scruple, at length determined upon accompanying the expedition; and I hope that every considerate person who takes into account all the circumstances in which we were placed, will approve of our resolution. [Sidenote: Wednesday, December 17th.] At length we proceeded onwards, entering new regions never trodden by European foot. Our departure having been delayed in the morning, owing to the separating of the army, we started rather late, leaving the sheikh, with the rest of the “kebú,” behind. The country at once presented a new and interesting feature. Already in Bórnu a considerable proportion of our diet had consisted of native rice, and we had been rather astonished at its black colour and bad quality. We had heard that it grew wild in the southern provinces of the country; but we had never yet seen it, and it was only this morning, after we had left Díggera and had traversed extensive stubble-fields of millet intermixed with beans, that we obtained a first view of a “shinkáfaram,” or wild rice-field, in the midst of the forest. We were then no longer surprised at the quality of the rice brought to the market in Kúkawa being so bad, as we felt justified in presuming that the elephant would have sense enough to take the best for himself, and leave the rest for the people. As we proceeded we found the whole wilderness, although not thickly wooded, full of pools of water and dense rice-fields. The country to-day presented a truly tropical aspect; and our encampment, lying near an extensive pond, or small lagoon, surrounded with a luxuriant growth of rice and a dense border of spreading trees, was so full of the footprints of the elephant, that scarcely a level spot of two or three feet in diameter could be found. This was by no means pleasant, in our present mode of living, as we were without a camp-stool, or anything to sit or lie upon; for the argillaceous soil is so excessively hard, that the borders of these holes produced by the unwieldy foot of the elephant cause a great deal of pain to a person lying on the ground with nothing but a mat or carpet. The most essential instrument on this whole journey was the “láteram,” the digging-instrument (from “langin,” “I dig”), consisting of a large piece of wood about three feet long, with a heavy iron point; for without the láteram it would have been impossible to fix the dáteram (from “dangin,” “I fasten, stop”), or the pole to which the horses are fastened during the night. In general, every horseman digs the hole in which the pole is fastened with his own spear; but this soil was so hard that it was scarcely possible to make the smallest hole in it. Of course during the rainy season it is just as soft and muddy as it is hard in the dry season, and scarcely passable in consequence.