I t may naturally enough be asked, Why something more than a short excursion to the westward of Mourzuk, and a few notes, do not appear from the pen of Dr. Oudney in the present volume ? I can only answer the question by the fact, that the only papers placed in my hands consist of “ An Itinerary from Mourzuk to Bo r n o u a n d “ An Excursion to the Westward of Mourzuk neither of which have been deemed fit for publication in extenso, from their imperfect state, and containing very little beyond what will be found in my own journals. I have, however, printed in foot notes such parts of them as have been pointed out to me. Not a paper of his, to niy knowledge, has been lost or destroyed; and I can only account for the unsatisfactory state in which they have been found, from the circumstance of his ill health, which became extremely precarious from the moment of our departure from Mourzuk, where he had caught a cold, which settled on his lungs, and never left him. On our arrival at Kouka, and frequently afterwards, he experienced so many attacks of fever, that there appeared little hope of his surviving to return to England, which was indeed his own opinion ; and when he set out on his last journey towards Soudan, he was so exhausted, and in a state so unfit for such an undertaking, that he fell a martyr to his zeal very soon after his departure, though, had he remained at Kouka, the melancholy event would not, in all probability, have been prolonged many days. My own expeditions in various parts of Bornou, in Mandara, and Loggun, and the two fruitless attempts I made to complete the tour of the great lake Tchad, will be found to occupy a considerable portion of the volume; and being made in countries, and among a people unknown to Europeans,—many of them even by name or report,—it is hoped that observations, faithfully and circumstantially minuted down at the time and spot, will not be found tedious or uninteresting to the reader. I t will, perhaps, be thought by some, that I have been more minute than necessary in the account of our journey across that tremendous desert which lies between Mourzuk and Bornou, and which, generally speaking, is made up of dark frowning hills of naked rock, or interminable plains, strewed in some places with fragments of stone and pebbles, in others of one vast level surface of sand, and, in others again, the same material rising into immense mounds, altering their form and position according to the strength and direction of the winds. But, even in the midst of this dreary waste, towns, villages, wandering tribes, and kafilas, or caravans, sometimes occur to break the solitude of this dismal belt, which seems to stretch across Northern Africa, and, on many parts of which, not a living creature, even an insect, enlivens the scene. Still, however, the halting places at the wells, and the wadeys or valleys, afford an endless source of amusement to the traveller, in witnessing the manners, and listening to the conversation, of the various tribes of natives, who, by their singing and dancing, their story telling, their quarrelling and fighting, make him forget, for a time, the ennui and fatigue of the day’s journey. As for the rest, I have to trust to its novelty, for its recom
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