Page:The Diothas, or, A far look ahead (IA diothasorfarlook01macn).pdf/169

 this way was secured the most desirable season of the year for travelling.

If betrothed, the zerdar was naturally anxious to pay at least a flying visit to where was for him the centre of attraction. As he was not allowed, however, to spend more than two days at home, a large part of the journey, if not all, was performed by curricle. Mounted on these, and careering over the splendid roads that penetrated every corner of the terrestrial globe, the young men could accomplish with ease a distance of two hundred and forty miles a day, or four hundred miles when pressed for time.

My host's eyes would yet sparkle with enthusiasm as he told of those glorious days of travel in company with a band of comrades. With literally "the world before them where to choose," they yet preferred, as a rule, so to map out their route, that it would gradually bring them to the place where, on a certain day, they should report for duty. Thus, at one time they would course for days over the seemingly endless pampas of South America: on another occasion they spent weeks of wonder and delight in the region of the Amazon, skirting the shores of its mighty flood, and viewing with the intelligent curiosity of cultivated minds the most remarkable vegetation to be seen on earth. On another excursion they sped across Africa, no longer the sable and unknown, to visit the renowned cataracts of the Zambesi, still distinguished by the name of a good queen of ancient renown. Thence they turned to descend the course of the once mysterious Nile, viewed with awe the pyramids, most venerable of earth's monuments, thence hastened along the southern