34 YOUNG SHEEEEF A LADY IN DIFFICULTIES. 
The weather is still cool, especially in the morning-. 
The prevailing wind during these last twenty days 
has been E.N.E., which is very refreshing. The 
Moorish merchants pretend that in Soudan it is now 
very cold. 
I received a visit from the young Shereef, whose 
conversation smacked a good deal of a disagreeable 
curiosity respecting my movements and intentions 
in Central Africa. I therefore gave him a very 
ordinary and cool welcome. This fellow has been 
here some time, and never offered to pay us a visit 
before. En-Noor has been feeding him during his 
stay. He displayed a good deal of shrewdness, and 
is well acquainted with the Christians of the Medi- 
terranean. He is going to visit his brother in 
Zinder, and then returns to Tripoli by the way of 
Bornou and Mourzuk. Like all these shereefs, or 
marabouts, he pretended that had he been with us, 
or had we travelled with him from Mourzuk to 
Tintalous, no one would have dared to molest 
us : an assertion wholly false, for the Tuaricks 
care little for marabouts when they are bent on 
plunder. 
A young woman has just arrived from a distant 
village, with the express object of procuring from 
the Taleb (Overweg) a medicine to produce abor- 
tion : she says she has been gadding, " barra" (out 
of her mother's house), and is frightened lest she 
should get a good beating. On Overweg's refusing 
to give her any such medicine she burst out into 
