Calamities by fire. Deliverance and escape. Six women-slaves burnt. Barterings. Domestication of wild-cats. Plague of cockroaches. Pillen-wasps. Agamæ and chameleons. Fever. Meteorology. Solar phenomenon. A festal reception with an unfortunate result. Disturbance of rest at night. Murmuring of prayers. Jewish school. Orgies and drum-beating. Casting out devils. Resolve to follow Aboo Sammat. Start towards the south. Passage of the Tondy. Character of the forest. The water-bock. Scenery by night. Shereefee’s attack. Seriba Duggoo. Consequences of the steppe-burning. Seriba Dagguddoo. Burnt human bones and charred huts. Tropics in winter. Two kinds of ant-hills. Arrival in Sabby. Nocturnal festivities of the Bongo. Desolation of the country. Goat-suckers. Abundance of game. The zebra-ichneumon. The spectral mantis. Lions. Wonderful chase after hartebeests. Snake and antelope at a shot. So satisfactory was the condition of my health that it appeared to me entirely to confute the opinion entertained by Europeans that a prolonged residence in the tropics is destructive alike of physical and moral energy. For those probably who live in indolent repose, and who are surrounded by all the appliances of domestic comfort, who, so far from undertaking the trouble of a journey, have scarcely the activity to take a walk, there may be some ground for the presumption; and more particularly may this be the case in Mohammedan countries where slothfulness and _laissez faire_ are as contagious as gaping is all the world over. But nothing of the kind is to be found for a traveller whose elasticity is kept at all on the stretch, and who is conscious of not having a minute to spare; the exercise of his faculties will keep them in vigour as full as though he were still on his native soil. For my own part, I could not help thinking of the contrast between the rainy season which I spent here and that which, in 1865, I had passed in Gallabat; now all was animated and cheerful; life seemed free from care; my health was unimpaired, and I enjoyed the most intimate converse with Nature; but then, on the contrary, it had been a perpetual struggle between getting well and getting ill, and I had never ceased to be haunted by the depressing influences of a weary spirit.