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For this latter object, the Kanou route is decidedly more advantageous. A wild adventure to Timbuctoo, ever so successful, can never serve me in such stead in the end, when I have to read my own heart and its motives, as a humane mission on the behalf of unhappy weak Africans, doomed, by men calling themselves Christians, to the curse of slavery. 1st October.
The Kailouees have some servants with them, very good-humoured black fellows. Of the Tanelkums I know little; but Haj Omer, who will accompany us to Kanou, seems a man of courage and tact. There are two or three venerable old men amongst these Tuaricks, together with some young ones. They all feel the civilising effect of visiting Mourzuk.
According to information here, they were once the most miserable race of Arab wanderers in The Desert. But at last they settled down as neighbours to the Negroes, some 700 years since. About this time they made the conquest of Kanou, Succatou, and the other large cities of Housa. Never a people rose to greater fame and power.
Spent the evening with Haj Ibrahim. The Haj surprised me by saying, "All my slaves, even the youngest of not more than four or five years' old, must walk to Tripoli as they have walked from Kanou to Ghat." I found Kandarka with him. The camel-driver is a right-jolly fellow, quite a new species of being from the Touaricks of Ghat.
His friend, the Ghadamsee merchant, Ahmed Ben Kaka, who makes the journey from Tripoli to Noufee, says he saw the English steamers of the late Niger expedition, so he must have descended lower than Noufee. He says they came up to Yetferrej, "amuse themselves," and look about. He had not heard of their anti-slavery objects. According to him, "Fever and sickness prevail more at Kanou than Noufee."
A great deal of merry laughing and grinning Negro feeling is in his composition. But, with all his fun, he is a most determined man. He is about to convey some of the Haj's merchandize to Kanou, as being the bravest and most trust-worthy of all the Aheer camel-drivers. 27th. I'm out of my reckonings with the Moors by some mistake or other, of them or me, for I'm Monday, and they're Tuesday.
Half an hour is fully enough to walk round the mere walls of the city, but then there are considerable suburbs, consisting of huts and stone and mud houses. At the Sheikh's I met a merchant just returned from Kanou; I put some questions to him, who, thinking I wished to have every one answered in the affirmative, gave me his terrible "yahs" and "aywahs" to all and everything demanded.
Yesterday arrived the powerful Aheer camel-driver and conducteur Kandarka Bou Ahmed, the Kylouwee, whose arrival produced a sensation. Some call him a Sheikh. He usually conducts the Ghadamsee merchants between this and Aheer, and as far as Kanou. It is an established custom or law, in The Desert, that the people of each district or country shall enjoy the privilege of conducting the caravans.
A large caravan has this winter left Mourzuk for Kanou viâ Aheer. The Haj has not begun to dispose of his goods, but he will exchange them against slaves. He, however, as a subject of Tunis, is virtually prohibited by the Bey's ordinances. My most friendly visitors are the merchants and traders from Soudan, Kanou, and Sukatou. I cannot help looking upon these people with profound pity.
I gave him sixty paras to buy tobacco. He begged for a whole piastre, but thinking he would be a customer of this sort again, I thought it prudent to begin with a little. His giantship swore by all the powers terrestrial and celestial, that he would escort me from Ghadames to Kanou in perfect safety.
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