Unluckily, Harmless Travellers Are Equally Liable To Fall Into These Living Graves.

Major Denham was petrified with horror, to find how near he had approached to several of them; indeed one of his servants stepped upon the deceitful covering, and was saved only by an almost miraculous spring.

It seems wonderful that the sheik should not have endeavoured to restore some kind of security to this portion of his subjects, and to re-people those fine but deserted regions.

The troops that had been seen hastening in parties to the scene of action were mustered at Kobshary, a town which the Mungas had nearly destroyed. The sheik made a review of his favourite forces, the Kanemboo spearmen, nine thousand strong. They were really a very savage and military-looking host, entirely naked, except a girdle of goat-skin, with the hair hanging down, and a piece of cloth wrapped round the head. They carried large wooden shields, shaped like a gothic window, with which they warded off the arrows of the enemy, while they pressed forward to attack with their own spears. Unlike almost all other barbarous armies, they kept a regular night-watch, passing the cry every half-hour along the line, and, at any alarm, raising a united yell, which was truly frightful. At the review they passed in tribes before the sheik, to whom they showed the most enthusiastic attachment, kneeling on the ground, and kissing his feet. The Mungas again were described as terrible antagonists, hardened by conflicts with the Tuaricks, fighting on foot with poisoned arrows, longer and more deadly than those of the Fellatas.

The sultan, however, contemplated other means of securing success, placing his main reliance on his powers as a mohammedan doctor and writer. Three successive nights were spent in inscribing upon little scraps of paper figures or words, destined to exercise a magical influence upon the rebel host, and their effect was heightened by the display of sky-rockets, supplied by Major Denham. Tidings of his being thus employed were conveyed to the camp, when the Mungas, stout and fierce warriors, who never shrunk from an enemy, yielded to the power of superstition, and felt all their strength withered. It seemed to them that their arrows were blunted, their quivers broken, their hearts struck with sickness and fear, in short, that to oppose a sheik of the Koran, who could accomplish such wonders, was alike vain and impious. They came in by hundreds, bowing themselves to the ground, and casting sand on their heads, in token of the most abject submission. At length, Malem Fanamy, the leader of the rebellion, saw that resistance was hopeless. After vain overtures of conditional submission, he appeared in person, mounted on a white horse, with one thousand followers. He was clothed in rags, and having fallen prostrate, was about to pour sand on his head, when the sultan, instead of permitting this humiliation, caused eight robes of fine cotton cloth, one after another, to be thrown over him, and his head to be wrapped in Egyptian turbans till it was swelled to six times its natural size, and no longer resembled any thing human.

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