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FROM SOCCATOO TO DUNRORA. 
FROM SOCCATOO TO DUNRORA. 
On the evening of the 3d of May, a messenger came from the 
sultan, and told me to get every thing in readiness to depart on 
the following morning, with a promise of a camel and provisions, 
which I never received. Early next day, therefore, I left Soccatoo, 
where I had suffered so much, heartily tired of the place and its 
inhabitants ; and, accompanied with a messenger from the kind 
old Gadado, Pascoe and Mudey, with our three camels and two 
horses, proceeded to a fiat, five miles to the east of Magaria, where 
we arrived in the afternoon, and rested for the night under the 
branches of a large tree, near to a small lake. Mosquitoes were 
numerous and troublesome, and consequently could not sleep till 
morning, when a refreshing breeze springing up, it drove them 
away. At this flat we joined a party of above 4,000 people, con- 
sisting of Tuarick salt-merchants returning to Kilgris, pilgrims on 
their way to Mecca, Goora merchants returning to Kano and 
ISTyffe, &c. &c. ; all travelling in company, for mutual protection, 
with an immense number of camels, horses, and bullocks. The 
merchants invariably meet at Ivashna, where they disperse for their 
different destinations. In the same train was the king of Jacoba, 
with fifty slaves, which he had driven to Soccatoo, as a present to 
the sultan, who, having learnt the dreadful losses he had sustained 
in men and cattle in his wars with the sheik of Bornou, and the 
number of his villages which had been plundered and burnt by the 
soldiers of the sheik, would not accept of them, and desired the 
king of Jacoba to re-conduct them to his own dominions. 
At eleven o’clock in the morning of the 4th of May, a signal to 
prepare to depart was made with the horns and drums of the party, 
which made a loud and most discordant noise ; and, about an hour 
after, the whole body was in motion. We travelled in great haste 
