We had full reason to admire the energy of the old chief, who on the 30th of November went to a “privy council” with Mʿallem Azóri and Sultan Astáfidet, which was appointed to be held in some solitary glen, halfway between Tin-téggana and Ásodi, and, after he had returned late in the evening of the 1st of December, was galloping along our encampment in the morning of the 2nd, in order to visit the new watering-place lower down in the principal valley,—the former well beginning to dry up, or rather requiring to be dug to a greater depth, as the moisture collected during the rainy season was gradually receding. This was the first time we saw our friend on horseback; and though he was seventy-six years of age, he sat very well and upright in his saddle. Overweg went on one of the following days to see the well (which was about four miles distant from our encampment, in a W.N.W. direction, beyond a little village of the name of Óbrasen), but found it rather a basin formed between the rocky cliffs, and fed, according to report, by a spring. Meanwhile I was surprised to learn from Mohammed Byrji, Ánnur’s grandson, and next claimant to the succession after Háj ʿAbdúwa, that the last-named, together with El Úsu or Lúsu, the influential chief of Azanéres, and El Hossén, had started for the south six days previously, in order to purchase provisions for the salt-caravan. In this little country something is always going on, and the people all appear to lead a very restless life; what wonder, then, if most of them are the progeny of wayfarers, begotten from fortuitous and short-lived matches? Perhaps in no country is domestic life wanting to such a degree as among the Kél-owí properly so called; but it would be wrong to include in this category the tribes of purer blood living at some distance from this centre of the salt-trade. At length, on the 5th of December, the first body of the salt-caravan arrived from Bílma, opening the prospect of a speedy departure from this our African home; but although we were very eager to obtain a glance at them, they did not become visible, but kept further to the west. The following evening, however, several friends and partisans of the old chief arrived, mounted on mehára, and were received by the women with loud shrill cries of welcome (“tirlelák” in Temáshight) very similar to the “tehlíl” of the Arabs.