It was half-past ten in the morning when I left the town of Kúkawa, which for upwards of twenty months I had regarded as my head quarters, and as a place upon which, in any emergency, I might safely fall back upon; for although I even then expected that I should be obliged to return to this place once more, and even of my own free will made my plans accordingly, yet I was convinced that, in the course of my proceedings, I should not be able to derive any further aid from the friendship and protection of the sheikh of Bórnu, and I likewise fully understood that circumstances might oblige me to make my return by the western coast. For I never formed such a scheme voluntarily, as I regarded it of much greater importance for the government in whose service I had the honour to be employed, to survey the course of the great river from Timbúktu downwards, than to attempt, if I should have succeeded in reaching that place, to come out on the other side of the continent, while I was fully aware that, even under the most favourable circumstances, in going, I should be unable to keep along the river, on account of its being entirely in the hands of the lawless tribes of Tawárek, whom I should not be able to pass before I had obtained the protection of a powerful chief in those quarters. Meanwhile, well aware from my own experience how far man generally remains in arrear of his projects, in my letter to Government I represented my principal object as only to reach the Niger at the town of Sáy, while all beyond that was extremely uncertain.