CAMEL WITH BRIDAL BOWER.
It will be noticed in a caravan that some of the camels carry extraordinary fan-shaped palanquins on their backs. These contain the Arab ladies, whose religion obliges them to be veiled, and who can thus travel securely screened from sight. In the deserts of Asia the women ride in a much more airy and comfortable fashion, being provided with cushioned panniers slung on either side of the camel's back and sheltered by a light awning. On the occasion of a wedding in the Nile Delta district, the bride is carried on a camel in a curious erection shaped like a Red Indian wigwam and decorated with a large tuft of palm-leaves.
From the deserts we go to the great tropical forests, and there, although there is plenty of water and shelter from the fierce rays of the sun, travellers have to encounter new difficulties, new hardships, and new dangers.
CARRIERS IN THE FOREST.
Those of us who have seen only woods in our own islands can hardly imagine what one of the great forests of Central Africa, America, or Asia is like, with its huge trees, strange plants, and hot, steamy atmosphere, dank with the smell of rotting vegetation and stagnant water, or heavy with the overpowering fragrance of some tropical blossom. It is almost dark, for the foliage is dense, and the trees are, moreover, hung with matted curtains of creepers, while below is a tangled undergrowth, so tall and thick that pathways have to be cut through it inch by inch.