Mahomet Would Not Have Ventured Upon
Another Voyage To The Other Side And Back Again, For The World,
And As To Giving Chase In Boots (Highlows) Four Sizes Too Big,
And Without Strings, That Would Have Been As Absurd As To Employ
A Donkey To Catch A Horse.
Mahomet could do nothing but rush
frantically to the very edge of the cliff, and scream and
gesticulate to a crowd of Arab women who had passed the day
beneath the shady trees by the Faky's grave, watching our passage
of the Atbara.
Beating his own head and tearing his hair were
always the safety valves of Mahomet's rage, but as hair is not of
that mushroom growth that reappears in a night, he had patches
upon his cranium as bald as a pumpkin shell, from the constant
plucking, attendant upon losses of temper; he now not only tore
a few extra locks from his head, but he shouted out a tirade of
abuse towards the far-distant Achmet, calling him a "son of a
dog," cursing his father, and paying a few compliments to the
memory of his mother, which if only half were founded upon fact
were sad blots upon the morality of the family to which Mahomet
himself belonged, through his close relationship to Achmet, whom
he had declared to be his mother's brother's cousin's sister's
mother's son.
A heavy shower of rain fell shortly after our camp was completed,
when fortunately the baggage was under cover; this proved to be
the last rain of the season, and from that moment the burning sun
ruled the sodden country, and rapidly dried up not only the soil
but all vegetation.
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