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Updated: June 4, 2025
Should the camels arrive, I could march into Myria in twenty minutes, make the chief a large present, and pass on without halting until I cleared the Ellyria valley. At any rate I was well before the Turks, and the forced march at night, however distressing, had been successful.
The valley of Ellyria was about four hundred feet below, at about a mile distant. Beautiful mountains, some two or three thousand feet high, of gray granite, walled in the narrow vale, while the landscape of forest and plain was bounded at about fifty or sixty miles' distance to the east by the blue mountains of Latooka.
I had no doubt that, by paying black mail, I should be able to clear Ellyria, provided I was in advance of the Turks, but should they outmarch me there would be no hope; a fight and defeat would be the climax. I accordingly gave orders for an IMMEDIATE start. "Load the camels, my brothers!"
I also had a sack of corn for the animals, a necessary precaution, as at this season there was not a blade of grass, all in the vicinity of the route having been burned. We started on the 30th of March, at 7.30 A.M., and entered from the valley of Ellyria upon a perfectly flat country interspersed with trees.
There was a difficult pass through the mountains of Ellyria which it would be impossible to force; thus my small party of seventeen men would be helpless. It would be merely necessary for the traders to request the chief of Ellyria to attack my party to insure its destruction, as the plunder of the baggage would be an ample reward. There was no time for deliberation.
This was agreed upon, and I now had hopes of getting through Ellyria before the arrival of the Turks. My caravan having arrived, the interest first bestowed upon the horses, as being a new kind of animal, was now transferred to the camels. The natives crowded round them, exclaiming, "that they were the giraffes of our country."
I had no doubt that by paying blackmail I should be able to clear Ellyria, provided I was in advance of the Turks; but should they outmarch me, there would be no hope; a fight and defeat would be the climax. I accordingly gave orders for an IMMEDIATE start. "Load the camels, my brothers!"
The Bari and those Tollogo and Ellyria have generally bullet-shaped heads, low foreheads, skulls heavy behind the ears and above the nape of the neck: altogether their appearance is excessively brutal, and they are armed with bows six feet long and arrows horribly barbed and poisoned.
Although Kamrasi had on many occasions offered the ivory to me, I had studiously avoided the acceptance of a single tusk, as I wished the Turks to believe that I would not mix myself up with trade in any form, and that my expedition had purely the one object that I had explained to Ibrahim when I first won him over on the road to Ellyria more than two years ago, "the discovery of the Albert lake."
A few rose from the ground ashamed and assisted to load the camels, while the others declared it an impossibility for camels to travel by the road we were about to take, as the Turks had informed them that not even the donkeys could march through the thick jungles between Belignan and Ellyria. "All right, my brothers!"
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