A BARREN LAND We had started under a sky overcast but calm.

There was no fear of heat, none of disastrous rain.

It was just the weather for tourists.
The pleasure of riding on horseback over an unknown country made me easy to be pleased at our first start.

I threw myself wholly into the pleasure of the trip, and enjoyed the feeling of freedom and satisfied desire.

I was beginning to take a real share in the enterprise.
"Besides," I said to myself, "where's the risk?
Here we are travelling all through a most interesting country! We are about to climb a very remarkable mountain; at the worst we are going to scramble down an extinct crater.