Niger

Christian, and his touch polluting. Turning round,
he poured the water into a nearby trough, where
three cows already drank, and indicated to Mungo
he could share with these beasts.
So the son of Mungo Park of Fowlshiels, that cold
prim youth who had landed neatly clad and com¬
posed on the Gambia beaches six months before,
knelt down in rags and filth among the kine, and
drank and slobbered in their trough, crying with
delight and fever as he drank.
But now the worst of the hot season was waning.
Winds arose and whirled the desert sands icily about
the encampment. Clouds came flooding up from
the south, dimming the flare of the midday sky,
and with them, presently, the flow of sheet-lightning
unending upon the African horizon. The rainy
season was near at hand. To Mungo this presented
a new terror. The Moors were accustomed to
retreat further out into the desert to escape the rains
of the jungle belt. Would they take him with them ?
But a fortunate accident prevented this. Daisy,
the heroic king of Kaarta, having beaten the Bam-
barrans and his own rebels, threatened Jarra, the
frontier town on the Ludamar-Kaarta line. In
Jarra were several hundred refugee and rebel
Kaartans. They sent an embassy to the Emir Ali
to hire a couple of hundred of his horsemen as
mercenaries with which to assail Daisy, and Ali
resolved to set out and treat with them in person.
If only he would take his Christian captive as far as
Jarra—
146