THE LETTER " GHAIn" FELLATAHS. 27 
To be sure there is all the risk and the heavy freight 
of such an article, especially if conveyed up during 
the rainy season. 
I wrote yesterday a despatch to Government, 
requesting letters of recommendation to be sent up 
to me in Kordofam pointing out the route of Egypt 
as the probable one by which I shall return to the 
Mediterranean. I had a long dispute with Overweg 
about the letter ghain, which he persists in pro- 
nouncing like a strong k. Yusuf was called in, 
and declared that the ghain was the letter which 
distinguished Arabic from all other languages. In 
Kailouee Tuarick there is no Jtof or ghain. These 
Berber dialects have, however, the hard g in a 
thousand words, and have also the k in a great 
number of cases, but the hard g and the t are the 
consonants most frequently occurring. The Haussa 
has also the g hard, as in magdree, "good;" and a 
great number of words with the sound tsh> as doutshee, 
a stone or mountain. 
The Fellatah language is said to resemble the 
Kailouee ; in other words, to be a Berber dialect. 
If this be the case, the Fellatah people are probably 
of Berber extraction, and not Arab, as they are vul- 
garly supposed to be. This is a question requiring 
still further investigation. Others, again, say that 
the Fellatah language is quite different from the 
Tuarick. Overweg thinks Islamism was intro- 
duced into Bornou by the Shoua Arabs, who are 
