224 
TRAVELS IN NORTHERN AFRICA. 
CHAP. V. 
usual auxiliaries, milk and sugar, articles which had now become 
almost unknown to us. Proceeded S. 50°. W. At 2. the camels 
arrived at the gardens, and we went on to the town of Gatrone, 
where we arrived at 3°. 30'. At 4. 50. the camels came in, having 
made twenty miles. 
Besheer and Belford having stopped at Gatrone gardens to 
water their horses, I rode into the town with Kaid Saad, alone, 
which greatly mortified him, as he wished me to have made my 
entrance with four horses abreast, thinking it would look more dig- 
nified, and in character for such a great ]:erson as myself. He was 
astonished when I told him, that even the Sultan of my country 
was neither ashamed nor afraid to ride unattended, and that his 
soldiers never rode or fired before him on his entering a town. 
This he wisely supposed must be owing to the excellence of our 
gunpowder, which our king would not suffer to be wasted unneces- 
sarily. W e put up at the house of a Tibboo woman : it had 
a garden and palms in front, and stood at a short distance from the 
walls of the town. 
Gatrone is siuTounded by sand hiUs, on which are built the low 
palm huts of the Tibboo, who appear to form a separate com- 
munity ; the people within the walls pretending to call themselves 
Fezzanners, although the language of Bornou is more generally 
spoken than the Arabic. 
As this was the evening of the feast of Milood, Mohammed's 
birth-day, every thing promised a gay meeting, and the young Tibboo 
girls were adorned for the occasion in all their finery. These 
females are light and elegant in form, and their graceful costume, 
quite different from that of the Fezzanners, is well put on. They 
have aquiline noses, fine teeth, and lips formed like those of Euro- 
peans ; their eyes are expressive, and their colour is of the brightest 
