Our route this morning lay through a remarkably fine district, teeming with fertility, and requiring only the hand of industry to render it the richest country in the world. Not a ten-thousandth part of the soil is cultivated. We met a troop of schoolboys with their masters; their boards, bedaubed with Arabic characters, would have been an effectual protection for them against a troop of horsemen a thousand times larger than ours. But, nevertheless, a poor woman, or a girl with a bowl of milk or a little butter, could not pass unscathed. Such is morality here. May there not, however, be some promise in this respect for education? A woodman left his axe a moment on the roadside; one of our troopers immediately went off and seized it. The woodman, returning, followed the trooper to the Kashalla, and falling down, and throwing dust over his head, begged for his axe as for his life. The Kashalla could not withstand the appeal, and ordered his trooper to restore the axe. The fellow had concealed the axe, and it was lucky the owner discovered the thief so soon. The poor man went away very thankful, thanking me also. I believe I may be some check on these depredations, for I told my interpreter last night that I never saw a village, or any people, pillaged in the Christian countries; in fact, that I could not have hitherto believed that men could do the things which I saw done that day by the servants of the Kashalla. It is probable he will mention what I said to some one, and it will get to the ears of the said Kashalla. The Africans, in plundering one another, appear as if they were avenging some old grudge; as if they remembered the various occasions when they themselves had been pillaged. They rob with wonderful _gusto_. A monotonous uniformity begins to prevail over all these tracts. I am afraid I shall soon get tired of this negro population and these towns, all built and all peopled in the same manner. They seem remarkably curious at first, but curiosity soon palls. We have with us the Hajah, mentioned before. She is very quiet, being _passée_, and also afraid of the Sheikh's people.