The news of the last month, both from the Begharmi side and the Kanem, from the south-east and the east, had been of the worst description: a direful war of extermination had been for years carried on between Bornou and Begharmi, the fury of which had not in the least abated. No males were spared on either side, except on terms worse perhaps than death. The sultan of Bornou had more than two hundred youths under twenty, from Begharmi, in his harem, as eunuchs; while the sultan of Begharmi (who was said to have nearly one thousand wives) had treble that number of unfortunate Bornouese and Kanemboo eunuchs, chosen out of the most healthy young men who had fallen into his hands as prisoners, and spared from the general massacre for the purpose of serving him in that capacity. Even the moral, and in many respects the amiable, sheikh had more than thirty Begharmi lads thus qualified to enter the apartments of his wives and princesses. As I was one day taking shelter, in the portico of the sheikh’s garden, from the violence of a sudden storm of rain, the chief of those privileged persons brought me to see about a dozen of this corps, who were just recovering from the ordeal of initiation, which they had gone through: thin and emaciated, though fed and taken the greatest care of (for they become extremely valuable, and will sell to any Turkish merchant for two hundred and fifty or three hundred dollars), these poor remnants of promising healthy young men passed before me. I could not contain my emotion, or disguise the distress which was apparent in my countenance, so that the old hardened chief of the seraglio, who seemed happy that so many of his fellow-creatures were reduced to the same standard as himself, exclaimed, “Why, Christian, what signifies all this? they are only Begharmis! dogs! kaffirs! enemies!—they ought to have been cut in four quarters alive, and now they will drink coffee, eat sugar, and live in a palace all their lives.”