CHAPTER VI.
Preparations for advance--Mek Nimmur makes a foray--The Hamran elephant-hunters--In the haunts of the elephant--A desperate charge.
The time was approaching when the grass throughout the country would be sufficiently dry to be fired.

We accordingly prepared for our expedition; but it was first necessary for me to go to Katariff, sixty miles distant, to engage men, and to procure a slave in place of old Masara, whose owner would not trust her in the wild region we were about to visit.
I engaged six strong Tokrooris for five months, and purchased a slave woman for thirty-five dollars.

The name of the woman was Barrake.

She was about twenty-two years of age, brown in complexion, fat and strong, rather tall, and altogether she was a fine, powerful-looking woman, but decidedly not pretty.

Her hair was elaborately dressed in hundreds of long narrow curls, so thickly smeared with castor oil that the grease had covered her naked shoulders.