We received a visit from the Nather, or civil governor of the Wady.  He is a Fezzanee, Abbas by name; and thankfully received the present of a handkerchief.  The Kaid, or military commander, is a Moor from Tripoli.  Everybody seems interested about us, and there is a perfect flux of visits.  All the authorities around seem to make our arrival a holiday.  We are quite the fashion.  The chaouch gets drunk in the evening on leghma, furnished by the Nather, who wants to worm out all the news; and there is little doubt that he has learned the whole truth, and a good deal more.  El-Maskouas, the Turkish officer employed in collecting contributions for Mourzuk, arrived at the camp and brought letters from M. Gagliuffi.  He also told us that the Sheikh of Aghadez had not yet returned from his pilgrimage to Mekka.  The motions of all these desert magnates are circulated from mouth to mouth as assiduously as those of our Mayfair fashionables.

Among our visitors was Haj Mohammed El-Saeedy, the owner of our camels.  His social position answers to that of an English shipowner.  He is a marabout of great celebrity in this country, and moves about in an atmosphere of respect.  By the way, when it became clearly impressed upon my mind that the Fezzanee camel-drivers were merely employed for hire, and had no property whatever in the beasts they drove, my opinion of them began to rise.  It would have been impossible to take more care of the camels than they did.

We remained stationary in the Wady, from the 1st of May to the evening of the 3d, when we moved on to Toueewah.  After dark was passed Azerna, in the neighbourhood of which stood the ancient town, celebrated for its ruins.  The modern place, though presenting a martial kind of appearance with its battlemented mud walls, contained only ten inhabitants, who live like so many rats in holes or under the piles of ruins.  On the 4th, when the people removed our beds in the morning, a scorpion sallied furiously forth.  We had been sleeping with him under our pillows.  We moved on, still in the Wady, for a couple of hours, until we came to the house of the Kaid, and once more encamped.  His habitation is large, commodious, and well protected from the sun.  He showed us his sleeping-apartment, which is airy and well protected from the sun.  A number of little wicker baskets, the handiwork of his wife, served as so many clothes-presses.  The baskets of Fezzan are perfectly water-tight.

This Kaid, called Ahmed Tylmoud, is quite a character, and looks very droll with his single eye.  He has twenty soldiers only under his command throughout the valley.  The Turks do not waste their men, making up by severity for want of numbers.  Like the commandant of Shaty, this Ahmed Tylmoud insisted on “playing at powder” with his men for our edification; but was also obliged to beg his ammunition.  It is singular, that although these people are only armed with matchlocks, and are supposed to be ready for service, either to defend the country or levy contributions, they seem entirely destitute of all necessary provisions for that purpose.