not force upon the reader; neither will I intrude anything that is not
actually necessary in the description of scenes that unfortunately must
be passed through in the journey now before us. Should anything offend
the sensitive mind, and suggest the unfitness of the situation for a
woman's presence, I must beseech my fair readers to reflect, that the
pilgrim's wife followed him, weary and footsore, through all his
difficulties, led, not by choice, but by devotion; and that in times of
misery and sickness her tender care saved his life and prospered the
expedition.

"O woman, in our hours of ease
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made;
When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel thou!"

In the journey now before us I must request some exercise of patience
during geographical details that may be wearisome; at all events, I will
adhere to facts, and avoid theory as much as possible.

The Botanist will have ample opportunities of straying from our path to
examine plants with which I confess a limited acquaintance. The
Ethnologist shall have precisely the same experience that I enjoyed, and
he may either be enlightened or confounded. The Geologist will find
himself throughout the journey in Central Africa among primitive rocks.
The Naturalist will travel through a grass jungle that conceals much
that is difficult to obtain: both he and the Sportsman will, I trust,
accompany me on a future occasion through the "Nile tributaries from
Abyssinia," which country is prolific in all that is interesting. The