In This Moral Desert, Where All Humanized Feelings Were Withered And Parched Like The Sands Of The Soudan, The Guilelessness Of The Children Had Been Welcomed Like Springs Of Water, As The Only Refreshing Feature In A Land Of Sin And Darkness.

"Where are you going?" cried poor little Abbai in the broken Arabic that we had taught him. "Take me

With you, Sitty!" (lady), and he followed us down the path, as we regretfully left our proteges, with his fists tucked into his eyes, weeping from his heart, although for his own mother he had not shed a tear. We could not take him with us; - he belonged to Ibrahim; and had I purchased the child to rescue him from his hard lot and to rear him as a civilized being, I might have been charged with slave dealing. With heavy hearts we saw him taken up in the arms of a woman and carried back to camp, to prevent him from following our party, that had now started.

We had turned our backs fairly upon the south, and we now travelled for several days through most beautiful park-like lands, crossing twice the Un-y-Ame stream, that rises in the country between Shooa and Unyoro, and arriving at the point of junction of this river with the Nile, in latitude 3 degrees 32 minutes N. On the north bank of the Un-y-Ame, about three miles from the embouchure of that river where it flows into the Nile, the tamarind tree was shown me that forms the limit of Signor Miani's journey from Gondokoro, the extreme point reached by any traveller from the north until the date of my expedition. This tree bore the name of "Shedder-el-Sowar" (the traveller's tree), by which it was known to the traders' parties. Several of the men belonging to Ibrahim, also Mahommed Wat-el-Mek, the vakeel of Debono's people, had accompanied Signor Miani on his expedition to this spot. Loggo, the Bari interpreter, who had constantly acted for me during two years, happened to have been the interpreter of Signor Miani; he confessed to me how he had been compelled by his master's escort to deceive him, by pretending that a combined attack was to be made upon them by the natives.

Upon this excuse, Miani's men refused to proceed, and determined to turn back to Gondokoro; thus ended his expedition. I regarded the tree that marked the limit of his journey with much sympathy. I remembered how I had formerly contended with similar difficulties, and how heartbreaking it would have been to have returned, baffled by the misconduct of my own people, when the determination of my heart urged me forward to the south; thus I appreciated the disappointment that so enterprising a traveller must have felt in sorrowfully cutting his name upon the tree, and leaving it as a record of misfortune.

With a just tribute to the perseverance that had carried him farther than any European traveller had penetrated before him, we continued our route over a most beautiful park of verdant grass, diversified by splendid tamarind trees, the dark foliage of which afforded harbour for great numbers of the brilliant yellow-breasted pigeon.

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