Chap. LXVII. FIRST INTERVIEW WITH THE SHEIKH. 453 
in his countenance as he rose from his seat to 
receive me, and relieved from all anxiety, I paid him 
my compliments with entire confidence, and entered 
into a conversation, which was devoid of any af- 
fected and empty ceremonious phrases, but from 
the first moment was an unrestrained exchange of 
thoughts, between two persons who, with great 
national diversity of manners and ideas, meet for the 
first time. 
The pistol, however, with which I presented him, 
soon directed our conversation to the subject of the 
superiority of Europeans in manufacturing skill, and 
in the whole scale of human existence ; and one of 
the first questions which my host put to me was, 
whether it was true, as the Eais (Major Laing) 
had informed his father, Sidi Mohammed, during his 
stay in A'zawad, that the capital of the British em- 
pire contained twenty times 100,000 people. 
I then learned to my great satisfaction what I 
afterwards found confirmed by the facts stated in 
Major Laing's correspondence*, that this most enter- 
prising but unfortunate traveller, having been plun- 
dered and almost killed by the Tawarekf, in the 
* See Major Laing's Letters in the Edinburgh Review, vol. 
xxxviii. 1828, p. 101, et seq., and vol. xxxix. 
f There cannot be the least doubt that, in addition to the love of 
plunder, it was also a certain feeling of revenge for the mischief 
inflicted upon their countrymen by the heroic Mungo Park which 
prompted this ferocious act of the Tawarek ; and it is very curious 
to observe the presentiment that Major Laing had, on setting out 
from Tawat, of what awaited him, as most distinctly embodied in 
g g 3 
