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The passage to the desert by the Way of the Thousand Steps was a brilliant feat, for of our great force not a single life was lost, and so rapidly did we travel, that within two weeks of the day we left the palace, our Dagombas, who preferred their native spears and arrows to firearms, were enrolled and we were well on our way to the Great Salt Road, a mere native path notwithstanding its imposing designation, towards Samory's great fortress-city.
I was brought here to Samory's harem as slave, attired in the garments I now wear, loaded with jewels torn from the body of one of his favourites, who, incurring his displeasure, had been promptly strangled by the chief of the negro eunuchs, and placed in an apartment with three other slaves to do my bidding, there to await such time as it should please my Arab captor to inspect me.
The combat again became terrible, and in it I received from a big, raw-boned Arab a severe sword-cut over the left wrist that caused me excruciating pain. Still I fought on, although half fearing that our expedition was ill-fated. We had believed Samory's capital practically denuded of troops, and of such strenuous opposition as that offered we had never dreamed.
As each day dawned we still held upon our way, until at length, under a broiling noon-day sun, we crossed a wide stretch of fertile grass-land where cattle were grazing, and there rose high before us the white fortified walls of a large town of flat-roofed Moorish-looking houses. It was, we afterwards learnt, called Koussan, one of Samory's principal strongholds.
Although one horse-shoe arch of the place led into the Court of the Eunuchs, the other, I noticed, was in direct communication with Samory's private apartments. With consummate skill he had led me here by such a circuitous route that I had not at first noticed that it joined a kind of ante-room to his pavilion.
There were others also of far less pretensions, which answered more to the caravanseri of Samory's country, where the weary animals who had borne their burdens from some far away corner of the mystic land were resting during their sojourn in the city.
The critical position of Mo had been fully discussed by Omar, his officers and sages, and it had been decided to send, in addition to the force of twenty thousand men to the Hombori Mountains on the northern frontier, a second expedition to travel with all swiftness across the sandy plain and make a dash upon Samory's stronghold at Koussan in the absence of its picked troops.
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