Another ride of twelve hours brought us, on the 3rd of January, 1850, to Sfákes, where we were obliged to take up our quarters in the town, as our land-journey was here at an end, and we were to procure a vessel to carry us either direct to Tripoli, or to some other point on the opposite side of the Lesser Syrtis. The journey by land is not only expensive, particularly by people who are encumbered with a good deal of luggage, as we then were, and very long and tedious, but is also very unsafe, as I found from experience on my former journey. The island of Jirbi, which forms the natural station of the maritime intercourse between the regency of Tunis and that of Tripoli, had been put under the strictest rules of quarantine, rather from political considerations than from those of health, all intercourse with the mainland having been cut off. It was therefore with great difficulty that we succeeded in hiring a “gáreb” to carry us to Zwára, in which we embarked in the forenoon of Saturday the 5th of January. During our two days’ stay in Sfákes we made the acquaintance of a Jew calling himself Baránes, but who is in truth the Jew servant named Jacob who accompanied Denham and Clapperton, and is several times mentioned in the narrative of those enterprising travellers as self-conceited and stubborn; yet he seems to be rather a clever fellow, and in some way or other contrives to be on the best terms with the governor. He communicated to us many anecdotes of the former expedition, and, among other things, a very mysterious history of a Danish traveller in disguise whom they met in Bórnu coming all the way from Dar-Fúr through Wadaï. There is not the least mention of such a meeting in the journal of the expedition, nor has such an achievement of a European traveller ever been heard of; and I can scarcely believe the truth of this story, though the Jew was quite positive about it.