It was well that we had arrived—having been incessantly marching for the last twenty-six hours, without taking into account the first part of the journey from the town to the pond; for I had never seen my horse in such a state of total exhaustion, while my people also fell down immediately they arrived. As for myself, kept up by the excitement of my situation, I did not feel much fatigued, but on the contrary felt strong enough to search without delay through the whole of my luggage, in order to select the choicest presents for the great prince of Sókoto, who was to set out the following morning, and upon whose reception depended a good deal of the success of my undertaking. The afternoon wore on without my being called into the presence of the sultan, and I scarcely expected that I should see him that day; but suddenly, after the evening prayer, Alháttu made his appearance with some messengers of the chief, not in order to hasten my present, but first to give me a proof of their own hospitality, and bringing me a very respectable present consisting of an ox, four fat sheep, and two large straw sacks or tákrufa containing about four hundred pounds weight of rice, with an intimation at the same time that ʿAlíyu wished to see me, but that I was not now to take my present with me. I therefore prepared myself immediately; and on going to the sultan’s we passed by the ghaladíma, who had been lodged in a courtyard of the village, and who accompanied us. We found ʿAlíyu in the northern part of the village, sitting under a tree in front of his quarters, on a raised platform of clay. He received me with the utmost kindness and good humour, shaking hands with me and begging me to take a seat just in front of him. Having paid my compliments to him on behalf of the Queen of England, I told him that it had been my intention to have paid him a visit two years previously, but that the losses which we had met with in the first part of our journey had prevented me from carrying out my design. I had scarcely finished my speech, when he himself assured me that at the right time he had received the letter which I had addressed to him through the sultan of Ágades (informing him of the reason why we could not then go directly to pay him our compliments), and that from that moment up to the present time he had followed our proceedings, and especially my own, with the greatest interest, having even heard at the time a report of my journey to Ádamáwa.