a little delay they opened the door, I loaded my pistols and threatened to shoot the first man that troubled me. However, I soon felt convinced that the chief fault was my own; and in order to obliterate the bad impression which this little adventure was likely to make in the town, particularly as the great Mohammedan feast was at hand, which of course could not but strengthen greatly the prejudice against a Christian, I resolved to stay at home the next few days. This I could do the more easily as the terrace of our house allowed me to observe all that was going on in the place. I therefore applied myself entirely for a few days to the study of the several routes which, with the assistance of ʿAbdallah, I had been able to collect from different people, and which will be given in the Appendix, and to the language of Ágades. For though I had left all my books behind at Tin-téllust, except that volume of “Prichard’s Researches” which treats of Africa, I had convinced myself, from the specimens which he gives of the language of Timbúktu, that the statement of my friends from Tawát with regard to the identity of the languages of the two places was quite correct, only with this qualification, that here this language had been greatly influenced by intercourse with the Berbers, from whom sundry words were borrowed, while the Arabic seemed to have had little influence beyond supplanting the numerals from 4 upwards. I was also most agreeably surprised and gratified to find this identity confirmed by the fact that the people of Ágades give the Tuarek in general the name under which that tribe of them which lives near Timbúktu and along the Niger had become known to Mungo Park in those quarters where the language of Timbúktu is spoken. This was indeed very satisfactory, as the native name of that powerful tribe is entirely different; for the Surka, as they are called by Mungo Park, are the same as the Awelímmiden, of whom I had already heard so much in Asben (the inhabitants of which country seemed to regard them with much dread), and with whom I was afterwards to enter into the most intimate relations.