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Updated: June 19, 2025
On this I went to sleep. 3d. Early in the morning Mohammed En-Noor paid me a visit, and promised me that all the things should be restored not the smallest thing should be lost. I looked about, and saw that the greater number of our escort had disappeared during the night, and gone to their homes. We now commenced our last stage to Tintalous.
To my tent came the confidential servant of En-Noor, and everybody was talking, drinking coffee, and making merry. After all, it was well to have these people, for if the thirteen robbers had shown ordinary courage, in our unprepared state we should have had a good deal of work to do, and might some of us have got bad sword-cuts or spear-thrusts.
En-Noor says of the villages which were attacked by the tribe of Oulimid, that the people must have been chickens not to have defended themselves; but the fact is, the whole country is now, to a certain extent, abandoned to the pillage of lawless banditti. In the evening the people contrived to celebrate the preliminaries of the approaching nuptials.
They were stolen, it seems, not only in the middle of the day, but at a distance of not more than a quarter of a mile from the residence of En-Noor! This is too bad, really too bad. Are we never to have any repose? In the evening, as a slight consolation, we were fortunate enough to purchase some provisions. The German got two goats, and I some samen. I also borrowed ghaseb until we could buy.
A few robbers have often visited us before this. When I had an interview with En-Noor I asked for a couple of guards, but he refused them, on the plea that they were unnecessary. Although he knew well the country is now full of thieves, and told us so, he never expected this audacious attack of thirteen maharees! Soudan abounds with thieves, and we must now always keep watch.
Our friend Mohammed is in full pursuit of them, with fair hopes of procuring their return. En-Noor says that we shall certainly get them back, all; but he adds the qualifying phrase, Inshallah! if it please God! Meanwhile "patience," as my comforter advises me. He is quite a narrative man, and enlarges on geography.
It is the most difficult thing in the world to deal with them; and it requires as long to exchange things of the value of a penny, as for two London merchants to agree about merchandise of the value of a hundred thousand pounds! When I had paid the En-Noor escort, I made a present to Yusuf and Saïd. To Saïd I gave a veneese and a lecture.
All this, however does not save the prince from being occasionally robbed if we are to believe report, which says that the other evening some black cotton turbans were taken from his house. The news from the town is, that En-Noor and his courtiers have received the amount of their extortion in goods.
If we attended a little more to these natural measures it might be well, although the human body being so various in size we could never be correct, and then we might lose sight of those artificial means of measuring objects which distinguish us from the semi-barbarian Arabs. This evening I heard from Es-Sfaxee a more favourable account of the power of En-Noor.
Alternately Zangheema attends the marts of Mourzuk and Kanou; and, fortunately for us, he is now going to Kanou. 25th. Whilst we were occupied in drying our clothes after the previous day's tempest, we learned that another Sultan had put himself on the list of beggars. His Excellency Astakeelee of Asoudee has written a long letter to En-Noor, of which we are the subject.
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