We have hitherto had to struggle against
mental anxieties, against fatigues, heat, drought, and thirst: we have
now to contend with rain and with floods. Everything is becoming awfully
damp, and everybody looks awfully dismal. I can see, from the lugubrious
countenances of the Kailouees and the blacks, that the rainy season is
their real winter. They go shivering about, and seem as if they were
half drowned. Our Bornou gauze-cotton tent still bears up well, however,
and keeps out the rain.
I was engaged in admiring the tent, and in reflecting on the changed
region into which we had entered--a region of luxuriant vegetation and
watery atmosphere--when there was again a wild holloa of "The floods are
pouring down upon us! The wady is coming!" Our people, however,
contented themselves at first with shouting, and made no preparations
for the advancing flood; but in a short time they found it necessary to
bestir themselves, and began to make dams and dykes, with the aid of
sticks and hatches. These expedients proved of no avail. The waters
swelled wildly up, higher and higher, and sheets of foaming waves came
whirling in amongst us. I called out to Yusuf to select some high ground
at once, to which our goods might be conveyed. He calmly replied, "The
people still stay where they are;" implying that there was no danger,
that the inundation would subside like the former one, and that we
should escape with a wetting.
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