-cakes of
Bilma--People of Tintalous--Wild Animals--List of Towns and
Villages--Population of Aheer and Ghat.

_Sept. 4th._--This morning I sent Yusuf with our recommendations to
En-Noor. He returned in the best possible humour, repeating that the
Sultan was determined to protect us, and see us safe to Soudan and
Bornou.

A freed black came into my tent, played on his one-stringed fiddle, and
sang an extempore song for the protection of the Consul. I gave him a
handkerchief. It appears that he is from Tunis.

Yesterday, some specimens of the women of the lower classes of this town
came to our encampment. I was astonished to see them such barbarians as
to daub their faces with yellow ochre. I did not expect this in the
Mahommedan country of Aheer. They had a little ghaseb, a few onions, and
other little things to barter. It is the most difficult thing in the
world to deal with them; and it requires as long to exchange things of
the value of a penny, as for two London merchants to agree about
merchandise of the value of a hundred thousand pounds!

When I had paid the En-Noor escort, I made a present to Yusuf and Said.
To the former I gave a fine burnouse (value thirty-four mahboubs), and
told him I did so as a compensation for the extraordinary difficulties
which we had encountered on the road from Ghat to Aheer, but that I
could not write to Government for a present for him unless we could make
some treaties with the inhabitants and princes of Central Africa. To
Said I gave a veneese and a lecture. Our servants have not behaved so
well as they ought to have done, considering that they are treated so
much better than the servants of Muslims.

Anecdotes of our late adventures are still in circulation amongst us,
and I have learned some new ones to-day. The _naivete_ of one of them is
extreme; but I can do more than allude to it. One of our party
transgressed a custom which the Mahommedans have absurdly made
obligatory. Great indignation was excited, even amongst the escort sent
for our protection by En-Noor; and one of them exclaimed: "If he do the
same thing again, and do not follow the way of us Muslims, I will send
an arrow through him."

During the night of the second affair, Oud-el-Khair used this nice
argument: "What will be gained if you do kill these three Christians?
There are plenty more in the English country!" Many topics of a similar
character were resorted to.

Some of the Tanelkums leave us to-day