Chap. LXV. INTERVIEW WITH SI'dI a'lAWA'TE. 401 
It was an important interview ; for, although this 
was not the person for whom my visit was specially 
intended, and whose favourable or unfavourable dis- 
position would influence the whole success of my 
arduous undertaking, yet for the present I was en- 
tirely in his hands, and all depended upon the manner 
in which he received me. Now my two messengers 
had only disclosed to himself personally, that I was 
a Christian, while at the same time they had laid 
great stress upon the circumstance that, although a 
Christian, I was under the special protection of the 
Sultan of Stambul ; and Sidi A'lawate inquired there- 
fore of me, with great earnestness and anxiety, as to 
the peculiar manner in which I enjoyed the pro- 
tection of that great Mohammedan sovereign. 
Now it was most unfortunate for me that I had no 
direct letter from that quarter. Even the firman with 
which we had been provided by the Basha of Tripoli 
had been delivered to the governor for whom it 
was destined, so that at the time I had nothing with 
me to show but a firman which I had used on my 
journey in Egypt, and which of course had no es- 
pecial relation to the case in question. The want of 
such a general letter of protection from the Sultan 
of Constantinople, which I had solicited with so much 
anxiety to be sent after me, was in the sequel the chief 
cause of my difficult and dangerous position in Tim- 
buktu ; for, furnished with such a letter, it would 
have been easy to have imposed silence upon my ad- 
versaries and enemies there, and especially upon the 
VOL. IV. D D 
