impossible for one of them to escape; for the elephant, though a heavy creature, is yet so dexterous and nimble with his trunk, that he will not fail to lift up the heaviest lion, or any other wild creature, and throw him up in the air quite over his back, and then trample him to death with his feet. We saw several lines of battle thus; we saw one so long, that indeed there was no end of it to be seen, and, I believe, there might be two thousand elephants in a row or line. They are not beasts of prey, but live upon the herbage of the field, as an ox does; and it is said, that though they are so great a creature, yet that a smaller quantity of forage supplies one of them than will suffice a horse. The numbers of this kind of creature that are in those parts are inconceivable, as may be gathered from the prodigious quantity of teeth, which, as I said, we saw in this G vast desert; and indeed we saw a hundred of them to one of any other kinds. One evening we were very much surprised; we were most of us laid down on our mats to sleep, when our watch came running in among us, being frightened with the sudden roaring of some lions just by them, which, it seems, they had not seen, the night being dark, till they were just upon them. There was, as it proved, an old lion and his whole family, for there was the lioness and three young lions, besides the old king, who was a monstrous great one: one of the young ones, who were good large well-grown ones too, leaped up upon one of our negroes, who stood sentinal, before he saw him, at which he was heartily frightened, cried out, and ran into the tent our other man, who had a gun, had not presence of mind at first to shoot him, but struck him with the but-end of his piece, which made him whine a little, and then growl at him fearfully; but the fellow retired, and, we being all alarmed, three of our men snatched up their guns, ran to the tent door, where they saw the great old lion by the fire of his eyes, and first fired at him, but, we supposed, missed him, or at least did not kill him; for they went all off, but raised a most hideous roar, which, as if they had called for help, brought down a prodigious number of lions, and other furious creatures, we know not what, about them, for we could not see them; but there was a noise and yelling, and howling, and all sort of such wilderness music on every side of us, as if all the beasts of the desert were assembled to devour us. We asked our black prince what we should do with them. Me go, says he, and fright them all. So he snatches up two or three of the worst of our mats, and, getting one of our men to strike some fire, he hangs the mat up at the end of a pole, and set it on fire, and it blazed abroad a good while, at which the creatures all moved off, for we heard them roar, and make their bellowing noise at a great distance. Well, says our gunner, if that will do, we need not burn our mats, which are our beds to lay under us, and our tilting to cover Let me alone, says he. So he comes back into our tent, and falls to making some artificial fire-works, and the like; and he gave our sentinels some to be ready at hand upon occasion, and particularly he placed a great piece of us. REACH THE END OF THE DESERT. 83 wildfire upon the same pole that the mat had been tied to, and set it on fire, and that burnt there so long that all the wild creatures left us for that time. However, we began to be weary of such company, and, to get rid of them, we set forward again two days sooner than we intended. We found now that, though the desert did not end, nor could we see any appearance of it, yet that the earth was pretty full of green stuff, of one sort or another, so that our cattle had no want; and, secondly, that there were several little rivers which ran into the lake, and, so long as the country continued low, we found water sufficient, which eased us very much in our carriage, and we went on still sixteen days more without yet coming to any appearance of better soil. After this we found the country rise a little, and by that we perceived that the water would fail us; so, for fear of the worst, we filled our bladder bottles with water. We found the country rising gradually thus for three days continually, when, on the sudden, we perceived, that though we had mounted up insensibly, yet that we were on the top of a very high ridge of hills, though not such as at first. CHAPTER VII. PRO WE REACH THE END OF THE DESERT-A PLEASANT COUNTRY WHEN we came to look down on the other side of the hills, we saw, to the great joy of all our hearts, that the desert was at an end; that the country was clothed with green, abundance of trees, and a large river; and we made no doubt but that we should find people and cattle also. And here, by our gunner's account, who kept our computations, we had marched about four hundred miles over this dismal place of horror, having been four-and-thirty days a-doing of it, and, consequently, were come about eleven hundred miles of our journey. We would willingly have descended the hills that night, but it was too late. The next morning we saw everything more plain, and rested ourselves under the shade of some trees, which were now the most refreshing things imaginable to us, who had been scorched above a month without a tree to cover us. We found the country here very pleasant, especially considering that we came from; and we killed some deer here also, which we found very frequent under the cover of the woods. Also we killed a creature like a goat, whose flesh was very good to eat, but it was no goat. We found also a great number of fowls, like partridge, but something smaller, and were very tame; so that we lived here very well, but found no people-at least, none that would be seen-no, not for several days' journey; and, to allay our joy, we were almost every night disturbed with lions and tigers. Elephants we saw none here. In three days' march we came to a river, which we saw from the hills, and which we called the Golden river; and we found it ran northward, which was the first stream we had met with that did so. It ran with a very rapid current, and our gunner, pulling out his map, assured me that this was either the river Nile, or ran into the great lake out of which the river Nile was said to take its beginning; and he brought out his charts and maps, which, by his instruction, I began to understand very well, and told me he would convince me of it, and indeed he seemed to make it so plain to me that I was of the same opinion. But I did not enter into the gunner's reason for this inquiry-not in the least-till he went on with it further. and stated it thus: If this is the river Nile, why should we not build some more canoes, and go down this stream, rather than to expose ourselves to any more deserts and scorching sands, in quest of the sea, which, when we are come to we shall be as much at a loss how to get home as we were at Madagascar. The argument was good had there been no objections in the way, of a kind which none of us were capable of answering; but, upon the whole, it was an undertaking of such a nature that every one of us thought it impracticable. and that upon several accounts; and our surgeon, who was himself a good scholar, and a man of reading, though not acquainted with the business of sailing, opposed it, and some of his reasons, I remember, were such as these: first, the length of the way, which both he and the gunner allowed, by the course of the water and turnings of the river, would be at least four thousand miles; secondly, the innumerable crocodiles in the river, which we should never be able to escape; thirdly, the dreadful deserts in the way; and, lastly, the approaching rainy season, in which the streams of the Nile would be so furious, and rise so high, spreading far and wide over all the plain country, that we should never be able to know when we were in the channel of the river and when not, and should certainly be cast away, overset, or run aground so often that it would be impossible to proceed by a river so excessively dangerous. This last reason he made so plain to us, that we began to be sensible of it ourselves; so that we agreed to lay that thought aside, and proceed in our first course westwards towards the sea: but, as if we had been loath to depart, we continued, by way of refreshing ourselves, to loiter two days upon this river, in which time our black prince, who delighted much in wandering up and down, came one evening, and brought us several little bits of something, he knew not what; but he found it felt heavy, and looked well, and showed it to me, as what he thought was some rarity. I took not much notice of it to him, but stepping out and calling the gunner to me, I showed it to him, and told him what I thought, viz., that it was certainly gold: he agreed with me in that, and also in what followed, that we would take the black prince out with us the next day, and make him show us where he found it; that, if there was any quantity to be found, we would tell our company of it; but, if there was but little. we would keep counsel, and have it to ourselves. But we forgot to engage the prince in the secret, who innocently told so much to all the rest, as that they guessed what it was, and came to us to see: when we found it was public, we were more concerned to prevent their suspecting that we had any design to conceal it, and openly telling our thoughts of it, we called our artificer, who agreed presently that it was gold; so I proposed, that we should all go with the prince to the place where he found it, and, if any quantity was to be |