lue and white, in the
moorish taste and on the back wall was sketched a fire screen,
ornamented with a coarse painting of a flower-pot. An arm-chair with
an iron lamp standing on it, was placed on each side of the screen.
The sultan bade Clapperton many hearty welcomes, and asked him if he
were not much tired with his journey from Burderewa. Clapperton told
him it was the most severe travelling he had experienced between
Tripoli and Sockatoo, and thanked him for the guard, the conduct of
which he did not fail to commend in the strongest terms.

The sultan asked him a great many questions about Europe, and our
religious distinctions. He was acquainted with the names of some of
the more ancient sects, and asked whether we were Nestorians or
Socinians. To extricate himself from the embarrassment occasioned by
this question, Clapperton bluntly replied, we were called
Protestants. "What are Protestants?" said he. Clapperton attempted to
explain to him, as well as he was able, that having protested more
than two centuries and a half ago, against the superstition,
absurdities, and abuses practised in those days, we had ever since
professed to follow simply what was written "in the book of our Lord
Jesus," as they call the New Testament, and thence received the name
of Protestants. He continued to ask several other theological
questions, until Clapperton was obliged to confess himself not
sufficiently versed in religious subtleties, to resolve these knotty
points, having always left that task to others more learned than
himself.

The sultan was a noble-looking man, forty-four years of age, although
much younger in appearance, five feet ten inches high, portly in
person, with a short curling black beard, a small mouth, a fine
forehead, a grecian nose, and large black eyes. He was dressed in a
light blue cotton tobe, with a white muslin turban, the shawl of
which he wore over the nose and mouth, in the Tuarick fashion.

In the afternoon Clapperton repeated his visit, accompanied by the
Gadado, Mahomed El Wordee, and Mahomed Gomsoo, the principal Arab of
the city, to whom he had a letter of introduction from Hat Salah, at
Kano. The sultan was sitting in the same apartment in which he
received him in the morning, and Clapperton laid before him the
presents, in the name of his majesty the king of England. Amongst
these presents, the compass and spy glass excited the greatest
interest, and the sultan seemed highly gratified when