ls
everywhere in Bornou, Soudan, and all this part of Africa; the Tuaricks
and Fellatahs being the only people who abstain from this barbarous
practice. Each device of scarifying denotes the peculiar nation of the
blacks. I have now got three sketches of faces thus disfigured, and
shall get as many as I can.

The Mahommedans of the coast usually teach that this way of marking the
body is a sin, but nevertheless the black Muslims will not abandon the
peculiarities of their nation.

_14th._--Started early, but made only two hours and a-quarter, through
the expansive valleys of yesterday. Here we found the salt-caravan,
there being in this place abundance of room, herbage, and a large well,
all necessary for such an assembly of people and beasts. On the road we
put up a covey of partridges, and a splendid solitary bird, the _hobara_
of Soudan. Footprints of the hares and of the gazelle were observed _en
route_.

By this opportunity we have got a few dates from Bilma; but they are
very poor, some of them little better than dried wood. The salt-caravan
has nothing attractive. The salt is all tied up in small bales or
bundles, the outward wrapper being matting or platting of strips of the
leaves of the doom-palm, called by the people _kabba_. Our caravan
resembles the march of a wandering tribe, there being camels, sheep,
oxen, asses, dogs, with all the paraphernalia of tents, cooking
utensils, &c. Some of the animals are laden, some unladen, playing,
running, and skipping about. Then come the human animals, men, women,
and children of every age. Our own caravan is mostly composed of the
household and slaves of En-Noor, with two or three strangers. But now
all changes to the salt-caravan, and we shall probably be soon absorbed
in it.

Yesterday morning I observed the dawn of day, and witnessed a degree of
redness and red clouds, or, more poetically, rosy-tinted clouds, which I
never before observed in all the Sahara. Probably now the sky will
change to a colouring more like England. Sunset and sunrise in the
Sahara are essentially different from those of England, the colours in
the desert being exceedingly light and bright; and often in the summer
time, at daybreak, there is a full, blazing sun in the course of three
quarters of an hour; so that, that rich colouring of the summer's dawn
in England is never here observed.

I visited the salt-caravan, or that portion of it which belongs to
En-Noor. The salt is prepared i