hitherto, either so friendly or so indifferent that we did not have
much apprehension on account of personal safety. So we set out with
beating hearts. Our path was exceedingly difficult to traverse, leading
chiefly among low trees and over the sharp stones that had rolled from
the river,--now close by the noisy stream, which babbled and foamed as
if it had gone mad,--now creeping on our knees through bushes, matted
with thick, twining vines,--now wading across an open morass,--now in
mimosa woods, or slipping in and out of the feathery dhelb-palms.

Since our conversation spoken of above, Herndon and I had talked little
with each other, and now usually spoke merely of the incidents of the
journey, the obstacles, etc.; we scarcely mentioned that for which we
were both longing with intense desire, and the very thoughts of which
made my heart beat quicker and the blood rush to my face. One day we
came to a place where the river made a bend of about two miles and then
passed almost parallel to our point of view. I proposed to Herndon that
he should pursue the course of the river, and that I would strike a
little way back into the country, and make a short cut across to the
other side of the bend, where he and the men would stop, pitch our
night-tent, and wait for me. Herndon assented, and we parted. The low
fields around us changed, as I went on, to firm, hard, rising ground,
that gradually became sandy and arid. The luxuriant vegetation that
clung around the banks of the river seemed to be dried up little by
little, until only a few dusty bushes and thorn-acacias studded in
clumps a great, sandy, and rocky tract of country, which rolled
monotonously back from the river border with a steadily increasing
elevation. A sandy plain never gives me a sense of real substance; it
always seems as if it must be merely a covering for something,--a sheet
thrown over the bed where a dead man is lying. And especially here did
this broad, trackless, seemingly boundless desert face me with its