According to one authority, the booty of the razzia is greatly reduced, even to more than half of what was reported. The share of the Sarkee is four hundred slaves, and one hundred and twenty slaves he gave to his troops. Seven places were attacked, but the people had news of the movements of the Sarkee, and were prepared to receive him: they shot their arrows through their stockades, thick and fast, upon the Sarkee and his people, and then retired to the rocks and behind the trees, which are abundant. Only one country was fairly razzied. Also but few beasts were taken, the people having secured all their cattle and flocks beforehand. The Sarkee got about one hundred bullocks. He took with him no less than two thousand horse, a collection from all the petty governments in the surrounding provinces, with their chiefs. All these forces did little more than beat the air. The capture of five hundred slaves will not pay the expenses of the expedition, but these people never sit down to count the cost. Their reckoning-days are few and far between. There is a report here that the Sultans of Maradee, Gouber, Korgum, and Tesaoua, have all gone together on a razzia to the territory of Sakkatou, and a few of the people of Zinder have gone with them; and this is the reason given for horses being now scarce in Zinder. Haj Beshir has sent a message from Kuka, that I am to quicken my steps thitherward. The kafila from Mourzuk has arrived, and many Arabs from the north. Of gubaga, called by the people of Zinder, ferri, four draâs are sold in Zinder for one hundred wadâs, about twopence. This native cotton cloth, when doubled, makes tents impervious to the summer rain. There are about fifty Ghadamsee merchants in Kanou and Boushi, capital of Yakoba, the principal of whom (here described as Maidukia) are:-- Haj Mohammed Bel Kasem. Haj Tahir. Mairimi. Haj Mohammed Ben Habsa. Hemed Basidi. Kasem Ben Haiba. Haj Ali. Mohammed Makoren. Haj Hoda. Haj Abdullah. There are some merchants of consequence from Fezzan, viz. Basha Ben Haloum, Mohammed es-Salah, the agent of Gagliuffi, Sidi Ali, and Fighi Hamit, who always goes to Goujah (_blad_ of the gour-nuts). This country of the gour is distant three months' travelling, making small stages south-west by west. Morocco, Tuat, and the countries of the west, are scarcely represented by merchants in Kanou--there being one or two of them at most. Nor are there any from Egypt or the East. According to my informant, a small merchant, but well acquainted with these parts, not more than one hundred and fifty or two hundred slaves pass through or from Zinder annually to the north, and about five or six hundred go by the route of Tesaoua to the north, i.e. Tripoli, and a few to Souf. After all, the great slave-market is Central Africa itself.