204 
TKAVELS IN AFRICA. Chap. XXVII. 
Mohammed would not hear of this proposal ; and 
indeed as I certainly could not reach Kiikawa in less 
than four days, and as part of the road was greatly 
infested by the Tawarek, such an attempt might have 
exposed me to a great deal of inconvenience. But 
we determined to go on as fast as the camels would 
allow us. We halted at eleven o'clock, shaded by the 
trunk of an immense leafless monkey-bread-tree, a lit- 
tle behind the walled place Kabi, the southern quarter 
of which is alone inhabited, and where our friends 
the Tebu had encamped. Starting then together with 
them at two o'clock in the afternoon, we took the 
road by Deffowa, leaving on our right that which 
passes Donari, the country now assuming a more hos- 
pitable and very peculiar character. 
For here begins a zone characterized by sandy 
downs from 100 to 120 feet high, and exhibiting on 
their summits a level plain of excellent arable soil, 
but with few trees, while the dells separating these 
downs one from the other, and which often wind about 
in the most anomalous manner, are in general richly 
overgrown with a rank vegetation, among which the 
dum-palm and the dum-bush are predominant. This 
curious formation, I fancy, has some connection with 
the great lagoon, which in a former period must have 
been of much greater extent. 
The intercourse on the road this afternoon was 
exceedingly animated ; and one motley troop fol- 
lowed another, — Hausa fataki, Bornu traders or 
" tugurchi," Kanembii Tebu, Shiiwa Arabs, and others 
