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They reached such a spot after about an hour's march, camping in the shelter of a small clump of stunted pines; and here, after breakfast, Busa approached the two white men with the request that, having performed his task of guiding the party to a spot from which the "city of palaces," could be seen, he and his bearers might now be permitted to set out upon the return journey, he and they being anxious to recross the divide during the hours of daylight, and so escape the bitter cold from which they had suffered so severely during the preceding night.
The two parties broke camp simultaneously, Busa and his bearers taking the back trail up the path which they had all descended an hour earlier, while the others, under Earle's leadership, proceeded down the mountain side at their best speed, being impatient to reach the fertile, cultivated country bordering the lake below.
As Busa had warned them, the way proved both long and difficult, leading as it did up and down wild ravines, along the dry and stony beds of mountain torrents, through rough and narrow passes, and by the edge of dizzy precipices where a single false step would have meant a fall of hundreds of feet through space; but after ten days of arduous travel the journey was accomplished without accident, and without any very startling adventure, the party arriving, late in a certain afternoon at a "divide," from which they looked down upon a vast basin containing a lake some thirty miles long by twenty broad, on the northern shore of which stood a city which Busa had not misrepresented when he spoke of it as a city of palaces.
Even at present, they make an inebriating liquor in Russia, from millet, called busa, which is very heady, and is probably what is named bossa in the text Forst. I strongly suspect that this passage is wrong translated, and that it ought to have been, that the castle as encompassed with wooden walls, as it is well known that the city of Moscow environs the castle or Kremlin.
Of course, it was not possible to judge very accurately the character of the buildings, or to see much detail, for the city was some twenty miles distant from the spot to which Busa had conducted the party, while the rarefaction of the atmosphere rendered even the field-glasses of little use.
In Mourzouk the men drink a great quantity of lackbi, or a drink called busa, which is prepared from the dates, and is very intoxicating. The Arabs practise hospitality generally; but among the Fezzaners that virtue does not exist, they are, however, very attentive and obsequious to those in whose power they are, or who can repay them tenfold for their pretended disinterestedness.
Arrangements were accordingly made for the construction of a litter for the accommodation of the old man, and on a certain morning the expedition set out from Yacoahite, the party now consisting of thirty men all told, including the old man, Busa, who was to serve as guide, his eight bearers, and ten additional bearers to assist in the transport of the white men's baggage.
But the great number of her guests rendered the burden more oppressive to Busa, for they amounted now to ten thousand men.
Those who escaped to Canusium, being received by the people of that place within their walls and houses only, were assisted with corn, clothes, and provisions for their journey, by an Apulian lady, named Busa, distinguished for her family and riches; in return for which munificence, the senate afterwards, when the war was concluded, conferred honours upon her.
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