Chap. LXXXV. TREATMENT OF SLAVES. 
415 
and suffering from the effects of the water, being 
scarcely able to keep up ; a big fellow even laid down 
never to rise again. Indeed it would seem as if the 
Tebu treated their slaves more cruelly than even the 
Arabs, making them carry all sorts of articles, espe- 
cially their favourite dried fish. 
After a march of not more than twelve miles, 
we halted some distance to the east of the well of 
Kufe, and were greatly excited in consequence of the 
approach of our fellow-travellers the Daza, whom, at 
the moment, we did not at first recognise. This lo- 
cality was also regarded so unsafe for a small caravan, 
that we started again soon after midnight, and halted 
after a march of about fifteen miles, when we met a 
courier coming from Kawar with the important news 
that Hassan Bashd, the governor of Fezzan, who had 
been suffering from severe illness for several years, 
had at length succumbed ; and that the E'fede, that 
turbulent tribe on the northern frontier of A'sben, 
which had caused us such an immense deal of trouble 
in the first part of our expedition, had undertaken 
a foray to Tibesti, — a piece of news which influenced 
our own proceedings very considerably, as we were 
thus exposed to the especial danger of falling in with 
this predatory band, besides the danger which in ge- 
neral attaches to the passage through this extensive 
desert tract, which extends from Negroland to the 
cultivated zone of North Africa. It was this circum- 
stance, together with the great heat of the mid-day 
hours at this hottest part of the year, which obliged 
