Boo-Khaloom was, as usual, very sanguine: he said “he should make the sultan handsome presents, and that he was quite sure a Kirdy[25] town full of people would be given him to plunder.” The Arabs were all eagerness; they eyed the Kirdy huts, which were now visible on the sides of mountains before us, with longing eyes; and contrasting their own ragged and almost naked state with the appearance of the sultan of Mandara’s people in their silk tobes, not only thought, but said, “if Boo-Khaloom pleased, they would go no further; this would do.” Boo-Khaloom and the Arab sheikhs had repeatedly exclaimed, when urging El Kanemy to send them to some country for slaves, “Never mind their numbers! arrows are nothing! and ten thousand spears are of no importance. We have guns! guns!” exclaiming, with their favourite imprecations, “_Nakalou-e-kelab fesaa_,” (We’ll eat them, the dogs, quickly)—“_eich nu, abeed occul_,” (what! why, they are negroes all!) I fancied I could see the keen features of El Kanemy curl at these contemptuous expressions, which equally applied to his own people; and certainly nothing could be more galling than for him to hear them from such a handful of Arabs: his own people were _abeed occul_, and their only arms spears and arrows, and this he could not but feel and remember. Towards the evening Barca Gana sent to desire me to mount, for the purpose of visiting the sultan. We entered the town, Boo-Khaloom and myself riding on his right and left; and at the farther end of a large square was the sultan’s palace. As is usual on approaching or visiting a great man, we galloped up to the skiffa at full speed, almost entering the gates. This is a perilous sort of salutation, but nothing must stop you; and it is seldom made except at the expense of one or more lives. On this occasion, a man and horse, which stood in our way, were ridden over in an instant, the horse’s leg broke, and the man killed on the spot. The trumpets sounded as we dismounted at the palace gate; our papouches, or outward slippers, were quickly pulled off; and we proceeded through a wide skiffa, or entrance, into a large court, where, under a dark blue tent of Soudan, sat the sultan, on a mud bench, covered however with a handsome carpet and silk pillows: he was surrounded by about two hundred persons, all handsomely dressed in tobes of silk and coloured cotton, with his five eunuchs; the principal men of the country sitting in front, but all with their backs turned towards him. The manner of saluting is curious: Barca Gana, as the sheikh’s representative, approached to a space in front of the eunuchs, his eyes fixed on the ground; he then sat down, with his eyes still fixed on the earth, with his back to the sultan, and, clapping his hands together, exclaimed, “_Engouborou dagah!_ (May you live for ever!)—_Allah kiaro!_ (God send you a happy old age!)—_La, lai, barca, barca_. (How is it with you? blessing! blessing!)” These words were repeated