880 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA. 
Chap* XLIX. 
most offensive terms, of having abstracted from her, 
by his witchcraft, one of her slaves. But it was 
rather astonishing that a man Avith so vast an 
amount of learning was allowed to live at all, in the 
midst of such barbarians as these, without being con- 
tinually suspected of sorcery and witchcraft. I shall 
not forget the day when I went to call on my friend, 
and found the unfortunate blind old man, sitting 
in his courtyard, in the midst of a heap of manu- 
scripts which he could then only enjoy by touch- 
ing them with his hands. Involuntarily I was 
reminded of a saying of Jackson's, that the time 
would come when the texts of the classics would be 
emendated from manuscripts brought from the interior 
of Negroland.* From the very beginning, when I 
became aware of the character of these people, I had 
taken the greatest precautions ; and hearing that the 
privilege of using a carpet was restricted to certain 
officers, I had stowed my old carpet away, although 
my couch, being on the bare ground, was not very 
soft. 
The market, or " kaskii,"f occupied a greal deal of 
my time and of my thoughts during my monotonous 
stay in this place, not so much on account of its im- 
portance as of my own poverty, as I was compelled 
to become a retail dealer on the smallest scale ; for, 
* Jackson's Account of Morocco, p. 100. 
"f We have here an evident proof that a certain degree of 
civilization spread from Bornu over the countries to the east. 
Kasku is a slight variation of the Kanuri word " kasuku." 
