Note 11 — Chapter I · FROM MOURZUK TO KOUKA IN BORNOU.
Reading edition
El-Wahr. The surface sandy till we approached the hills, then it changed to stony. The black hills with cones, peaks, and a columnar-looking cap, reminded us of what we had seen before. The gloom of these places in the dusk has something grand and awful. We winded up, with the light of a moon not a quarter old, and that lessened by a cloudy sky. Some sandy and pebbly beds, as of a stream, and in one place high clayey banks, with iron ore underneath. Skeletons lay about, mangled in a shocking manner; here a leg, there an arm, fixed with their ligaments, at considerable distances from the trunk. What could have done this? Man forced by hunger, or the camels? The latter are very fond of chewing dried bones, but whether they ever do so to those with dried flesh on them, I cannot say.—W. O.