to me whether I buy them or not.”  Ateeko frequently repeated his belief of the sextant being gold; but at length the bargain seemed to be concluded, and Clapperton requested the prince to send a slave to his house with the articles he had picked out, to whom also he would pay the money.  The slave, however, was recalled before he got half-way, and his suspicious master took back the sextant-frame, in dread of being overreached by the purchaser in its value, which Clapperton did not fail to deduct from the price agreed on.

The prince stated, that he kept two hundred civet cats, two of which he showed Clapperton.  These animals were extremely savage, and were confined in separate wooden cages.  They were about four feet long from the nose to the tip of the tail, and, with the exception of a greater length of body and a longer tail, they very much resembled diminutive hyenas.  They are fed with pounded guinea corn and dried fish made into balls.  The civet is scraped off with a kind of muscle shell every other morning, the animal being forced into a corner of the cage, and its head held down with a stick during the operation.  The prince offered to sell any number of them which Clapperton might wish to have; but he did not look upon them as very desirable travelling companions.  Ateeko was a little spare man, with a full face, of monkey-like expression.  He spoke in a slow and subdued tone of voice, and the Fellatas acknowledge him to be extremely brave, but at the same time avaricious and cruel.  “Were he sultan,” say they, “heads would fly about in Soudan.”

One evening, on paying the gadado a visit, Clapperton found him alone, reading an Arabic book, one of a small collection he possessed.  “Abdallah,” said he, “I had a dream last night, and am perusing this book to find out what it meant.  Do you believe in such things?”

“No, my lord gadado.  I consider books of dreams to be full of idle conceits.  God gives a man wisdom to guide his conduct, while dreams are occasioned by the accidental circumstances of sleeping with the head low, excess of food, or uneasiness of mind.”

“Abdallah,” he replied, smiling, “this book tells me differently.”  He then mentioned, that, in a few days, the sultan was going on another expedition, and wished him to join it; but that he preferred remaining, in order to have a mosque, which was then building, finished before the Rhamadan, lest the workmen should idle away their time in his absence.

Previously to the sultan’s departure, he sent Clapperton a present of two large baskets of wheat, who now began to think seriously of retracing his steps to Kano.  He was sitting in the shade before his door, with Sidi Sheik, the sultan’s fighi, when an ill-looking wretch, with a fiend-like grin on his countenance, came and placed himself directly before Clapperton, who immediately asked Sidi Sheik who he was.  He immediately answered, “The executioner.”  Clapperton instantly ordered