Our passage through the country, if it did not do much good, could not do much harm either. So near to Timbuktu, with people all virtually under French protection, I should not venture to engage in any diplomatic or military enterprise on my own account, for of course to do so would be to encroach on the province of the supreme authority in the French Sudan. Is it too much to hope that our gentleness and our patience will make it easier later to establish really satisfactory relations with the Tuaregs? We shall have shown by our conduct that we are not the ferocious beasts our enemies chose to represent us to be. Moreover, some of the Tuaregs, no matter how few, will be grateful for the presents we have given them, and as those presents really were very handsome ones, I hope that the fame of our generosity will precede us, and incite the tribes through whose territories we have to pass to make friends with us. To avoid having to give any more presents we got under sail early on the 17th, but the wind got up and compelled us to anchor amongst the grass at the entrance to the Zarhoi lagoon. We were scarcely gone before, as we had foreseen, the Igwadaren arrived in numbers at the scene of our recent encampment, and were greatly discomfited at finding that the goose which laid the golden eggs had flown away. But they soon spied us in our new anchorage, and hurried to hail us, entreating us again with eager gestures and shouts to land. They wanted to re-open the profitable intercourse with us, but the comedy was played out now. At about eleven o’clock we were able to resume our voyage along the left bank, followed for some little distance by a regular cavalcade, amongst whom Sidi Hamet thought he recognized Sakhaui himself. We now crossed the river, and cast anchor near another tongue of land a little above Sakhib’s camp at Kardieba, where Mohamed Uld Mbirikal was to rejoin us. [Illustration: OUR COOLIES’ CAMP AT ZARHOI.] It soon became pretty evident that we should see no more of Sakhib than we had of Sakhaui. If he had wished ever so much to pay us a visit, his dignity would have compelled him to act exactly as his brother had done. His envoys, however, duly arrived, charged with friendly messages, and accompanied, or rather preceded, by Mohamed. By right of birth Sakhib is the true chief of the Igwadaren. His brother turned against him, and seduced a part of the tribe from their allegiance, on account of a love affair which was related to me as follows: a belle of the neighbourhood had been the mistress of Sakhaui when still quite a young girl. Knowing nothing of this, Sakhib, enamoured of her charms, married her with an ingenuous haste by no means peculiar to Africa, and discovering too late that he had been forestalled, he repudiated her. This modern Helen then returned to form a new union with her former lover Sakhaui. _Inde iræ_.