_Attempts Of Horneman, Nicholls, Roentgen, And Adams._
During the interval which elapsed between Park's first and second
journey, several attempts were made to explore Central Africa.
The first
traveller was Frederick Horneman, a student of Gottingen, who was
recommended by Professor Blumenbach to the patronage of the African
Association. After spending some time in the study of Natural History,
and the Arabic language, he went to Cairo, intending to join some
caravan, under the assumed character of an Arab or Moslem. It was not
till the following year, 1798, that he was enabled to find a caravan
proceeding westward, and bound for Fezzan. On the 8th September, they
left Egypt, entering upon a wide expanse of sandy desert, resembling what
might be supposed to be the bed of the ocean after the waters had left
it. It was covered with fragments of petrified wood, of a lightish grey
colour and bearing a strong resemblance to natural wood. The Arabs
travelled all day, and when they halted at night, each gathered a few
sticks and prepared his own victuals. There were a few _oases_ in this
waste. In ten days they came to Ummesogeir, a village containing one
hundred and twenty inhabitants, who lived on a rock, subsisting on dates,
and separated by immense tracts of sand from all intercourse with the
rest of the world. In twenty-four hours they came to Siwah, an extensive
oasis, about fifty miles in circumference, and the only inhabited spot of
any considerable extent on the route to Fezzan.
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