burdens tumbling off from the donkeys in the most
delightful confusion, and the girls squalling for help. I ate on the
road some Soudan dates, as they are called by the Arabs, and found them
pleasant--a sort of bitter sweet. The name of the tree and of the fruit
is, in Bornou, _bitu_. In Haussa the tree has two names, _aduwa_ and
_tinku_. Our course to day was up a fine valley, down which the water in
the rainy season runs from east to west. There was abundance of trees
and herbage. At this place, however, lions abound, and last night a
camel was eaten by them. We encamped opposite a mountain, rising pretty
high in sugar-loaf shape, called Adudai. Over the carcase of the camel
hovered a small flock of eagles.

A Bornouee fighi, called Mustapha, from the country Malamdi, west of
Kuka, tells us he has been six months at Aghadez. According to him, the
route from Aghadez to Timbuctoo is one month. It is open, and not
dangerous. En-Noor, indeed, promised to send any of us by that route if
we wished. There are few people on the route, and if you pay them a
little money you pass unmolested. This Bornouese fighi is not equal to
his brethren whom I saw in Tintalous. But I learnt from this itinerant
pedagogue the interesting fact, that there are a great number of persons
of his profession, all from Bornou, travelling about in Aheer. Light,
therefore, is springing up from the interior, and spreading to the coast
in an opposite direction to what it did in former times.

_5th._--Warmer weather greeted us this morning. We stay here to-day. The
place is called Tin-Tagannu, and is a large wady, full of herbage and
trees. It is inhabited by a few shepherds. This place is said to have
been the first of the inhabited localities in Aheer, although now
shepherds only drive their flocks there; so that spots of earth have
their seasons and fortunes in the Sahara as elsewhere. By the way, I
must continue to call this Sahara. Although there are periodic rains, we
are still without the influences of the Soudan climate, which begins at
Damerghou and Zinder. At the present season no country can be more
healthy than these Asbenouee valleys. I hear that nearly all the women,
as well as the men, have left Tintalous, so that the town is a perfect
desert. En-Noor has brought his wives and daughters, and our caravan is
like the migration of the whole of the town going in quest of a new
country.

A trap was set last night for the lion, but the king of