FIGHIS 
1 TREE OF DEATH. 
211 
part of Africa. There is but very slight communi- 
cation between it and Zinder; and little is known 
of the people, except that they are Tuaricks. 
19th. — I again entertained visitors, who are still 
numerous, of all classes; and also paid a visit to the 
Shereef, and took with me the kaleidoscope, as he 
expressed a wish to see its revolving glowing- 
beauties. 
Zinder is full of half-crazy fighis, who can just 
write the Arabic alphabet. They go about the 
streets begging piteously, with a calabash inkstand 
and reed-pen in their hands. I have been pestered 
with two or three every day since I came here. 
They also wander through the country parts of Da- 
me rgh on. Bornou is the nursery of these silly 
pedagogues, in whom learning and madness are 
most cordially united; but, as 1 have already men- 
tioned, it sends out a few instructed ones to redeem 
the reputation of these ignoramuses. 
In the afternoon I went to see the place of execu- 
tion, and found it covered with human bones, the 
leavings of the hysenas, whose dens are close by. 
Proceeding a little further I came to the Tree of 
Death ! a lonely tree springing out of the rocks, 
some forty or fifty feet in height, and of the species 
called here kanisa. My guide would not approach 
it very near, for he assured me that if any person 
went under its boughs, there must instantly come an 
order from the Sultan to put him to death, or hang 
him heels upwards upon its branches. " Don't you 
