to the east side of the Chad. Hillman, the
carpenter, was busily employed in finishing a covered cart, to be used
as a carriage for the sheikh's wives. The workmanship reflected the
greatest credit on his ingenuity, though it was neither light nor
handsome.

On the 16th of August, soon after Major Denham returned from the
eastward, he and Captain Clapperton, accompanied by William Hillman the
carpenter, took their departure from Kouka, with the intention of first
visiting the shores of Lake Chad and then joining the _kafila_ which was
on its way from Soudan to Tripoli. On the morning of their departure
they went to take leave of the sheikh, whom they found in his garden.
He gave them a letter to the King of England, and a list of requests,
and expressed himself very kindly. At parting he offered his hand,
which excited an involuntary exclamation from his attendants.

Meeting with no event of any especial interest on their visit to the
lake, they joined the caravan on the 14th of September.

Throughout the journey they found that they got on as well, if not
better than their companions, who looked to them both for safety and
protection, as well as for the direction of the route. They had upwards
of fifty miles to cross, over a frightful waste of movable sand-hills,
to Zow; many of the poor children, panting with thirst, scarcely able to
creep along.

At Bilma they laid in a stock of dates for the next fourteen days,
during which man and beast nearly subsisted upon them, the slaves for
twenty days together mostly getting no other food.

Then came the stony desert, which the camels, already worn-out by the
heavy sand-hills, had to cross for nine days. El Wahr is of surpassing
dreariness, the rocks a dark sandstone of the most gloomy and barren
appearance; the wind whistles through the narrow fissures, where not a
blade of grass finds nourishment, and, as the traveller creeps under the
lowering crags to take shelter for the night, he stumbles over the
skeleton of some starved human being.

On the day they made El Wahr, and the two following, camels in great
numbers dropped down and died, or were quickly killed and the meat
brought in by the hungry slaves.

Such are some of the ordinary events of a journey across the desert.

On the 21st of January, 1825, they reached Tripoli, and soon after
embarked for Leghorn. Before leaving, however, Major Denham obtained
the freedom of a Mandara boy, whose liberation fr