“I have heard much talk of it,” I replied, “and would see for myself what manner of place it is.” “The curiosity of fools is the bane of wise men,” exclaimed Musa angrily. “Because thou speakest little I had thought thee a man of sense; and now thou wilt bring a mischief on us by prying into the secrets of the heathen.” “Surely,” said I, “it is no harm to go and look at the water. It is there for any man to see.” “I tell thee the place is sacred and forbidden, and thou must not go near it,” persisted the old man. “I am going to see it,” said I, and to save further discussion I pulled Alhassan by the sleeve and strode off. In a few minutes we came to a small track that turned off from the caravan road into the forest. “This is the path,” said Alhassan. “Shall I come with thee?” He was brimful of curiosity, but mighty nervous, and would not have been sorry, I think, if I had refused his company. However, I told him he might come if he pleased, and we entered the path together; but we had not gone a couple of hundred yards when we encountered an object that brought Alhassan to a dead stop. In the middle of the path and completely barring the way was a grotesque and frightful figure with long curved horns and great goggle eyes, seated on a stool and staring stonily before it. It was nearly life-size and was the more diabolical in aspect because it was really skilfully modelled and painted, and an additional touch of realism was imparted by an actual garment of palm fibre. “Let us go back, Yúsufu,” exclaimed Alhassan in a shaky voice, surveying the apparition with dismay, as it sat with its little heap of votive offerings before it; “this place is the abode of devils. Come away.” “Go thou and wait for me in the road,” said I. “I am going to see this pool since I have come so far”; and I pushed past the image and proceeded along the path. I could now distinguish the sound of falling water, and walking on another hundred yards, I came out on to the bank of the pool. A brief glance round sufficed to convince me that here again Almeida’s narrative was strictly veracious. The pool was a sheet of water some hundred and fifty yards across, surrounded by forest. At one end the bank rose so steeply as to form a kind of cliff, and from one part of this a small stream of red, muddy water fell into the pool, while at a little distance from the spring there stood up out of the water a solitary mass of red rock from which two slender tusk-like fragments of quartz projected. The spring did not, however, gush out of the tusked rock as Almeida had described it, but it may have done so formerly, as it now spouted from the end of a gorge which it had excavated, in the course of years, in the cliff. The pool was evidently of considerable depth, even close inshore, and the water was very clear where I first came out on to the bank; but as I followed the path along the brink towards the spring, it became more turbid.