When I had made myself comfortable, I received a visit from the ghaladíma of the town; he brought me the compliments of the governor, who was a man of rather noble birth, being nobody else but ʿAlí Káramí, the eldest son and presumed successor of ʿAlíyu the emír el Múmenín. He bears the pompous title of serkí-n-Góber, “lord of Góber,” although almost the whole of that country is in the hands of the enemy. Having taken his leave, the messenger soon returned accompanied by Alháttu, the younger brother of the ghaladíma of Sókoto, who was anxious to show his importance, bringing me a fat sheep as a present, which I acknowledged by the gift of a fine heláli bernús, besides a red cap and turban; and the governor expressed his satisfaction at my present by sending me also corn for my horses, and half a dozen fowls. In the evening we had a short but violent tornado, which usually indicates the approach of the rainy season; but no rain fell, and we passed the night very comfortably in our open encampment, without any accident. [Sidenote: Thursday, March 31st.] We had a very difficult day’s march before us,—the passage of the wilderness of Gúndumi,—which can only be traversed by a forced march, and which, even upon a man of Captain Clapperton’s energies, had left the impression of the most wearisome journey he had ever performed in his life. But before returning into our westerly direction, we had first to follow a north-westerly path leading to a large pond or tebki, in order to provide ourselves with water for the journey. It was still a good-sized sheet of water, though torn up and agitated by numbers of men and animals that had preceded our party from the town; and we were therefore very fortunate in having provided ourselves with some excellent clear water from the well close to our place of encampment. The pond was in the midst of the forest, which towards its outskirts presented a cheerful aspect, enlivened by a great number of sycamore trees and even a few deléb palms, but which here assumed the more monotonous and cheerless character which seems to be common to all the extensive forests of Negroland.