The heat had now become insufferable. Everything vegetable was scorched up, and the whole country presented a dreary expanse of sand dotted over with a few stunted trees and thorny acacia bushes. Water was almost unattainable, and night and day the wells were crowded with cattle lowing and fighting with each other to get at the troughs. The pangs of thirst rendered many of them furious and ungovernable, while the weak, unable to contend for a place, endeavoured to quench their thirst by licking up the liquid mud from the gutters--frequently with fatal consequences. The suffering due to the scarcity of water extended to the people, and to no one more than the white captive among them. If his boy Demba attempted to get a supply of water, he was usually soundly thrashed for his presumption. This treatment became so intolerable in the end that Demba would rather have died than go near the wells. Park and his attendants were in this way reduced to begging from the negro slaves, but with indifferent success. Fatima, however, more than once relieved their necessities. Nevertheless, time after time, Park “passed the night in the situation of Tantalus. No sooner had I shut my eyes than fancy would convey me to the streams and rivers of my native land; then, as I wandered along the verdant brink, I surveyed the clear stream with transport, and hastened to swallow the delightful draught; but, alas! disappointment awakened me, and I found myself a lonely captive perishing of thirst amidst the wilds of Africa!” One night, driven half wild by his tortures, he started off in search of relief. At every well he found struggling herdsmen, and from one and all he was driven away with outrageous abuse. At length at one he found only an old man and two boys, from whom he was on the point of receiving what he sought, when, discovering whom they were about to supply, they dashed the water into the trough, and told him to drink with the cattle. Too glad to get water in any way, “I thrust my head between two of the cows, and drank with great pleasure, until the water was nearly exhausted, and the cows began to contend with each other for the last mouthful.” Signs that the wet season was approaching began to show themselves towards the end of May in frequent changes of the wind, gathering clouds, and distant lightning. At the same time Park’s fate was approaching a crisis, and he began to revolve schemes of escape. His hopes rose high when discovering that Ali was about to join some rebellious Kaartans in attacking Daisy, through the intervention of Fatima, he was permitted to accompany the expedition as far as Jarra. Once in Kaarta, he hoped that means would be found to escape from his barbarous captors.