Niger

troubled. Was not his friend about to set out on a
journey through a land of mist ?
While their horses stood deep-breathing, Scott
tried again to dissuade Mungo from the venture.
The two score troops the Government proposed to
raise for defence of Mungo’s expedition at Goree
were entirely inadequate for defence. They were
more likely to enrage the negro kings than overawe
them. Mungo, who had ridden as silent as his
friend till then, awoke to interest. Just the reverse
was likely to happen. The little kingdoms were
yearly traversed by small caravans of aliens. So long
as these paid customs they were seldom molested.
A single European traveller would be in danger :
a white regiment would raise up the black levies to
war. But his two score from Goree would be
neither attacked nor regarded with suspicion.
They had shaken their horses into a trot again by
then, and Scott, seeing that his friend would not be
dissuaded, gave up the argument. They are a
curious pair to our eyes on that last ride together.
They had talked over their favourite Border ballads
on the night before, in between stretches of the talk
on Africa ; and, when now they came to the road
in the moorland where Scott was to turn back, an
incident stirred all those slumbering memories of
tenebrous superstition that the ballads bore. Mungo
cantered his horse across the ditch to the road, but
the beast was clumsy, catching its hoof in the ditch
and nearly falling. Scott watched Mungo pull it
up.
G.N.
273
S