In the evening Tahr came for his present. I gave him a tobe from Soudan, a red cap, and a turkodie: the tobes and cap he looked at, and said, “Ah! this is very well for me; I am one, but my wives are three:—what shall I do with one turkodie?” Tahr now began a speech: he was greatly distressed that he had nothing to send sultan George. “By the head of Mustapha!” said he, “I consider him as much my master as the bashaw;—ay and more—for you say he sent you to see me, which is more than the bashaw ever did. I can send him a tiger-skin, and I will write him a letter—for Tahr’s enemies are never quiet, and he has no time to kill ostriches now. The well Beere Kashifery, whose waters are here like gold, and better than gold, and all that Kashella Tahr and the Gunda Tibboos have to give, shall always be, as long as he or his children govern, at the service of sultan George Inglesi.” He now asked for water, and began washing the ink from a paper which had previously been ornamented with a charm, drinking the dirty water, and rubbing it over his head and neck: when this was finished, he laid the paper in the sun; and I was a little amused when I found, that it was on this dirty scrap that he intended writing to king George. Sept. 25.—In the afternoon of this day we left Beere Kashifery, taking a very hearty leave of Tahr. In order to save my camels, who had seventeen skins of water to carry in addition to their loads, as we were to be four days on our road to Aghadem, I hired a maherhy to carry two heavy boxes to Bilma, for seven dollars. The moon, which was in its first quarter, assisted us after sunset, but we were obliged to move on for at least two hours after she had sunk quietly to rest. We halted for a few hours, at a spot called Geogo Balwy (honey spot), and a little after midnight proceeded on our dreary way. There was great difference of opinion as to our route, which, probably, by following our own back bearings, we might have found better ourselves: but we were not yet quite so bold in the desert as on the main; and I insisted on the Mina Hamedee, the guide whom the sheikh had given us, being allowed his own way, and my confidence was not misplaced. By daylight on Sunday we discovered the foot-marks of the camels and slaves of Hadge-Boo-Said, a Fezzan merchant, who had absolutely been in the right track, but had turned back, and gone southerly. Numbers now exclaimed that we were wrong: there appeared, however, no sort of timidity about our guide; he looked confident, and bore the abuse that was levelled at him on all sides, with great coolness: and there was a sort of conscious ability about him that determined me to rely completely on _his_ judgment alone. No man is ever afraid of doing what he knows he can do well; and in most cases a sense of power gives confidence: so it proved with my Tibboo. We continued travelling another night and day in these most dreary wastes, with nothing but the wide expanse of sand and sky to gaze upon.