Soon after our arrival, the sultan’s trumpets announced his approach, and he took up his station, at no great distance, under a tree of the same kind: he never used a tent, but slept in an open space, surrounded by his eunuchs. At Hairey are the remains of a Mandara town, long since destroyed by the Felatahs; parts of the mud walls were still standing, and under shelter of these the troops bivouacked. The scorpions, however, made their appearance in the course of the night in great numbers, and several men were stung by them: on hearing the disturbance, and learning the cause, I called my negro, and, striking a light, we killed three in my tent; one of them was full six inches in length, of the black kind, exactly resembling those I had seen in Tripoli. In consequence of Boo-Khaloom’s illness, it was after daylight when we broke up from our encampment, and probably the mountain scenery, by which we were surrounded, could scarcely be exceeded in beauty and richness. On all sides the apparently interminable chain of hills closed upon our view: in rugged magnificence, and gigantic grandeur, though not to be compared with the Higher Alps, the Apennines, the Jura, or even the Sierra Morena, in magnitude, yet by none of these were they surpassed in picturesque interest. The lofty peaks of Vahmy, Savah, Joggiday, Munday, Vayah, Moyung, and Memay, with clustering villages on their stony sides, appeared to the east and west of us; while Horza, exceeding any of her sister hills in height, as well as in beauty, appeared before us to the south, with its chasm or break through which we were to pass; and the winding rugged path we were about to tread was discernible in the distance. The valley in which I stood had an elevation superior to that of any part of the kingdom of Bornou, for we had gradually ascended ever since quitting Kouka; it was in shape resembling a large pentagon, and conveyed strongly the idea of its having been the bed or basin of some ancient lake, for the disappearance of which all hypothesis would be vain and useless. There were the marks of many outlets, some long and narrow fissures, through which the waters might have broken; the channel by which we had entered appearing most likely to have carried off its contents. On proceeding through the pass of Horza, where the ascent continued, its perpendicular sides exceeding two thousand five hundred feet in height, hung over our heads with a projection almost frightful; the width of the valley did not exceed five hundred yards, and the salient and re-entering angles so perfectly corresponded, that one could almost imagine, if a similar convulsion of nature to that which separated were to bring its sides again together, they would unite, and leave no traces of their ever having been disjoined.