We were pestered with two very modest requests, which were not in our power to grant.  In the first place, the native inhabitants sent a deputation to ask us to use our influence with the Governor of Mourzuk to procure a reduction of their taxes; and then the Arab troops desired that we should procure for them their discharge.  Our refusal even to take the charge of these verbal petitions seemed very harsh.  An impression had evidently got abroad that we came to bring about a general redress of grievances; or, at any rate, that our influence was far greater than we chose to avow.

I gave to the Kaid a handkerchief, as well as some snuff and tobacco.  In return, he sent a little bread and a fly-flapper; so that we parted good friends.  During our stay, we heard this jolly fellow entertaining the chaouches and his own horsemen with a description of the ladies of the Wady, who had no reason to be flattered by his account.  And yet he seems to have married one himself:  hinc illae lachrymae, perhaps.  My chaouch had already given me a confirmation of these libels, and was evidently greatly delighted by this testimony to his exactitude.

There are several roads from the Wady to Mourzuk, all much about the same distance.  It is said, also, that Ghat is only ten days from Laghareefah.  We moved on a little further on the evening of the 4th, but did not start properly until next day, when we made a long stretch of more than thirteen hours, and encamped at the village of Agar, where I remembered having halted once before on my way from Ghat.  During this day’s march we found, that what we had supposed to be the border of the Mourzuk plateau was not in reality so.  We soon reached the summit of the cliffs, and having cast back a glance upon the valley, with its expanse of corn-fields and thousands of palm-trees, expected to find an elevated plateau beyond; but the hills gradually softened down into a plain on their eastern side.  Our route may be said to have led through a wilderness, not a desert.  On all sides were clusters of the tholukh, which grows prettily up, and has a poetical appearance.  The ground at some places was strewed with branches, cut down for the goats to feed on.  Then we came to a small wady full of resou, which our marabout calls the “meat of the camel;” and all the camels at once stopped, and for a long time obstinately refused to proceed.  This appeared strange to us, but on inquiry we found that the sagacious brutes remembered perfectly well that until the evening there would be no herbage so good, and were determined to have their fill whilst there was an opportunity.  The drivers, after indulging them a few moments, took them in flank, and their shouts of “Isa!  Isa!” and some blows, at length got the caravan out of this elysium of grass into the hungry plain beyond.  As we proceeded, a cold bracing wind began to blow from the east, and considerably chilled our frames.  I had met the same weather four years