To these primal travellers the perils of unknown adventure and the pressure of want would most probably have proved excitements too absorbing to have permitted a chronicle of their experience, even had the art of writing then existed. But details of adventure as wild and strange, perhaps, as any encountered by those earliest travellers exist in the volumes of recent discoverers; and while glancing at these we may imagine to ourselves similar enterprises of our race in the thousands of years which are past and gone. Let it be observed, in passing, that the young reader will find no books more rich and varied in interest than those of intelligent travellers; and if our slight mention of a few of their names as partakers in the “Triumphs of Enterprise” should induce him to form a larger acquaintance with their narratives, it can scarcely fail to induce thoughts and resolves that will tend to his advantage.
The perils to be undergone in desert regions are not more forcibly described by any travellers than by Major Denham, Dr. Oudney, and Captain Clapperton, the celebrated African discoverers. “The sand-storm we had the misfortune to encounter in crossing the desert,” says the former, “gave us a pretty correct idea of the dreaded effects of these hurricanes. The wind raised the fine sand with which the extensive desert was covered so as to fill the atmosphere and render the immense space before us impenetrable to the eye beyond a few yards. The sun and clouds were entirely obscured, and a suffocating and oppressive weight accompanied the flakes and masses of sand which, I had almost said, we had to penetrate at every step. At times we completely lost sight of the camels, though only a few yards before us. The horses hung their tongues out of their mouths, and refused to face the torrents of sand. A sheep that accompanied the kafila (the travelling train), the last of our stock, lay down on the road, and we were obliged to kill him and throw the carcass on a camel. A parching thirst oppressed us, which nothing alleviated. We had made but little way by three o’clock in the afternoon, when the wind got round to the eastward and refreshed us a little; with this change we moved on until about five, when we halted, protected in a measure by some hills. As we had but little wood our fare was confined to tea, and we hoped to find relief from our fatigues by a sound sleep. That, however, was denied us; the tent had been imprudently pitched, and was exposed to the east wind, which blew a hurricane during the night; the tent was blown down, and the whole detachment were employed a full hour in getting it up again. Our bedding and every thing within the tent was during that time completely buried by the constant driving of the sand. I was obliged three times during the night to get up for the purpose of strengthening the pegs; and when in the morning I awoke two hillocks of sand were formed on each side of my head some inches high.”
Dr. Oudney, the partner of Denham and Clapperton, in their adventurous enterprise, affords details more frightful in character. “Strict orders had been given during a certain day of the journey,” he informs us, “for the camels to keep close up, and for the Arabs not to straggle—the Tibboo Arabs having been seen on the look out. During the last two days,” he continues, “we had passed on the average from sixty to eighty or ninety skeletons each day; but the numbers that lay about the wells of El-Hammar were countless; those of two women, whose perfect and regular teeth bespoke them young, were particularly shocking—their arms still remained clasped round each other as they had expired, although the flesh had long since perished by being exposed to the burning rays of the sun, and the blackened bones only were left; the nails of the fingers and some of the sinews of the hand also remained, and part of the tongue of one of them still appeared through the teeth. We had now passed six days of desert without the slightest appearance of vegetation, and a little branch was brought me here as a comfort and curiosity. A few roots of dry grass, blown by the winds towards the travellers, were eagerly seized on by the Arabs, with cries of joy, for their hungry camels. Soon after the sun had retired behind the hills to the west, we descended into a wadey, where about a dozen stunted bushes, not trees, of palm marked the spot where water was to be found. The wells were so choked up with sand, that several cart-loads of it were removed previous to finding sufficient water; and even then the animals could not drink till nearly ten at night.”
Nor was it merely the horrors of the climate which these intrepid travellers had to encounter. Their visitation of various savage tribes drew them into the circle of barbarous quarrels. The peril incurred by Major Denham, while accompanying the Bornou warriors in their expedition against the Felatahs, is unsurpassed for interest in any book of travels. “My horse was badly wounded in the neck, just above the shoulder, and in the near hind leg,” says the Major, describing what had befallen himself and steed in the encounter; “an arrow had struck me in the face as it passed, merely drawing the blood. If either of my horse’s wounds had been from poisoned arrows I felt that nothing could save me [The tribe he accompanied had been worsted.] However, there was not much time for reflection; we instantly became a flying mass, and plunged, in the greatest disorder, into that wood we had but a few hours before moved through with order, and very different feelings. The spur had the effect of incapacitating my beast altogether, as the arrow, I found afterwards, had reached the shoulder-bone, and in passing over some rough ground he stumbled and fell. Almost before I was on my legs the Felatahs were upon me; I had, however, kept hold of the bridle, and, seizing a pistol from the holsters, I presented it at two of these ferocious savages, who were pressing me with their spears: they instantly went off; but another, who came on me more boldly, just as I was endeavouring to mount, received the contents somewhere in his left shoulder, and again I was enabled to place my foot in the stirrup. Re-mounted, I again pushed my retreat; I had not, however, proceeded many hundred yards when my horse came down again, with such violence as to throw me against a tree at a considerable distance; and, alarmed at the horses behind, he quickly got up and escaped, leaving me on foot and unarmed. A chief and his four followers were here butchered and stripped; their cries were dreadful, and even now the feelings of that moment are fresh in my memory; my hopes of life were too faint to deserve the name. I was almost instantly surrounded, and incapable of making the least resistance, as I was unarmed. I was as speedily stripped; and, whilst attempting first to save my shirt and then my trousers, I was thrown on the ground. My pursuers made several thrusts at me with their spears, that badly wounded my hands in two places, and slightly my body, just under my ribs, on the right side; indeed I saw nothing before me but the same cruel death I had seen unmercifully inflicted on the few who had fallen into the power of those who now had possession of me. My shirt was now absolutely torn off my back, and I was left perfectly naked.
“When my plunderers began to quarrel for the spoil, the idea of escape came like lightning across my mind, and, without a moment’s hesitation or reflection, I crept under the belly of the horse nearest me, and started as fast as my legs could carry me for the thickest part of the wood. Two of the Felatahs followed, and I ran on to the eastward, knowing that our stragglers would be in that direction, but still almost as much afraid of friends as of foes. My pursuers gained on me, for the prickly underwood not only obstructed my passage but tore my flesh miserably; and the delight with which I saw a mountain-stream gliding along at the bottom of a deep ravine cannot be imagined. My strength had almost left me, and I seized the young branches issuing from the stump of a large tree which overhung the ravine, for the purpose of letting myself down into the water, as the sides were precipitous, when, under my hand, as the branch yielded to the weight of my body, a large liffa, the worst kind of serpent this country produces, rose from its coil, as if in the act of striking. I was horror-stricken, and deprived for a moment of all recollection; the branch slipped from my hand, and I tumbled headlong into the water beneath; this shock, however, revived me, and with three strokes of my arms I reached the opposite bank, which with difficulty I crawled up, and then, for the first time, felt myself safe from my pursuers.
“Scarcely had I audibly congratulated myself on my escape, when the forlorn and wretched situation in which I was, without even a rag to cover me, flashed with all its force upon my imagination. I was perfectly collected, though fully alive to all the danger to which my state exposed me, and had already began to plan my night’s rest in the top of one of the tamarind trees, in order to escape the panthers, which, as I had seen, abounded in these woods, when the idea of the liffas, almost as numerous and equally to be dreaded, excited a shudder of despair.
“I now saw horsemen through the trees, still farther to the east, and determined on reaching them if possible, whether friends or enemies. They were friends. I hailed them with all my might; but the noise and confusion which prevailed, from the cries of those who were falling under the Felatah spears, the cheers of the Arabs rallying and their enemies pursuing, would have drowned all attempts to make myself heard, had not the sheikh’s negro seen and known me at a distance. To this man I was indebted for my second escape: riding up to me, he assisted me to mount behind him, while the arrows whistled over our heads, and we then galloped off to the rear as fast as his wounded horse could carry us. After we had gone a mile or two, and the pursuit had cooled, I was covered with a bornouse; this was a most welcome relief, for the burning sun had already begun to blister my neck and back, and gave me the greatest pain; and had we not soon arrived at water I do not think it possible that I could have supported the thirst by which I was being consumed.”