334 
TRAVELS IN AFRICA. Chap. LXXXII. 
had just come to Bornu, meaning Mr. Vogel, to visit 
the south-eastern provinces of his kingdom. The fol- 
lowing evening, a messenger arrived from the vizier 
'Abdii, son of Gedddo, informing me that we were to 
start on the succeeding day, and that we should find 
camels on the other side of the river. The river, as 
I had already learned, w^as very much swollen, and 
extremely difficult to cross. 
While my Mohammedan and black friends thus 
behaved towards me in the kindest and most hos- 
pitable manner, the way in which I felt myself treated 
by my friends in Europe, was not at all encouraging, 
and little adapted to raise my failing spirits ; for it 
Avas only by accident, through a liberated female 
slave from Stambul, who called upon me soon after 
my arrival, that I obtained information of the im- 
portant fact, that five Christians had arrived in Kii- 
kawa, with a train of forty camels. While I en- 
deavoured to identify the individuals of whom this 
person gave me some account from a very selfish 
point of view, with the particulars contained in Lord 
Russell's despatch, which I had received near Tim- 
buktu, about the members of an auxiliary expedition 
to be sent out to join me, I was greatly astonished 
that, for myself, there was not a single line from 
those gentlemen, although I felt still authorized to 
consider myself the director of the African Expedition; 
and I could only conclude from all this, that something 
was wrong. I had not yet any direct intimation of 
the rumour which was spread abroad with regard to 
