They Proceeded On Their Route, Which Was Along A Continued Desert, And At Sunset Halted On The Sand, Without Either Wood Or Water, After Twenty-Four Miles.

The courier from Bornou to Mourzouk assured them, that he should not be more than thirty days on the road from where they left him.

The Tibboos are the only people who will undertake this most arduous service, and the chances are so much against both returning in safety, that one is never sent alone. The two men whom they had encountered were mounted on two superb maherhies, and proceeding at the rate of about six miles an hour. A bag of zumeeta (some parched corn), and one or two skins for water, with a small brass basin, and a wooden bowl, out of which they ate and drank, were all their comforts. A little meat, cut in strips, and dried in the sun, called gedeed, is sometimes added to the store, which they eat raw; for they rarely light a fire for the purpose of cooking; although the want of this comfort during the nights, on approaching Fezzan, where the cold winds are sometimes biting after the day's heat, is often fatal to such travellers. A bag is suspended under the tail of the maherhy, by which means the dung is preserved, and this serves as fuel on halting in the night. Without a kafila, and a sufficient number of camels to carry such indispensables as wood and water, it is indeed a perilous journey.

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