colours; dark blue, and striped with yellow and re d ; bomouses of coarse scarlet cloth; with large turbans of white or dark coloured cotton. Their horses were really beautiful, larger and more powerful than any thing found in Bornou, and they managed them with great skill. The sultan’s guard was composed of thirty of his sons, all mounted on very superior horses, clothed in striped silk tobes; and the skin of the tiger-cat and leopard forming their shabracks, which hung fully over their horses’ haunches. After these had returned to their station in front of the sultan, we approached at full speed in our turn, halting with the guard between us and the royal presence. The parley then commenced, and the object of Boo-Khaloom’s visit having been explained, we retired again to the place we had left 5 while the sultan returned to the town, preceded by several men blowing long pipes, not unlike clarionets, ornamented with shells, and two immense trumpets from twelve to fourteen feet long, borne by men on horseback, made of pieces of hollow wood, with a brass mouth-piece, the sounds of which were not un- pleasing. The parley was carried on in the Mandara language, by means of an interpreter; and I understood that we were to visit the sultan in the course of the day, and hear his determination. Boo-Khaloom was, as usual, very sanguine: he said “ he should make the sultan handsome presents, and that he was quite sure a Kirdy * town full of people would be given him to plunder.” The Arabs were all eagerness; they eyed the Kirdy huts, which were now visible on the sides of mountains before us, with longing eyes • and contrasting their own ragged and almost naked state with the appearance of the sultan of Mandara’s people in their silk tobes, not only thought, but said, “ if Boo-Khaloom pleased, they would go no further; this would do.” Boo-Khaloom and the Arab sheikhs had * A general term for unbelievers.
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