size of a woodcock, and with a flight more resembling that bird's than
an English snipe's. In the pools, too, was a species of small alligator
or enormous iguana, I do not know which, that fed, Billali told me, upon
the waterfowl, also large quantities of a hideous black water-snake, of
which the bite is very dangerous, though not, I gathered, so deadly as a
cobra's or a puff adder's. The bull-frogs were also very large, and
with voices proportionate to their size; and as for the mosquitoes--the
"musqueteers," as Job called them--they were, if possible, even worse
than they had been on the river, and tormented us greatly. Undoubtedly,
however, the worst feature of the swamp was the awful smell of
rotting vegetation that hung about it, which was at times positively
overpowering, and the malarious exhalations that accompanied it, which
we were of course obliged to breathe.

On we went through it all, till at last the sun sank in sullen splendour
just as we reached a spot of rising ground about two acres in extent--a
little oasis of dry in the midst of the miry wilderness--where Billali
announced that we were to camp. The camping, however, turned out to be
a very simple process, and consisted, in fact, in sitting down on the
ground round a scanty fire made of dry reeds and some wood that had been
brought with us. However, we made the best we could of it, and smoked
and ate with such appetite as the smell of damp, stifling heat would
allow, for it was very hot on this low land, and yet, oddly enough,
chilly at times. But, however hot it was, we were glad enough to keep
near the fire, because we found that the mosquitoes did not like the
smoke. Presently we rolled ourselves up in our blankets and tried to
go to sleep, but so far as I was concerned the bull-frogs, and the
extraordinary roaring and alarming sound produced by hundreds of snipe
hovering high in the air, made sleep an impossibility, to say nothing of
our other discomforts. I turned and looked at Leo, who was next me; he