Our caravan was numerous: it consisted of fourteen hundred camels, laden with the various productions of the Soudan; as gold, slaves, ivory, gum, ostrich-feathers, and cloth in the piece and made into dresses. In leaving El-Arawan the road leads over a sandy country, with but few traces of vegetation. After proceeding six miles in this direction, we arrived at Mourat, a small village, containing five houses like those of El-Arawan, and built of sand bricks. At Mourat, the sons of Sidi-Boubacar, chief of El-Arawan, keep a school, where the children of the inhabitants of the town study the Koran. Mourat appeared to me even more gloomy than El-Arawan; the uniformity of the soil is broken only by a few plants, which are eaten by the camels, and which are buried beneath the sand, drifted by the east wind. On leaving Mourat, the traveller comes to some deep wells filled with brackish water. Here our caravan stopped and took a hearty draught, for we were now about to enter upon a part of the desert where we should find no water for the space of eight days. In the midst of these vast deserts, the wells of Mourat, surrounded by fourteen hundred camels, and by the four hundred men of our caravan, who were crowded round them, presented the moving picture of a populous town; it was a perfect tumult of men and beasts. On one side were camels laden with ivory, gum, and bales of goods of all sorts; on the other, camels carrying on their backs negroes, men, women, and children, who were on their way to be sold at the Morocco market; and further on, men prostrate on the ground, invoking the prophet. This spectacle touched and excited my feelings, and in imitation of the devout Musulmans, I fell on my knees; but it was to pray to the God of the Christians: with my eyes turned to the north, towards my country, my relations, and friends, I besought the Almighty to remove from my path the obstacles which had stopped so many other travellers; in the ardour of my wishes, I imagined that my prayer was granted, and that I should be the first European who had set out from the south of Africa, to cross this ocean of sand, and succeeded in the undertaking. The thought electrified me; and while a gloom hung on all other faces, mine was radiant with hope and joy. Full of these sentiments I hastened to mount my camel, and to penetrate fearlessly into the deserts which separate the fertile Soudan from the regions of northern Africa. I felt as if I was mounting the breach of an impregnable fort, and that it was incumbent upon me to sustain the honour of my nation, by divesting myself of every kind of fear and braving this new peril.