In this way we continued our retreat, and it was after midnight when we halted in the sultan of Mandara’s territory. Riding more than forty-five miles, in such an unprovided state, on the bare back of a lean horse, the powerful consequences may be imagined. I was in a deplorable state the whole night; and notwithstanding the irritation of the flesh wounds was augmented by the woollen covering the Arab had thrown over me, teeming as it was with vermin, it was evening the next day before I could get a shirt, when one man who had two, both of which he had worn eight or ten days at least, gave me one, on a promise of getting a new one at Kouka. Barca Gana, who had no tent but the one he had left behind him with his women at Mora, on our advance, could offer me no shelter; and he was besides so ill, or chagrined, as to remain invisible the whole day. I could scarcely turn from one side to the other, but still, except at intervals when my friend Maramy supplied me with a drink made from parched corn, bruised, and steeped in water, a grateful beverage, I slept under a tree nearly the whole night and day, of the 29th. Towards the evening I was exceedingly disordered and ill, and had a pleasing proof of the kind-heartedness of a Bornouese. Mai Meegamy, the dethroned sultan of a country to the south-west of Angornou, and now subject to the sheikh, took me by the hand as I had crawled out of my nest for a few minutes, and with many exclamations of sorrow, and a countenance full of commiseration, led me to his leather tent, and, sitting down quickly, disrobed himself of his trowsers, insisting I should put them on. Really, no act of charity could exceed this! I was exceedingly affected at so unexpected a friend, for I had scarcely seen, or spoken three words to him; but not so much so as himself, when I refused to accept of them:—he shed tears in abundance; and thinking, which was the fact, that I conceived he had offered the only ones he had, immediately called a slave, whom he stripped of those necessary appendages to a man’s dress, according to our ideas, and putting them on himself, insisted again on my taking those he had first offered me. I accepted this offer, and thanked him with a full heart; and Meegamy was my great friend from that moment until I quitted the sheikh’s dominions.