liADIES OF THE WADY. 
75 
I gave to the Kaid a handkercliief, as well as 
some snufF and tobacco. In return, he sent a litMe 
bread and a fly-flapper; so that we parted good 
friends. During our stay, we heard this jolly fellow 
entertaining the chaouches and his own horsemen 
with a description of the ladies of the Wady, who 
had no reason to be flattered by his account. And 
yet he seems to have married one himself : Mnc 
nice lachrymcB, perhaps. My chaouch had already 
given me a confirmation of these libels, and was 
evidently greatly delighted by this testimony to his 
exactitude. 
There are several roads from the Wady to Mour- 
zuk, all much about the same distance. It is said, 
also, that Ghat is only ten days from Laghareefah. 
We moved on a little further on the evening of the 
4th, but did not start properly until next day, when 
we made a long stretch of more than thirteen hours, 
and encamped at the village of Agar, where I re- 
membered having halted once before on my way 
from Ghat. During this day's march we found, 
that what we had supposed to be the border of the 
Mourzuk plateau was not in reality so. We soon 
reached the summit of the cliffs, and having cast 
back a glance upon the valley, with its expanse of 
corn-fields and thousands of palm-trees, expected to 
find an elevated plateau beyond ; but the hills gra- 
dually softened down into a plain on their eastern 
side. Our route may be said to have led through a 
wilderness, not a desert. On all sides were clusters of 
