I continued to work at the Arabic and Bornou languages; and, besides this, I usually visited Barca Gana two or three times a week, and sometimes he came to me, so that my time rarely hung heavy on my hands; but he always came mounted, and with so many attendants, that my little hut was put in disorder for the whole day after. I believe he entered no person’s habitation in the town but my own, except the sheikh’s. No great man here ever visits his inferior, or moves from his own house to the sheikh’s, without a retinue agreeable to his rank; and the kashella, on remonstrating with me for coming through the streets alone, was surprised when I told him that even our king did the same; and, often habited like his subjects, rode attended only by a single servant. Convinced as he was before of his importance, this astonished him greatly. “Why,” said he, “were the sheikh to do so, nobody would respect him:”—and replied I, “in England the oftener the king does this the more he is both loved and respected.” Two decisions of the sheikh lately had created a considerable emotion amongst the people. The slave of one man had been caught with the wife of another, a free man, and the injured husband demanded justice. The sheikh condemned both the man and the woman to be hanged side by side: the owner of the slave, however, remonstrated, and said that the decision, as far as respected the woman, was just; for she was always endeavouring to seduce his slave from his work, and that if he (the sheikh) condemned his slave to death, the man, whose wife was the cause of it, ought to give him the value of his slave, as he was poor: this the husband objected to. “Ah!” exclaimed the sheikh, “how often is a man driven to his destruction by woman; yet of all his happiness, she is the root, or the branch.” He himself paid the value of the slave to the owner, and the next morning the guilty pair were suspended outside the walls. August 8.—Last night a man brought a large bird, called oubara, a smaller species of which the bashaw’s sons hunt daily, in the neighbourhood of Tripoli, with their hawks: this was exceedingly large, weighing as much as twelve pounds; and we gave him about two shillings for his present, in coarse cloth (gubbuk); and before breakfast this morning, he brought another still larger; but finding we had spoiled the market, for this I only gave him half as much. These birds are peculiar for the brilliancy of their large eyes, which exceeds that of the gazelle[34], and the flesh very much resembles our pheasants in flavour.