OUR RECEPTION IN PARTOOWYE
UPON starting, at last, I flung away my sandals - by this time quite
worn out - with the view of keeping company with the doctor, now
forced to go barefooted. Recovering his spirits in good time, he
protested that boots were a bore after all, and going without them
decidedly manly.
This was said, be it observed, while strolling along over a soft
carpet of grass; a little moist, even at midday, from the shade of
the wood through which we were passing.
Emerging from this we entered upon a blank, sandy tract, upon which
the sun's rays fairly flashed; making the loose gravel under foot
well nigh as hot as the floor of an oven. Such yelling and leaping as
there was in getting over this ground would he hard to surpass. We
could not have crossed at all - until toward sunset - had it not been
for a few small, wiry bushes growing here and there, into which we
every now and then thrust our feet to cool. There was no little
judgment necessary in selecting your bush; for if not chosen
judiciously, the chances were that, on springing forward again, and
finding the next bush so far off that an intermediate cooling was
indispensable, you would have to run hack to your old place again.
Safely passing the Sahara, or Fiery Desert, we soothed our
half-blistered feet by a pleasant walk through a meadow of long
grass, which soon brought us in sight of a few straggling houses,
sheltered by a grove on the outskirts of the village of Partoowye.
