It was long after mid-day when we came to the mountain stream called Mikwa, and it afforded an indescribable relief to our almost famished horses and ourselves: the road, after quitting the Horza pass, had been through an extensive and thickly-planted valley, where the tree gubberah, the tamarind, a gigantic wild fig, and the mangoe (called by the Mandaras _ungerengera_, and _comonah_ by the Bornouese), flourished in great numbers and beauty. This was the first spot I had seen in Africa where Nature seemed at all to have revelled in giving life to the vegetable kingdom; the leaves presented a bright luxuriant verdure, and flowers, from a profusion of climbing parasitical plants, winding round the trunks of the trees, left the imagination in doubt as to which of them the fair aromatic blossoms that perfumed the air were indebted for their nourishment. The ground had frequent irregularities; and broken masses of granite, ten and twelve feet in height, were lying in several places, but nearly obscured by the thick underwood growing round them, and by the trees, which had sprung up out of their crevices. The nearest part of the hills, to which these blocks could have originally belonged, was distant nearly two miles. When the animals had drunk we again moved on, and after eighteen miles of equally verdant country, more thickly wooded, we came, after sunset, to another stream, near some low hills, called Makkeray, where we were to halt for a few hours to refresh, and then move again, so as to commence an attack on the Felatahs, who were said to be only about sixteen miles distant, with the morning sun. Our supper, this night, which indeed was also our breakfast, consisted of a little parched corn pounded and mixed with water, the only food we had seen since leaving Mora. Nothing could look more like fighting than the preparations of these Bornou warriors, although nothing could well be more unlike it than the proof they gave on the morrow. The closely-linked iron jackets of the chiefs were all put on, and the sound of their clumsy and ill-shapen hammers, heard at intervals during the night, told the employment of the greater part of their followers. About midnight the signal was given to advance. The moon, which was in her third quarter, afforded us a clear and beautiful light, while we moved on silently, and in good order, the sultan of Mandara’s force marching in parallel columns to our own, and on our right. At dawn, the whole army halted to sully: my own faith also taught me a morning prayer, as well as that of a Musselman, though but too often neglected.