Yussuf generally amused me by singing, and ridiculing the Arabs. The Tuarick were always subjects for his wit, and he related many curious anecdotes of them. One which, though greatly exaggerated, is much in character of these people, was of a man sent as a courier from Ghraat to Ghadāms, eighteen days’ journey, for which he received sufficient provision to support him the whole time, but which devouring at a meal, and girding his loins with a belt, he mounted his camel, and performed the journey without other sustenance! These people, however, really can abstain from food for three or four days without any apparent inconvenience. On the 8th of December news arrived that the slave hunters had made but little booty, the people having been warned of their coming, and that they were on their return home. We also heard that the men of Waday had cut the throats of eighty-two white traders in Wara, the capital, and had determined to suffer no Moors to trade again in their country, but to kill them immediately on their entering it. I now began a little to recover my health, and Belford, though still quite deaf, was without fever. I remarked that our negress invariably used the letter P for F; she would say, for instance, Yussup instead of Yussuf, Patoo for Fatoo; and I found that this was general amongst the natives of Bornou and Baghermee. These people, as well as the natives of Fezzan, always pronounce _s_ as _sh_, and vice versâ. Another peculiarity which I have often observed is, that all the Fezzanners and slaves, in cutting onions or other vegetables, cut downwards on the forefinger of the left hand, and however sharp the knife may be, they seldom injure themselves.