272 
RESIDENCE AT SOCCATOO. 
kindness, and given liim his freedom, no sooner was made acquainted 
with his master’s illness than he became careless and idle, and in- 
stead of leading the camels to the rich pasturage in the vicinity of 
Soccatoo, let them stray wherever they pleased, whilst he himself 
either loitered about the city, or mixed with the most degraded 
people in it : by this means the camels became quite lean ; and 
being informed of the reason, I told my master, who instantly dis- 
charged him from his service. 
My master grew weaker daily, and the weather was insuffer- 
ably hot, the thermometer being, in the coolest place, 107 at twelve 
in the morning, and 109 at three in the afternoon. At his own 
suggestion I made a couch for him outside the hut, in the shade, 
and placed a mat for myself by its side. For five successive days 
i took him in my arms from his bed in the hut to the couch out- 
side, and hack again at sunset, after which time he was too much 
debilitated to be lifted from the bed on which he lay. He at- 
tempted to write once, and but once, during his illness ; but before 
paper and ink could be brought him, he had sunk back on his 
pillow, completely exhausted by his ineffectual attempt to sit up in 
his bed. Fancying by various symptoms he had been poisoned, 1 
asked him one day whether he thought that, in any of his visits to 
the Arabs or Tuaricks, any poisonous ingredients had been put 
into the camel’s milk they had given him, of which he was par- 
ticularly fond. He replied, “ No, my dear boy; no such thing has 
been done, I assure you. Do you remember,” he continued, “ that 
when on a shooting excursion at Magaria, in the early part of F e- 
bruary, after walking the whole of the day, exposed to the scorching 
rays of the sun, I was fatigued, and lay down under the branches 
of a tree for some time ? The earth was soft and wet, and from 
that hour to the present I have not been free from cold : this has 
brought on my present disorder, from which, I believe, I shall 
never recover.” 
