The rain continues to pour in torrents, the boundary mountains on either hand are scarcely visible, and a watery vapour prevents us from tracing the course of the valley. We have hitherto had to struggle against mental anxieties, against fatigues, heat, drought, and thirst: we have now to contend with rain and with floods. Everything is becoming awfully damp, and everybody looks awfully dismal. I can see, from the lugubrious countenances of the Kailouees and the blacks, that the rainy season is their real winter. They go shivering about, and seem as if they were half drowned. Our Bornou gauze-cotton tent still bears up well, however, and keeps out the rain. I was engaged in admiring the tent, and in reflecting on the changed region into which we had entered--a region of luxuriant vegetation and watery atmosphere--when there was again a wild holloa of "The floods are pouring down upon us! The wady is coming!" Our people, however, contented themselves at first with shouting, and made no preparations for the advancing flood; but in a short time they found it necessary to bestir themselves, and began to make dams and dykes, with the aid of sticks and hatches. These expedients proved of no avail. The waters swelled wildly up, higher and higher, and sheets of foaming waves came whirling in amongst us. I called out to Yusuf to select some high ground at once, to which our goods might be conveyed. He calmly replied, "The people still stay where they are;" implying that there was no danger, that the inundation would subside like the former one, and that we should escape with a wetting. Not so, however. All the low parts of the valley were already covered with a turbid stream, that broke fiercely round the trunks of the trees; and at length the mounting tide threatened our tent. Yusuf then made a little child's dam around, as if in sport; but in a few minutes this was swept away, and we found ourselves standing in the water.