The flat country surrounding the village had the same monotony and aridity that characterised the banks of the lower Senegal.
None the less clumps of trees, or forests even, were already to be seen, indicating that this was the threshold of the land of Galam, the wooded regions of the interior.
XVIII
It is the first reconnaissance made in the tract of country to the east of the encampment of Dialdé, towards Djidiam, and it is carried out by Jean, Sergeant Muller, and tall Nyaor.
According to the report of timid old women of the friendly tribe, fresh tracks of a large body of foot soldiers and mounted men, who could be no other than the army of the great black chief, had been seen on the sand.
For two hours the three mounted spahis patrolled the plain in all directions, but discovered no human footprint, nor any trace of the passage of an army.
On the other hand, the ground was covered with the spoor of all the fauna of Africa—from the great round pit made by the heavy foot of the hippopotamus to the dainty little triangular hoofprint of the light-stepping gazelle. The sand, hardened by the last showers of the winter season, preserved faithfully all the impressions made upon it by the denizens of the wild. The paws of monkeys, the great straggling stride of giraffes, the tracks of lizards and serpents, the pads of tigers and lions were visible. One might have traced the stealthy comings and goings of jackals, the prodigious leaps of hunted deer. There were suggestions of all the terrible vitality which darkness unchains in these deserts—deserts that lie so silent under the burning eye of the sun. One could form a picture of the saturnalia of wild life bursting forth under cover of darkness.
All the wild fowl lurking in the brushwood rose up, startled by the three spahis’ horses. It was miraculous shooting country. Red partridges, guinea fowl, blue jays, pink jays, sheeny blackbirds, and huge bustards flew across the very muzzles of their rifles. But the spahis let them all go, still continuing their vain search for human tracks.
It was nearly evening, and dense vapours were gathering on the horizon. The sky had that heavy, torpid aspect, such as the imagination pictures at the setting of antediluvian suns—at the period when the atmosphere, more torrid, more heavily charged with vital essences, was maturing on primitive earth the monstrous germs of the mammoth and the pleiosaurus.