Several of these Tawátíye were about to return to their native country, and were anxiously seeking information as to the time when the caravan of the Sakomáren, which had come to Tin-téllust, intended to start on their return-journey, as they wished to go in their company. Among them was a man of the name of ʿAbdallah, with whom I became afterwards very intimate, and obtained from him a great deal of information. He was well acquainted with that quarter of the African continent which lies between Tawát, Timbúktu, and Ágades, having been six times to Ágades and five times to Timbúktu, and was less exacting than the mass of his countrymen. The most interesting circumstance which I learnt from them to-day was the identity of the Emgédesi language with that of Timbúktu,—a fact of which I had no previous idea, thinking that the Háusa language, as it was the vulgar tongue of the whole of Ásben, was the indigenous language of the natives of Ágades. But about this most interesting fact I shall say more afterwards. When the Tawátíye were about to go away, Ámagay, or Mággi, as he is generally called, the chief eunuch of the sultan, came; and I was ordered by my Kél-owí companions, who had put on all their finery, to make myself ready to pay a visit to the sultan. Throwing, therefore, my white heláli bernus over my black tobe, and putting on my richly- ornamented Ghadámsi shoes, which formed my greatest finery, I took up the letters and the treaty, and solicited the aid of my servant Mohammed to assist me in getting it signed; but he refused to perform any such service, regarding it as a very gracious act on his part that he went with me at all.