drop on the road from faintness, were, on reaching the well, quite unmanageable. The name of the well was Kofei. On the 31st, Boo-Khaloom had thought it right to send on a Tibboo with the news of our approach to the sheikh El-Kanemy, who, we understood, resided at Kouka, and one was despatched with a camel and a man of Mina Tahr: the Gundowy accompanied him on the arrival at Kofei of the Arabs, who preceded us for the purpose of clearing the well. The Tibboo who had been despatched was found alone and naked; some Tibboo Arabs, of a tribe called Wandela, had met them near the well on the preceding evening and robbing him even to his cap, and taking from him the letters, sayipg, they cared not for the sheikh or Boo-Khaloom, tied him to a tree, and then left him. In this state was he found by our people; and Mr. Clapperton coming up soon after, gave him, from his biscuit- bag, wherewithal to break his fast, after being twenty-four hours without eating. Eighteen men had stripped' him, he said, and taken off the camel and Mina Tahr’s man, who, they also said, should be ransomed, or have his throat cut. Mina Tahr represented these people as the worst on the road in every sense of the word: “ They have no flocks,” said he, “ and have not more than three hundred camels, although their numbers are one thousand or more; they live by plunder, and have no connexion with any other people. No considerable body of men can follow them; their tents are in the heart of the desert, and there are no wells for four days in the line of their retreat. Giddy-ben-Agah is their chief, and I alone would give fifty camels for his head: these are the people who often attack and murder travellers, and small kafilas, and the Gundowy, who respect strangers, have the credit of it.” The men of Traita, with their chief, Eskou-ben-Coglu, came in the evening to welcome u s : the well Kofei belongs to them; and greatly enraged they appeared to be at the conduct of the Wandelas. This chief returned to Boo-Khaloom his letters, which, he said, “ the chief of the Wandelas had sent him that morning, begging that he would meet the kafila at the well, and deliver them to Boo- Khaloom : had he known then what had taken place, the slave,” he said, i should have been stabbed at his father’s grave before he would have delivered them”, Boo-Khaloom was greatly enraged; and I was almost apprehensive that he would have revenged himself on the Traita chiefs. However, the Tibboo courier was again clothed and mounted, and once more started for Bornou. The Traita Tibboos are more important-looking fellows than the Gunda, but they want their quickness and activity: they are said not to be more than eight hundred strong in males. Feb. 3.—Our course, during the early part of the day, was due south, and through a country more thickly planted by the all-tasteful hand of bounteous Nature. We disturbed a flock of what we at first thought were deer, but they were only a large species of antelope; they are of a deeper fawn colour, and have black and white stripes under the belly. The Guinea fowl were in great numbers, but extremely shy. The whole day our route lay through most pleasing forest scenery. I t was near sunset when we arrived at Mittimee, which, in the Bornou language, means warm, tepid: the wells exceed fifty in number, and he in a woody hollow, where there are clumps of the tulloh and other species of the mimosa tribe, encircled by kossom and various parasitical and twining shrubs, which, embracing their stems, wind to the extremities of their branches, and climb to the. very tops, when, falling over, they form weeping bowers of a most beautiful kind: it was indeed a lovely and a fair retreat. Boo-Khaloom, myself, and about six Arabs, had ridden on in front: it was said we had lost the track, and should miss the well: the day had been oppressively hot, my companions were sick and fatigued, and we dreaded the want of water. A fine dust, arising g 2
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