DENHAM AND CLAPPERTON. 133 



vng 3own, saw the animal trampling on two perfect human 

 skeletons. A movement of one of the feet had separated 

 the scull from the trunk, and driven it forward like a ball. 

 In some of these remains portions of the flesh and haii 

 were left, and even the features were still distinguishable. 

 Two female skeletons lay closely twined together, having 

 evidently been faithful friends, who had died in each other's 

 arms. The Arabs gave little proof of their boasted sensi- 

 bility in the utter indifference with which they viewed these 

 dismal objects, driving about the limbs with their firelocks, 

 passing coarse jests upon the dead, and deriding the sym- 

 pathy manifested by their English companions. They told 

 them these were only blacks, " damn their fathers," — the 

 barbarous prejudices arising from difference of religion and 

 lineage having thus extinguished in their breasts every touch 

 of human sympathy. Major Denham appears in one place 

 to countenance the popular belief that these bodies were the 

 remains of caravans buried beneath tempests of moving 

 sand ; but none of his facts support this conclusion, or con- 

 tradict the opinion of Browne, that such victims have in 

 most instances perished from other causes. They were 

 lying open and exposed, without even a covering of dust ; 

 and the catastrophe of the largest group was too well known, 

 having been a body of slaves, the chief booty obtained ^by 

 the sultan of Fezzan during his last expedition into Sou- 

 dan. The troop had left Bornou without an adequate sup- 

 ply of provisions, which failed entirely before they ap- 

 proached Mourzouk. That want, or perhaps fatigue, was 

 the real cause of this destruction was manifest from the 

 fact that the sufferers were all negroes, while their Arab 

 masters had taken care to reserve for themselves the means 

 of reaching home. 



In this route the travellers had on one «ide the Tibboos, 

 on the other the Tuaricks, two native tribes, probably of 

 great antiquity, and having no alliance with the Arab race, 

 now so widely spread over the continent. The Tibboos 

 were on the left, and it was through their villages that the 

 caravan passed. These people live partly on the milk of 

 their camels, which pick up a scanty subsistence on the few 

 verdant spots that rise amid the Desert, partly by carry- 

 ing on a small trade between Mourzouk and Bornou, in 

 which they are so busily employed that many do not spend 

 M 



