and ponderous trunks of prostrate trees," like bone-white skinny arms, appeared to slither out from the night with the set object of preventing the advance. One of the bearers, stung by a scorpion, and another afflicted with some other complaint—or it might have been mere sympathy for his companion in misfortune—hobbled along, rending the night air with their wild and dismal lamentations. The leading group of coolies, stepping into the darkness, dropped with considerable noise and objurgation into a deep cutting, but with more damage to nerves than limbs, as fortunately the stream, which had humorously constructed this pitfall across the route, thought fit to deposit a comparatively soft bed of sand and gravel before chuckling itself dry over the practical joke. At another place, in the utter blackness of the night, while attempting to negotiate a curiously shaped boulder, this obstacle made some slight movement, revealing a derelict bullock, deserted by its owner and left in this wilderness of stones to die. And so stumbling on, every few yards the pace becoming slower and slower, the lights of
