96 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA. Chap. LXXIII. 
for the honour of such a visit ; for the pupils of my 
friend, who had capital appetites, required a great deal 
of substantial nourishment to satisfy their cravings ; 
and besides a dozen dishes of rice, and a great quantity 
of milk, two oxen had to be slaughtered by our 
hosts. These Arabs, who formed here an encampment 
of about twenty-five spacious tents, made of sheep- 
skins or farrwel, have no camels, and possess only a 
few cows, their principal herds being sheep and goats, 
besides a large number of asses. They have been 
settled in this district, near the river, since the time 
when Sidi Mukhtar, the elder brother of El Bakdy, 
established himself in Timbuktu, that is to say, in the 
year 1832. 
Although I should have liked much better to have 
made at once a fair start on our journey, I was glad 
that we had at least set out at all, and, lying down in 
the shade of a small kdlgo tree, I indulged in the 
hope that in a period of from forty to fifty days I 
might reach S6koto ; but I had no idea of the unfa- 
vourable circumstances which were gathering to 
frustrate my hopes. 
The whole of this district is richly clothed with 
siwak, or Irak {Capparis sodata)^ and is greatly in- 
fested with lions, for which reason we were obliged 
to surround our camping-ground with a thick fence, 
or zeriba; and the encampment of the Sheikh, for 
whom an immense leathern tent had been pitched, 
with his companions, horses, and camels, together 
with the large fires, presented a very imposing appear- 
