372 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA. Chap. XXXII. 
the lovely bed of the fiumara, bordered by fine wide- 
spreading trees, and richly overgrown with succulent 
grass, upon which numbers of horses were feeding, 
we reached our quarters just in time; for shortly 
afterwards the storm, which had been hanging in the 
air the whole day, and had made the heat about noon 
more insupportable than I ever felt it in my life, 
came down with considerable violence. The conse- 
quence was that I was driven from the cool shed 
which I had occupied in the morning, into the in- 
terior of a hut, where flies and bugs molested me 
greatly. The sheds or stalls, which are often made 
with great care, but never waterproof, have the great 
inconvenience in the rainy season, that while they do 
not exclude the rain, they retain the humidity, and 
at the same time shut out the air from the huts to 
which they are attached. 
In the course of the day we obtained the im- 
portant news, that Mohammed Lowel, the governor of 
A'damawa, had returned from his expedition against 
the Bana, or rather Mbana, a tribe settled ten days 7 
march north-eastward from Yola, but at less distance 
from Uje. Billama gave me much interesting in- 
formation about the country before us, chiefly with 
reference to Sugur, a powerful and entirely indepen- 
dent pagan chief in the mountains south from Man- 
dard. With regard to this latter country, I perceived 
more clearly, as I advanced, what a small province it 
must be, comprehending little more than the capital 
and a few hamlets lying close around. There came 
