I left Gúre, continuing my march towards Zínder not along the most direct road, but with the intention of visiting those localities which were likely to present the most interesting features. I therefore kept first in a westerly direction, passing through a mountainous district, and further on through more open country, with the purpose of visiting Wúshek, a place which had been mentioned to me as peculiarly interesting. The situation of the place has something (as the plate a few pages further on, as well as the woodcut, will show) very peculiar about it—a mixture of fertility and aridity, of cultivation and desolation, of industry and neglect—being situated at some distance from the foot of a mountain-range, and separated from it by a barren tract, while on the site itself the moisture percolates in several small dells and hollows; and thus, besides a good crop of wheat, several small groves of date trees are produced. The largest of these groves, skirting the east side of the town, contains about 800 trees, while a little further east another dell winds along, containing about 200 palms, and, joining the former, to the north of the village, widens to a more open ground richly overgrown with tamarind trees, which are entwined with creepers and clad with herbage. This grove, which encompasses the whole of the north side of the place, exhibits a very pleasant aspect. Several ponds are formed here; and abundance of water is found in holes from a foot to two feet in depth. Going round this depression, I entered the town from the north-east quarter, and here found a large open space laid out in fields of wheat, kitchen-gardens, with onions, and cotton-grounds, all in different stages of cultivation: most of the beds where wheat was grown were just being laid out, the clods of dry earth being broken and the ground irrigated, while in other places the green stalks of the crop were already shooting forth. The onions were very closely packed together. Everywhere the fertilizing element was close at hand, and palm trees were shooting up in several detached clusters; but large mounds of rubbish prevented my taking a comprehensive view over the whole, and the more so as the village is separated into four detached portions lying at a considerable distance from each other, and forming altogether a circumference of about three miles, with a population of from 8000 to 9000 inhabitants. But the whole is merely surrounded by a light fence. The principal cluster, or hamlet, surrounds a small eminence, on the top of which stands the house of the head man or mayor, built of clay, and having quite a commanding position, while at the north-eastern foot of the hill a very picturesque date grove spreads out in a hollow. The ground being uneven, the dwellings, like those in Gúre, are mostly situated in hollows; and the courtyards present a new and characteristic feature—for although the cottages themselves are built of reed and