We Travelled With Great Silence And Expedition Until Midnight, When We Stopped In A Sort Of Enclosure, Near A Small Village; But The Thermometer Being So Low As 68 Deg., None Of The Negroes Could Sleep On Account Of The Cold.

At daybreak on the 18th we resumed our journey, and at eight o'clock passed Simbing, the frontier village of Ludamar, situated in a narrow pass between two rocky hills, and surrounded with a high wall.

From this village Major Houghton (being deserted by his Negro servants, who refused to follow him into the Moorish country) wrote his last letter with a pencil to Dr. Laidley. This brave but unfortunate man, having surmounted many difficulties, had taken a northerly direction, and endeavoured to pass through the kingdom of Ludamar, where I afterwards learned the following particulars concerning his melancholy fate. On his arrival at Jarra he got acquainted with certain Moorish merchants who were travelling to Tisheet (a place near the salt pits in the Great Desert, ten days' journey to the northward) to purchase salt; and the Major, at the expense of a musket and some tobacco, engaged them to convey him thither. It is impossible to form any other opinion on this determination, than that the Moors intentionally deceived him, either with regard to the route that he wished to pursue, or the state of the intermediate country between Jarra and Tombuctoo. Their intention probably was to rob and leave him in the Desert. At the end of two days he suspected their treachery, and insisted on returning to Jarra.

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