344 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA. 
Chap. LXIIL 
while we were greatly pleased to observe that, al- 
though pagans, they were decently clad with neat 
aprons of cotton round their loins. 
Having at length joined our friends of yesterday, 
we pitched our linen tents, which greatly attracted 
their attention, at some distance from their leather 
dwellings, and were soon beset by numbers of the 
fair sex, some of whom were distinguished by their , 
plumpness, especially by that peculiar feature called 
" tebiilloden," which I mentioned on a former occasion ; 
but I was forced to frighten these fair visitors away, 
as, in consequence of the last day's thunder-storm, I felt 
very unwell, and was obliged to have recourse to an 
emetic. As for the men, their dress consisted through- 
out of a short shirt with short open sleeves, made of a 
coarse kind of broad cotton strips, only a few young 
lads, sons of the chief, wearing also, here in the en- 
campment, blue -dyed shirts, with a patch of red cloth to 
adorn the large breast-pocket. Their head-dress was 
likewise very poor, consisting not of a whole shawl, 
hardm or tesilgemist, but of single cotton strips of 
various colours, blue, red, white, and of the mixed 
kind called u shahariye," sewed together, only a few 
of them being able to add a strip of red cloth : for, 
altogether, these Tawarek are very fond of a variety 
of colours, a feature already observed by that most 
excellent geographer El Bekri*, and never leave the 
manufactured shirts of Nupe and Hausa as they 
receive them, with the exception of a few of the 
* El Bekri's "Description de l'Afrique Septentrionale," p. 118. 
