On the departure of the last load, a general begging commenced on a grand scale, on the part of all who flattered themselves that they had in the most remote manner been so fortunate as to render assistance during the protracted sojourn of the Kafirs. Many, whose claims were far from being apparent, after confessing themselves satisfied _in propriis personis_, modestly urged demands on behalf of their still more worthless neighbours; and in order to have any chance of passing in safety to the mountains with so long a line of camels, it was only prudent to propitiate each and all of this predatory hosts of locusts, before entering upon their lawless country. With a feeling of pleasure akin to that experienced by Gil Blas, when he escaped from the robbers' cave, the party at length bade adieu to Tajura. Of all the various classes and denominations of men who inhabit the terrestrial globe, the half-civilised savages peopling this sea-port, are perhaps the most thoroughly odious and detestable. They have ingeniously contrived to lose every virtue wherewith the rude tribes to which they pertain, may once have been adorned; and having acquired nothing in exchange, save the vices of their more refined neighbours, the scale of abject degradation to which they are now reduced, can hardly descend lower. Under this sweeping and very just condemnation, the impotent Sultan, Mohammad ibn Mohammad, stands pre-eminently in relief; and the old miser's rapacity continuing unsated up to the very latest moment, he clutched his long staff betwixt his skinny fingers, and hobbled forth from his den, resolved to squeeze yet another hundred dollars as a parting memento from his British victims. The European escort were in the act of mounting the mules already harnessed to the galloper-gun, which he had vainly persuaded himself could never be transported from the coast, since no camel-owner consented to take it, and repeated attempts that he had witnessed to yoke a pair of oxen to the limbers had proved unsuccessful, even after their stubborn noses were pierced. But mule harness had been ably manufactured to meet the exigency, and when his lustreless eyes beheld the party in horse artillery order, firmly seated in their saddles, and moving along the strand towards Ambabo--forgetting the vile errand upon which he had come, he involuntarily exclaimed, "In the name of Allah and the holy Prophet, whither are those fellows going?" "_Raheen el Habesh_," "to Abyssinia," was the laconic reply that fell upon his astounded ears as the whips cracked merrily in succession; and His Highness was long after seen, still leaning on his slender crutch, and staring in idiotic vacancy after the departing cavalcade, as it disappeared under a cloud of dust from before his leaden gaze. Volume One, Chapter XI. INIQUITOUS PROCEEDINGS AT AMBABO, AND UNDERSTANDING WITH THE RAS EL KAFILAH.