Niger

fringed the woods, seemed to strike under his
eyeballs and set his head afire. His tongue moved
in a dry mouth, for water was very scarce. Day
and night the wells were crowded with cattle,
lowing and fighting with each other to come at the
troughs ; excessive thirst made many of them
furious ; others, being too weak to contend for the
water, endeavoured to quench their thirst y
devouring the black mud from the gutters near the
wells, c which they did with great avidity though
it was commonly fatal to them .
In this sheol of heat and thirst none suffered more
than himself. Demba had been provided with a
skin for carrying water ; but every time e
attempted to fill it at the wells the Moors beat him
away. Mungo went and begged a little water
from Fatima. Sluggishly curious that Christians
should suffer in this fashion, she allowed him a little
from her own store. It merely whetted his cravings.
Demba would no longer venture near the wells,
where blows and threats awaited him, and no
chance of water. Had the followers of the Prophet
dug the wells, the shepherds would ask, that they
might be defiled by the slave of a Christian hog .
Mungo and Demba took to begging water
throughout the camp from negroes and slaves who
had been more fortunate than themselves in essays
upon the wells. They were given a little now and
then Mungo began to weaken, was often delirious,
especially with the fall of night, in the unease of
half-sleep. He would hear rise in a volume-roar the
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