course. In a country like Africa, where woman
is only thought of for one purpose, it chagrins these old fellows to see
all their nice plump slave-girls about them, and to find themselves past
and gone, so far as this state of existence is concerned. En-Noor and
Hateetah both made this kind of application to the Taleb. When I was
alone in my former journey in the desert, I had also the same kind of
experience.

We came two hours to-day to the well of Anfesas, before the mountain of
Baghzem. Our course was through valleys and rocks, as yesterday, and,
indeed, always in this country; for there is very little variation in
the landscape. Baghzem, instead of being the high mountain pictured to
me by the Ghadamsee merchants, is, at this view of it, only a low range.
Two little things observed to-day were, first, a "traveller's sharpening
stone," on which every person passing by sharpened his dagger or his
sword: next, were heaps of sand scraped together, and sticks or stalks
of herbage stuck on the top, as frail marks of the route, corresponding
to the heaps of stone which mark in line the routes of the Sahara. There
was also a mosque formed of boughs of trees; that is, a low wall of the
groundplan of a mosque made of boughs of trees, like the walls of stone
in other places. The trees were as before, always those full of thorns,
like the tholukh; many of the species bearing what is called the date of
this country. No animals of game were seen, except a solitary hare; but
there were marks of the foot of the mohur, or large gazelle.

The lading of the camels in the morning takes always an hour and a-half:
we have few people, compared with the number of beasts of burden.

However, under the leadership of En-Noor, who has now decked himself in
a fine yellow burnouse, a sort of ensign of authority, the caravan
marches in great order and tranquillity.

The inhabitants of Damerghou are said to be a mixture of Kohlans and
Tuaricks; the latter, however, receding into the interior. But if the
Tuaricks have dispossessed the Kohlans, they have almost become Kohlans
themselves, forgetting their own language and their own customs and
manners. This would naturally result from their habit of taking female
slaves from Soudan. Women, of course, always teach their children their
own language. In this way the population becomes in a few years
amalgamated, the blacks with Tuaricks.

_17th._--We stopped here all day, occupied with Bornouese. Th