"That shalt thou see," and at a sign from him his bearers stared forward at a run till they reached the litter in which Job was reposing (with one leg hanging over the side).Apparently, however, he could not make much out of Job, for presently I saw his bearers trot forward to Leo's litter.
And after that, as nothing fresh occurred, I yielded to the pleasant swaying motion of the litter, and went to sleep again.I was dreadfully tired.When I woke Ifound that we were passing through a rocky defile of a lava formation with precipitous sides, in which grew many beautiful trees and flowering shrubs.
Presently this defile took a turn, and a lovely sight unfolded itself to my eyes.Before us was a vast cup of green from four to six miles in extent, of the shape of a Roman amphitheatre.The sides of this great cup were rocky, and clothed with bush, but the centre was of the richest meadow land, studded with single trees of magnificent growth, and watered by meandering brooks.On this rich plain grazed herds of goats and cattle, but I saw no sheep.At first I could not imagine what this strange spot could be, but presently it flashed upon me that it must represent the crater of some long-extinct volcano, which had afterwards been a lake, and was ultimately drained in some unexplained way.And here I may state that from my subsequent experience of this and a much larger, but otherwise similar spot, which I shall have occasion to describe by and by, I have every reason to believe that this conclusion was correct.What puzzled me, however, was that, although there were people moving about herding the goats and cattle, I saw no signs of any human habitation.Where did they all live? Iwondered.My curiosity was soon destined to be gratified.Turning to the left, the string of litters followed the cliffy sides of the crater for a distance of about half a mile, or perhaps a little less, and then halted.Seeing the old gentleman, my adopted "father," Billali, emerge from his litter, I did the same, and so did Leo and Job.The first thing I saw was our wretched Arab companion, Mahomed, lying exhausted on the ground.It appeared that he had not been provided with a litter, but had been forced to run the entire distance, and, as he was already quite worn out when we started, his condition now was one of great prostration.
On looking round we discovered that the place where we had halted was a platform in front of the mouth of a great cave, and piled upon this platform were the entire contents of the whaleboat, even down to the oars and sail.Round the cave stood groups of the men who had escorted us, and other men of a similar stamp.
They were all tall and all handsome, though they varied in their degree of darkness of skin, some being as dark as Mahomed, and some as yellow as a Chinese.
They were naked, except for the leopard-skin round the waist, and each of them carried a huge spear.
