He had heard them regularly during the preceding thirty years,
and he was more than ever bent on outwitting the jealous rivals who had
placed such obstacles in his path.
The French officers at Pajura thought he was rather cracked to take
ladies with him, yet they were obliged to admit that desert travel was
healthy and enjoyable, provided supplies were ample, and, on this
score, the skilled explorer of Soudan by-ways showed that he had lost
none of his cunning. Before the caravan started news came from Aden
that the _Cigno_ had been dragged off her sandspit. This gave an added
value to the land route, as the coast of Erythrea was assuredly closed
to them; the French authorities, on the other hand, rendered every
assistance in their power.
And now, after a month of steady marching, the caravan was well within
Italian territory. The route lay parallel with the sea, but nearly a
hundred miles distant from it. It traversed the interminable wadys and
shelving table-lands leading down to the coast from the granite and
pink Nubian stone foothills of the inner range of giants which guarded
the fertile valleys of Abyssinia.
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