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Seenawan is but a handful of date-trees, thrown upon the wide waste of The Sahara, with one or two pools of sluggish running water, sheltering beneath its palms thirty or forty inhabitants. There are four or five spots of vegetation, gems of emerald on the rugged brow of The Desert.

Next to my house is a garden whose date-trees bear no fruit, and its beds are covered with dry dust, a sad picture of neglect. On asking how this was, I was told the owner was in Soudan, and in consequence no one looked after and watered his garden.

The ships that sail from Cosseir to Yembo generally make this point, and continue from thence their coasting voyage southwards. North of Dhoba two days, lies the castle and small village of Moeyleh, in the territory of the Howeytat and Omran Bedouins. We passed it at a distance; but I could see considerable plantations of date-trees near the shore.

He has been at Constantinople, Smyrna, Malta, and many other parts of the Upper Mediterranean. People complain that the gardens languish for want of money to cultivate them; not more than half of the date-trees bear fruit this year, owing entirely to the want of labour and irrigation. People have to purchase water. I have seen no birds in the oasis up to this time.

They accordingly set out, and traversing a level district covered with wild date-trees, and here and there large patches of swamp, for a distance of a hundred and thirty miles to the north-east, they reached the banks of the Zambesi, in the centre of the continent.

Vast flat stretches of land were on either side, recovering from the subsiding inundations: near the mud villages, a country ship or two was roosting under the date-trees; the landscape everywhere stretching away level and lonely.

"There," says the treatise, "shalt thou understand the words of men, the words of cattle, the singing of birds, the language of beasts, the barking of dogs, the language of devils, the language of ministering angels, the language of date-trees, the motion of the sea, the unity of hearts, and the murmuring of the tongue nay, even the thoughts of the reins."

Departure from Linyanti for Sesheke Level Country Ant-hills Wild Date-trees Appearance of our Attendants on the March The Chief's Guard They attempt to ride on Ox-back Vast Herds of the new Antelopes, Leches, and Nakongs The native way of hunting them Reception at the Villages Presents of Beer and Milk Eating with the Hand The Chief provides the Oxen for Slaughter Social Mode of Eating The Sugar-cane Sekeletu's novel Test of Character Cleanliness of Makololo Huts Their Construction and Appearance The Beds Cross the Leeambye Aspect of this part of the Country The small Antelope Tianyane unknown in the South Hunting on foot An Eland.

To reach them from the banks of the Nile we have first to traverse the low region which the inundations of the ancient river, regularly repeated since the beginning of time, have rendered propitious to the growth of plants and to the development of men; an hour or two's journey, this evening through forests of date-trees whose beautiful palms temper the light of the March sun, which is now half veiled in clouds and already declining.

Jack answered, "everyone bearing a torch to illumine the outer darkness of ignorance! May every happy thought I have for Little Rivers spring up in a date-tree wonderful! Then, before the year is out, you will have a forest of date-trees stretching from foothills to foothills, across the whole valley."