■COMMUNICATIONS, 
• ' Bornou, the name which the natives give to the country, is 
diflinguiflied in Arabic by the appellation of Bernou or Bernoa, 
a word that figniiifcs the land of Noah, for the Arabs conceive 
that, on the firft retiring of the deluge, its mountains received 
the ArL 
The Climate, as may naturally be expe£led in a kingdom 
-which feems to be bounded by the i6th and the 26th parallels 
" S 2 of 
the kingdom of the Bornoos, the limit of which be reprefents as feven days difiant from the 
xapital, he faffed through feveral poor villages of Blacks, who live upon the charity of 
Travellers ; for though there be no regular marked road, yet the- caravans alzvays tak: 
the fame rout, and pafs by thofe villages both in going and returning. 
Ben Alli feems to have travelled from Mourzouk to Bornou by a different rout fro:;i 
that which is ufually taken by the Merchants of Fezzan : nor can it be fuppofed, that the 
, independent and pozverful Arabs with zvhom he journeyed, zvould either obtain, or foUcit the 
JiermiJJion of the Sovereign of Fezzan to pafs in fo large a body through his f mall and 
mguMrded dominions. And though the correfponding accounts that ar^ given in the nar- 
ratives of the Skereef and of Be^ Alli, of fome villages of miferable Blacks, may fuggeji 
.an idea that the tzvo roads interfeElcd each other on the frontier of Bornou, yet as on that 
fuppofition, the different times within zvhich the feveral parts of the two journeys zvcre 
refpe^ively performed cannot be eafily reconciled, there is reajon to believe that the vil- 
lages defcribed by Ben Alli, though peopled by fimilar inhabitants, may not be the fame 
zvith thofe zvhich attra5le.d the compaffionate notice of the Shereef. 
