assions; and their variations,
circumstances, and situations, which, before they were encountered,
would appear intolerable, generate a resolution and firmness, which
render them possible to be borne. Providence, with its usual
benevolence, willing the happiness of mankind, fortifies the heart to
the assaults, which it has to undergo.

On the 14th of April, Ali proposed to go two days journey, to fetch
his queen Fatima. A fine bullock was therefore killed, and the flesh
cut into thin slices, was dried in the sun; this, with two bags of
dry kouskous, served for food on the road. The tyrant, fearing
poison, never ate any thing not dressed under his immediate
inspection. Previously to his departure, the negroes of Benown,
according to a usual custom, showed their arms and paid their tribute
of corn and cloth.

Two days after the departure of Ali, a shereef arrived with
merchandize from Walet, the capital of the kingdom of Biroo. He took
up his abode in the same hut with Mr. Park, and appeared be a
well-informed man, acquainted with the Arabic and Bambarra tongues;
he had travelled through many kingdoms; he had visited Houssa, and
lived some years at Timbuctoo. Upon Mr. Park's inquiring the distance
from Walet to Timbuctoo, the shereef, learning that he intended to
travel to that city, said, _it would not do_, for Christians were
there considered as the _devil's children_, and enemies to the
prophet.

On the 24th, another shereef arrived, named Sidi Mahomed Moora
Abdallah, and with these two men Mr. Park passed his time with less
uneasiness than formerly, but as his supply of victuals was now left
to slaves, over whom he had no control, he was worse supplied than
during the past month. For two successive nights, they neglected to
send the accustomed meal, and the boy, having begged a few handfuls
of ground nuts, from a small negro town near the camp, readily shared
them with his master. Mr. Park now found that when the pain of hunger
has continued for some time, it is succeeded by languor and debility,
when a draught of water, by keeping the stomach distended, will
remove for a short time every sort of uneasiness. The two attendants,
Johnson and Demba, lay stretched upon the sand in torpid slumber, and
when the kouskous arrived, were with difficulty awakened. Mr. Park
felt no inclination to sleep, but was affected with a deep convulsive
respiration, like constant sighing, a dimness of sight, and a
tendency to faint, wh