cottages.  The walls and pillars were painted blue and white, in the moorish taste and on the back wall was sketched a fire screen, ornamented with a coarse painting of a flower-pot.  An arm-chair with an iron lamp standing on it, was placed on each side of the screen.  The sultan bade Clapperton many hearty welcomes, and asked him if he were not much tired with his journey from Burderewa.  Clapperton told him it was the most severe travelling he had experienced between Tripoli and Sockatoo, and thanked him for the guard, the conduct of which he did not fail to commend in the strongest terms.

The sultan asked him a great many questions about Europe, and our religious distinctions.  He was acquainted with the names of some of the more ancient sects, and asked whether we were Nestorians or Socinians.  To extricate himself from the embarrassment occasioned by this question, Clapperton bluntly replied, we were called Protestants.  “What are Protestants?” said he.  Clapperton attempted to explain to him, as well as he was able, that having protested more than two centuries and a half ago, against the superstition, absurdities, and abuses practised in those days, we had ever since professed to follow simply what was written “in the book of our Lord Jesus,” as they call the New Testament, and thence received the name of Protestants.  He continued to ask several other theological questions, until Clapperton was obliged to confess himself not sufficiently versed in religious subtleties, to resolve these knotty points, having always left that task to others more learned than himself.

The sultan was a noble-looking man, forty-four years of age, although much younger in appearance, five feet ten inches high, portly in person, with a short curling black beard, a small mouth, a fine forehead, a grecian nose, and large black eyes.  He was dressed in a light blue cotton tobe, with a white muslin turban, the shawl of which he wore over the nose and mouth, in the Tuarick fashion.

In the afternoon Clapperton repeated his visit, accompanied by the Gadado, Mahomed El Wordee, and Mahomed Gomsoo, the principal Arab of the city, to whom he had a letter of introduction from Hat Salah, at Kano.  The sultan was sitting in the same apartment in which he received him in the morning, and Clapperton laid before him the presents, in the name of his majesty the king of England.  Amongst these presents, the compass and spy glass excited the greatest interest, and the sultan seemed highly gratified when Clapperton pointed out, that by means of the former he could at any time find out the east, to address himself in his daily prayers.  He said “Every thing is wonderful, but you are the greatest curiosity of all,” and then added, “What can I give that is most acceptable to the king of England?” Clapperton replied, “The most acceptable service you can render to the king of England, is to cooperate with his majesty, in putting a stop to the slave trade on the coast, as the king of England sends every year large ships to cruise there, for the sole purpose of seizing all vessels engaged in this trade, whose crews are thrown into prison, and of liberating the unfortunate slaves, on whom lands and houses are conferred, at one of our settlements in Africa.”