At length, under the guidance of this woman, Jeel, we made a start.  There were but fifty miles to go, a distance that on a fair road any good horse would cover in eight hours, or less.  But we had no horses, and there was no road—­nothing but swamps and bush and rocky hills.  With our untrained cattle it took us three days to travel the first twelve miles, though after that things went somewhat better.

It may be asked, why did I not send on?  But whom could I send when no one knew the way, except the woman, Jeel, whom I feared to part with lest I should see her no more?  Moreover, what was the use of sending, since the messengers could take no help?  If everyone at the camp was dead, as rumour told us—­well, they were dead.  And if they lived, the hope was that they might live a little longer.  Meanwhile, I dared not part with my guide, nor dared I leave the relief wagons to go on with her alone.  If I did so, I knew that I should never see them again, since only the prestige of their being owned by a white man who was not a Portuguese prevented the natives from looting them.

It was a truly awful journey.  My first idea had been to follow the banks of the Crocodile River, which is what I should have attempted had I not chanced on the woman, Jeel.  Lucky was it that I did not do so, since I found afterwards that this river wound about a great deal and was joined by impassable tributaries.  Also it was bordered by forests.  Jeel’s track, on the contrary, followed an old slave road that, bad as it was, avoided the swampy places of the surrounding country, and those native tribes which the experience of generations of the traders in this iniquitous traffic showed to be most dangerous.

Nine days of fearful struggle had gone by.  We had camped one night below the crest of a long slope strewn with great rocks, many of which we were obliged to roll out of the path by main force in order to make a way for the wagons.  The oxen had to lie in their yokes all night, since we dared not let them loose fearing lest they should stray; also lions were roaring in the distance, although, game being plentiful, these did not come near to us.  As soon as there was any light we let out the teams to fill themselves on the tussocky grass that grew about, and meanwhile cooked and ate some food.

Presently the sun rose, and I saw that beneath us was a great stretch of plain covered with mist, and to the north, on our right, several denser billows of mist that marked the course of the Crocodile River.

By degrees this mist lifted, tall tops of trees appearing above it, till at length it thinned into vapour that vanished away as the sun rose.  As I watched it idly, the woman, Jeel, crept up to me in her furtive fashion, touched me on the shoulder and pointed to a distant group of trees.