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A great quantity of guinea coin is taken every year by the Tuaricks, in exchange for salt. The market is extremely well supplied, and is held daily from sunrise to sunset.
At noon, fifty-one discharges of muskets and matchlocks announced the auspicious event to the natives of this city, and to the Tibboos, Tuaricks, Soudanese, Bornouese, and all other strangers of the Sahara and Central Africa. In the evening, the Consul gave a dinner to us travellers and to the Pasha and his officers.
The interior of some of the houses is neat and tidy; the men are generally travelling merchants, or rather pedlars, and probably do not pass more than four months in the year with their families, for the Tibboos rarely go beyond Bornou to the south, or Mourzouk to the north; they appeared light-hearted, and happy as people constantly in dread of such visitors as the Tuaricks can be, who spare neither age nor sex.
Our course is now south, over a high sandy plain. We are at length fairly in the Land of Demons, as the country of the Ghât Tuaricks is called by themselves.
On their way thither, the travellers passed through Burwha, a fortified town which had thus far resisted the inroads of the Tuaricks, and crossed the Yeou, a large river, in some parts more than 500 feet in width, which, rising in the Soudan, flows into Lake Tchad. On the southern shores of this river rises a little town of the same name, about half the size of Burwha.
The sultan being afterwards in want of an expert headsman, sent for him to Sockatoo, where, a short time after his arrival, he had to officiate at the execution of two thousand Tuaricks, who, in conjunction with the rebels at Goober, had attempted to plunder the country, but were all made prisoners.
Wataitee asked me whether he should go to see if there were any Tuaricks at Janet, to get news of them; but I told him that he had better continue with us until we reach Tajetterat. This he has agreed to do; and we all feel that his presence is, to a certain extent, a protection. In the evening we had a visit from three Tuarick sportsmen, with a couple of dogs.
It was long before Boo Khuloom's best endeavours could restore confidence; the inhabitants had been plundered by the Tuaricks only the year before, and four hundred of their people butchered, and but a few days before, a party of the same nation had again pillaged them, though partially.
I may as well record here, in form, a list of our grievances against the Tuaricks, for the information and warning of future travellers: 1st. They, the Tuaricks, wished to obtain presents from the Germans, nearly in the same quantity as from myself; or, at least, something considerable. 2d. They wanted us to remain six weeks in Ghât, to wait for an answer from Sultan En-Noor at Aheer. 3d.
The silence that reigned, I know not why, introduced ideas of terror into our minds, and we began to gaze anxiously to the right and to the left. We remembered that this region, likewise, was inhabited by Tuaricks, though not of the Haghar tribe. They might be inhospitable, perhaps hostile.
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