Besides this kind of occupation, my dealings with the governor, and an occasional ride which I took through and outside the town, I had a great deal to do in order to satisfy the claims of the inhabitants upon my very small stock of medicinal knowledge, especially at the commencement of my residence, when I was severely pestered with applications, having generally from 100 to 200 patients in my courtyard every morning. The people even brought me sometimes animals to cure; and I was not a little amused when they once brought me a horse totally blind, which they thought I was able to restore to its former power of vision. Living in Kátsena is not so cheap as in most other places of Negroland—at least we thought so at the time, but we afterwards found Sókoto, and many places between that and Timbúktu, much dearer; but the character of dearth in Kátsena is increased by the scarcity of shells in the market, which form the standard currency, and, especially after I had circulated a couple of hundred dollars, I was often obliged to change a dollar for 2300 shells instead of 2500. I had here a disagreeable business to arrange; for suddenly, on the 18th of March, there arrived our old creditor Mohammed e’ Sfáksí, whose claims upon us I thought I had settled long ago by giving him a bill upon Fezzán, besides the sum of two hundred dollars which I had paid him on the spot[33]: but, to my great astonishment, he produced a letter, in which Mr. Gagliuffi, Her Majesty’s agent in Múrzuk, informed him that I was to pay him in Sudán. Such is the trouble to which a European traveller is exposed in these countries, by the injudicious arrangements of those very people whose chief object ought to be to assist him, while at the same time all his friends in Europe think that he is well provided, and that he can proceed on his difficult errand without obstacle. On the 19th of March we received information that the army of the Góberáwa had encamped on the site of the former town of Róma, or Rúma; and I was given to understand that I must hold myself in readiness to march at an hour’s notice.