Chat*. XXXI. THE SHEIKH'S RELATIVES. 
347 
we were obliged to be cautious in our dealings with 
him ; for we had scarcely made his acquaintance, 
when he sent us a secret message, begging for poison, 
with which he most probably wished to rid himself of 
his deadly enemy the vizier. Quite a different man was 
Yiisuf, the sheikh's second brother, with whom during 
my last stay in Kukawa, in the beginning of 1855, I 
became intimately acquainted. He was a learned 
and very religious man, always reading, and with a 
very acute sense of justice ; but he was not a man of 
business. As for Bu-Bakr, the eldest son of 'Omar, 
who now unfortunately seems to have the best claim 
to the succession, he was a child, devoid of intelli- 
gence or noble feelings. Twice was I obliged to have 
recourse to his father to make him pay me for some 
articles which he had bought of me. 
The much desired moment of my departure for 
Adamawa drew nearer and nearer. The delay of my 
starting on this undertaking, occasioned by the late 
arrival of Mr. Overweg, had been attended with the 
great advantage that, meanwhile, some messengers of 
the governor of that country had arrived, in whose 
company, as they were returning immediately, I was 
able to undertake the journey with a much better 
prospect of success. The subject of their message 
was, that Kashella 'All Ladan, on his late predatory 
incursion into the Marghi country, had enslaved and 
carried away inhabitants of several places to which 
the governor of Adamawa laid claim, and it was more 
in order to establish his right, than from any real 
