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Updated: July 27, 2025
Nor is this the worst which sometimes befals the traveller; the overpowering effect of a sudden sand-wind, when nearly at the close of the desert, often destroys a whole kafila, already weakened by fatigue, and the spot was pointed out to them strewed with bones and dried carcasses, where the year before, fifty sheep, two camels, and two men perished from thirst and fatigue, when within eight hours march of the well, for which they were then anxiously looking.
A bag is suspended under the tail of the maherhy, by which means the dung is preserved, and this serves as fuel on halting in the night. Without a kafila, and a sufficient number of camels to carry such indispensables as wood and water, it is indeed a perilous journey. On the 27th, they appeared gradually to approach something resembling vegetation.
Unbuckling the last goat's-skin of water from one of the camels, he poured out a small cup for each individual of the kafila. Each was then served with a little sangleh and a couple of dried figs. All were now ordered to move on towards the west, Golah leading the way. The new route was at right angles to the course they had been following during the earlier part of the day.
In this splendid array they moved on, until, as they approached the gates of the town, the dancing and singing men and women met them, and amidst these, the shouts and firing of the men, who skirmished before them, and the loo! loo! of the women, they entered Sockna. They found that houses were provided for them in the town, but the kafila bivouacked outside the gates.
Soon after encountering the locusts, the kafila came upon a well-beaten road running through a fertile country, where hundreds of acres of barley could be seen growing on both sides. That evening, for some reason unknown to the slaves, their masters did not halt at the usual hour.
There could be no manner of doubt that the Italian had begun an unprovoked attack on the smaller kafila. His only messengers were bullets, and the orders he issued to the Hadendowas were definite. The whole party was to be exterminated, with the exception of Mrs. Haxton, who was to be taken alive if possible.
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