In appearance, the people of Mandara differ from the Bornouese, or Kanoury (as they call themselves); and the difference is all in favour of the former. The men are intelligent and lively, with high though flat foreheads, large sparkling eyes, wiry curled hair, noses inclining to the aquiline, and features altogether less flattened than the Bornouese. The women are proverbial for their good looks,—I cannot say beauty. I must allow them, however, all their acknowledged celebrity of form: they are certainly singularly gifted with the Hottentot protuberance; their hands and feet are delightfully small; and as these are all esteemed qualifications in the eye of a Turk, Mandara slaves will always obtain an advanced price. Certainly I never saw so much of them as when sporting in their native wilds, with not so much covering on as one of Eve’s fig-leaves. A man who took me to be a Moorish merchant led me to his house, in order to show me the best looking slaves in Mandara. He had three, all under sixteen, yet quite women; for these are precocious climes; and certainly, for negresses, they were the most pleasing and perfectly formed I had ever seen. They had simply a piece of blue striped linen round their loins, yet they knew not their nakedness. Many of these beauties are to be seen at Kouka and Angornou: they are never, however, exposed in the fsug, but sold in the houses of the merchants. So much depends on the magnitude of those attractions for which their southern sisters are so celebrated, that I have known a man about to make a purchase of one out of three, regardless of the charms of feature, turn their faces from him, and looking at them behind, just above the hips, as we dress a line of soldiers, make choice of her whose person most projected beyond that of her companions. The day before the Rhamadan, which commenced on the 13th instant (May), I had an interview with the sheikh, who mentioned his intended departure for Munga; and after some conversation, it was agreed that I should proceed to Old Bornou or Birnie; and after seeing that part of the country, the ruins of the town of Gambarou, and the river of that name, which is said to come from Soudan; that I should follow its course, and join him at a place called Kabshary on the same river, to which he was about to proceed by a different route. The whole population was in confusion at the departure of this ghrazzie, and nearly all the people of Kouka, with the exception of the kadi, were to accompany the sheikh. Previously, however, to his departure, he had determined on sending off a courier to Tripoli, with an account of Boo Khaloom’s death, and we availed ourselves of the opportunity by writing to England. On the 17th of May the courier departed; and on the 18th the sheikh began his march, and bivouacked at Dowergoo. [Illustration] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 23: _Silsel_: irons placed round the necks of refractory slaves.]