s not
visit this place, but is found in the open country. There are also many
lions on the road between this and Kuka.

A very simple mode of salutation is prevalent here in Zinder, said to be
the custom of Wadai--that of merely clapping the palms of the hand
together; the hand being held forward flat, not edge-ways.

Gurasu is an interesting Tuarick territory, three days' journey
north-east from Zinder, and two days from Minyo. This country consists
of a number of small villages, scattered upon the rocks, or mountains.
The inhabitants are especially those banditti who, from time to time,
plunder the caravans on the route from Bornou to Mourzuk. Gurasu is
seven days from Kanem, and Kanem is three days from the Bornou route.
Kanem is mostly a desert country, and has now only a few inhabitants.

Gurasu and Damerghou are the only Tuarick countries adjoining the
provinces of the Sheikh of Bornou, and Gurasu is the last country east
in this part of Africa. There is but very slight communication between
it and Zinder; and little is known of the people, except that they are
Tuaricks.

_19th._--I again entertained visitors, who are still numerous, of all
classes; and also paid a visit to the Shereef, and took with me the
kaleidoscope, as he expressed a wish to see its revolving glowing
beauties.

Zinder is full of half-crazy fighis, who can just write the Arabic
alphabet. They go about the streets begging piteously, with a calabash
inkstand and reed-pen in their hands. I have been pestered with two or
three every day since I came here. They also wander through the country
parts of Damerghou. Bornou is the nursery of these silly pedagogues, in
whom learning and madness are most cordially united; but, as I have
already mentioned, it sends out a few instructed ones to redeem the
reputation of these ignoramuses.

In the afternoon I went to see the place of execution, and found it
covered with human bones, the leavings of the hyaenas, whose dens are
close by. Proceeding a little further I came to the Tree of Death! a
lonely tree springing out of the rocks, some forty or fifty feet in
height, and of the species called here _kanisa_. My guide would not
approach it very near, for he assured me that if any person went under
its boughs, there must instantly come an order from the Sultan to put
him to death, or hang him heels upwards upon its branches. "Don't you
see the place is swept clean underneath its boughs? This is done ever