During this painful scene, in which one girl had
been entirely lost, the mother of her who was saved
had rushed to meet her child as she landed from
the ford; but instead of clasping her to her heart,
as we had expected, she gave her a maternal welcome
by beating her most unmercifully with her
fists, bestowing such lusty blows upon her back that
we could distinctly hear them at a distance of fifty
yards; this punishment, we were given to understand,
served her perfectly right, for having been
foolish enough to venture near the rapids. The
melancholy death-howl was now raised by all the
women in the village, while the men explored the
river in search of the missing body. On the following
morning the sheik appeared at my tent,
with a number of Arabs who had been unsuccessful,
and he begged me, if possible, to suggest some
means for the discovery of the girl, as her remains
should be properly interred.
I proposed that they should procure a log of heavy
wood, as near as possible the size of the girl, and that
this should be thrown into the rapids, in the exact
spot where she had disappeared ; this, being nearly
the same weight, would be equally acted upon by
the stream, and would form'a guide which they
should follow until it should lead them to some
deep eddy, or whirlpool formed b y . a backwater;
should the pilot log remain in such a spot, they
would most probably find the body in the same
place. The men immediately procured a log, and
set off with the sheik himself to carry out the experiment.
In the afternoon, we heard a terrible
howling and crying, and a crowd of men and women
returned to the village, some of whom paid us a
visit; they had found the body. The log had guided
them about two miles distant, and had remained
stationary in a backwater near where I had shot
the bull hippopotamus; in this still pool, close to
the bank, they almost immediately discovered the
girl floating slightly beneath the surface. No crocodile
had injured the body, but the fish had destroyed
a portion of the face; it was already so far advanced
in decomposition, that it was necessary to bury it
upon the margin of the river, at the spot where it
was discovered. The people came to thank me for
having originated the idea, and the very agreeable
sheik spent the -evening with us with a number ol
his people; this ’was his greatest delight, and we
had become thoroughly accustomed to his daily
visits. At such times we sat upon an angarep,
while he sat upon a mat stretched upon the ground,
with a number of his men, who formed a half-circle
around u s; he then invariably requested that we
would tell liim stories about England. Of these he
never tired, and with the assistance of Mahomet we
established a regular entertainment; the great amusement
of the Arabs being the mistakes that they
readily perceived were made by Mahomet as interpreter.
We knew sufficient Arabic to check and to
explain his errors.