quiver. They soon came to another small valley, where tents were pitched, and about one hundred and fifty people of all ages and both sexes assembled. Here it appeared they were to be separated, Clark being given to one party, Horace to another, and Riley, with the Cook, remaining with their first master. The women came out of the tents to gaze at them, and, by way of expressing their disgust and contempt, spat upon them as they went along, 'making their faces still more horrid by every possible contortion of their frightful features.' At last an old man came up to Riley, and by his plain and distinct manner of speaking, by his significant signs, and by making use of the words 'O Fransah, O Spaniah,' he understood him to ask what countrymen they were, to which he replied Inglesis; he then asked from what part of the horizonand I pointed,' says Riley, to the north; he then repeated the words Marocksh, Sooltaan, Moolay Solimaan, to all which Riley nodded assent-that he knew him-that he lived in such a direction-and made signs that if they would carry him and his comrades thither they would receive so much money; but they shook their heads, signifying that the distance was great, and that there was nothing to eat or drink on the way either for them or their camels.

It was midnight before they got any thing either to eat or drink, when some milk and water was given to them. Riley says he this night sunk into a kind of sleep, which was disturbed with the most horrible dreams; that these however were followed by one of a contrary nature, in which he saw a tall young man mounted on a horse, habited in an European dress, who, in his own language, called him brother, and who told him 'to take courage,' for that 'God had decreed he should again embrace his beloved wife and children' -at this instant his master called him. He awoke, and found it was a dream;' but it was a dream that tended to keep up his spirits, and afterwards, on seeing Mr. Willshire, he immediately recognized the features of the phantom that appeared in his sleep.

In the evening Hogan joined them, when they found they had been purchased by an Arab of the name of Hamet, who about midnight brought each of them a pint of camel's milk. On the morning of the 13th they again set out, continuing their course about south-east. In the course of the day he came up with Mr. Williams, the chief mate, in a most dreadful situation, who told him that he could not possibly survive another day in such misery. 'If,' said this unhappy man, you should ever get clear from this dreadful place, and be restored to your country, tell my dear wife that my last breath was spent in prayers for her happiness.'-He could say no more; tears and sobs choked his utterance--and they were separated.

The

The face of the Desert now appeared as smooth as the surface of the ocean when unruffled by winds, and camels could be seen in every direction, like ships at sea when just appearing in the horizon. In the evening, when they halted, Riley asked the women for a little water, but they not only laughed and spat at him, but drove him away from under the shade of the tent.

1

On the 20th they made a turn towards the N. W. or sea shore, and when they halted, two strangers came up, each having a double barrelled gun; one of the women told Riley it was Sidi Hamet and his brother, from the Sultan's dominions, who had come with blankets and blue cloth to sell. The former came up to them, and asked Riley if he was el rais, (the captain,) and gave him some water to drink. Poor Clark was then apparently in a dying state, 'stretched out on his back, a perfect wreck of almost naked bones; his belly and back nearly collapsed, and breathing like a person in the last agonies of death.' Sidi Hamet, observing him, suffered Riley to carry him also a little water-it was the first fresh water which they had tasted since they left the boat; the poor creature's eyes brightened up--This is good water,' said he, and must have come from a better country than this; if we were once there, and I could get one good drink of such water, I could die with pleasure, but now I cannot live another day.' About midnight a pint of milk was given to each, which Riley thinks saved Clark from dissolution.

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Sidi Hamet was an Arab trader, in whom avarice had not altogether subdued the feelings of humanity. After questioning Riley very closely as to his hopes of redemption at Suara or Mogadore, and what money he would ensure his receiving on being carried thither-after much hesitation and a great deal of bargaining, he at length concluded a purchase of him from the old Arab, who had claimed him as his slave; and after many entreaties and assurances of a good round sum of money, he was also induced to purchase Horace, Clark, and Savage, but would have nothing to say to Hogan. In addition to the small quantity of milk they had hitherto received, each of them had been enabled, as they travelled along, to pick up a few snails, which seemed to be the only living. creature on the Desert. Sidi Hamet now caused an old meagre camel to be killed, which he had purchased for a blanket. A vein in his neck was first opened close to his breast; the blood was received into a kettle, placed over the fire and boiled, stirring it all the time, till it became thick and of the consistence of bullock's liver

our appetites,' says Riley, were voracious, and we soon filled our stomachs with this, to us, delicious food.' The skin being then taken off, the entrails were rolled out, and put into the kettle, without cleaning; as they had no water, a slit was cut in the camel's

pauuch,

paunch, into which a bowl was dipped, and the thick contents poured into the kettle; the whole was then boiled, and well stirred, the Arabs now and then taking out a gut, and biting off an end to ascertain whether it was cooked enough.

Before the morning, one half of the meat and bones of the camel's carcass was carried off, without the possibility of Sidi Hamet and his brother, to whom it belonged, being able to prevent itthey could scarcely get a bite of the intestines without fighting for it. Burns, who was an old man, now came up, and Sidi Hamet purchased him also for an old blanket. The two brothers, Sidi and Seid, it seems, had expended all their property in this adventure, and were consequently interested in bringing their slaves safe to Mogadore. Riley was now furnished with a check shirt, which Sidi told him he had stolen for him; Clark had met with a piece of an old sail that partly covered him; Burns had procured an old jacket, and Horace and Mr. Savage had obtained goat skins. The distance travelled on the 27th could not be less, Riley says, than 63 miles--yet, for eighteen days the camels had not tasted a drop of water--this we think can scarcely be true, as we shall have occasion to see hereafter. They were themselves reduced to drink the camel's urine. The next day they travelled fifteen hours at the rate of seven miles an hour, making one hundred and five milesthis is possible, but, in their reduced state, we apprehend, not very probable. They lay down on the hard ground, without a morsel to eat, and nothing to quench their thirst but the camel's urine, which Riley observes is bitter but not salt.

On the morning of the 29th, they proceeded in the same direction, when they discovered what appeared to be high land, but it proved to be the opposite bank of what seemed once to have been the bed of a large river, though now perfectly dry; they descended into it down a precipitous bank, four or five hundred feet in height. In this ravine Sidi Hamet questioned Riley very closely about his acquaintance at Suara, made him repeat his bargain, and told him if he deceived him he would certainly cut his throat, for that he and his brother had expended their whole property in the purchase of them on speculation.

At some height on the edge of the northern bank they found a delightful spring of fresh water, covered with a large rock, from fifteen to twenty feet high, cool, clear, fresh, and sweet.' Here they remained some time before they could water their camels, the largest of which drank full sixty gallons, the poor creature not having tasted water, he says, for twenty days before.

Riley calls this valley the bed of an arm of the sea: the high banks, distant from each other eight or ten miles, were worn and

washed

washed by water; the level bottom was encrusted with marine salt; they were then about three hundred miles from the sea coast; the spring was not more than a hundred feet below the surface of the Desert, and from three hundred and fifty to four hundred from the bottom of the valley, over which, as they travelled easterly, 'the crust crumbled under the feet of the camels like a thin crust of snow.'

With difficulty they ascended on the northern side to the top of the level Desert, which had the same appearance as that on the opposite side; no undulation of surface-neither rock, tree, nor shrub, to arrest the view within the horizon-all was a dreary and solitary waste. Riley says he judged by the meridian height of the pole star, that this supposed bed of the ocean must be in about the 20th parallel of latitude.

In travelling between N. E. and East, Sidi Hamet said he saw a camel, but Riley could discern nothing for two hours afterwards, when something appeared like a speck in the horizon, and it was not until sun-set that they came up with a large drove of camels. They had travelled this day fourteen hours without a morsel of food or a drop of water, but towards midnight some meat was dealt out to them together with a large bowl of milk and water.

On the evening of the 1st October, they met with a drove of camels, which had been watering to the northward; by these people they were conducted to a shallow valley, where about fifty tents were pitched; here the ground was in many places covered with short moss, and here and there a few small shrubs. The next day the whole party moved to the northward. The tribe had about fifty lean sheep, one of which was purchased by Sidi Hamet, and they gave them all as much milk as they could drink. On the 4th they travelled about thirty-five miles N. E. when the entrails of the sheep were given to them for supper. They were now arrived among immense sand hills, piled up like drifted snow, towering to the height of two hundred feet, without a blade of grass or a shrub of any sort to relieve the eye. The trade-winds blew violently and buried the travellers in clouds of sand, which, driven forcibly against their sore bodies, gave them exquisite pain. To add to their other miseries they were all now afflicted with a violent diarrhoea, which they stopped however by chewing the bitter bark of a small shrub which grew where they had passed the night.

On the night of the 5th they thought they heard the roaring of the sea, which, the next day, was confirmed by Sidi Hamet. They met with two camels with sacks on their backs and other articles, the owner of which being asleep on the sands, Sidi Hamet and his brother drove them off with their own. The sacks contained barley and barley meal, a quantity of which they took and then let the ca

mels

mels go; but the owner, on discovering the robbery, followed them and got back his barley, Sidi Hamet having assured him it was taken only to prevent the starvation of the slaves; but he still contrived to carry off two little bags which he had also stolen, containing gold dust, charms, &c.

On the 8th they fell in with a large drove of camels, sheep, and goats, browsing in a valley, and observed about twenty tents pitched near a small thicket of thorn trees, some of them eight inches in diameter. A kid was here purchased, and the entrails given to the Christian slaves. At midnight however a bowl was brought to them containing about four or five pounds of a kind of stirabout or hasty pudding, into which was poured a pint or more of good sweet milk,'-and they agreed that this was the most delicious meat they had ever tasted. Proceeding to the northward they fell in with several wells, but the water of all of them was brackish: at many of them were parties watering their camels.

On the 11th after travelling nearly seventy miles, they reached a cluster of bushes which they had seen from a great distance looking like an island in the midst of a lake; here they found some brackish water. They now got into the deep bed of a large river or arm of the sea, at the bottom of which was a sheet of white salt that made a crackling noise under the feet of the camels. Getting out of this glen and entering some sand hills, they met with an Arab driving some goats, of which Sidi Hamet seized four, and paid the unarmed Arab with an old worn-out camel: on reaching the height they perceived the sea at a distance on their left, the sight of which revived their drooping spirits. They descended the heights, and now travelled along the sea shore in company with an Arab and his wife, who were going the same way; the woman, having been at Lancerota, could speak a little Spanish. Presently they fell in with another Arab in his tent, who affected to speak Spanish, and through him Sidi Hamet again tried to discover whether Riley really had a friend in Suara, and again gave him to understand, that if he deceived him he most surely would have his throat cut.

The road along the edge of the sea coast was rugged and uneven, and they travelled over it in the night to avoid the numerous robbers that lurk among the sand hills. In the course of the night journey Mr. Savage fainted and fell off his camel, upon which Seid and another Arab began to beat him with sticks, and, conceiving that he was perverse and obstinate, had intended to put him to death that they might not be delayed, lest they should fall in with robbers; and it was with the utmost difficulty they could be made to understand that any man could faint through hunger and fatigue