In this place we remained the four following days, my protector not returning until the third day, and my patience was again put to a severe trial. But, altogether, the stay here was not so uninteresting, as we received a great many visits from the inhabitants of this and the neighbouring districts. First, there came Kára, the governor of the island, a stately-looking old man, dressed in a fine white tobe, with a white shawl round his head. Having entered into conversation with me, he stated, without the subject being brought forward by myself, that about fifty years ago, a Christian had come down the river in a large boat with a white tent, and the river being then full, had passed without any accident the rocky passage ahead of us. But he added that the Kél- terárart had attacked him at Zamgoy. Park had passed this place in the morning, while he (Kára) was encamped with his people on the sandy downs of Áribínda. This chief himself, although he was not at all hospitable, had really something in his demeanour which might indicate a descent from a nobler stock, but the rest of the inhabitants of the island had much the same appearance as the less noble tribes of the Tawárek in general. However, there is no doubt that the name of the whole district, Tin-sherífen, is taken from the supposed origin of these people—from sherífs. And here in this district, as well as in the neighbouring one of Burrum, where the great river, after having made this remarkable bend into the heart of the desert, changes its easterly course into a south- easterly one, we must evidently look for the earliest Mohammedan settlers along the Niger. I here also first came into more intimate relation with that remarkable tribe the Kél e’ Súk, who seem to deserve a great deal of attention among these nomadic tribes, although I am not yet able to elucidate all the points connected with their history, for they themselves take very little interest in historical facts, and if there exist written records they are not generally known. But this much is certain, that these Kél e’ Súk have been so called from a place, Súk, or at least generally called Súk[30], situated at the distance of five days’ journey from this point, and six from Gógó, which seems to have been a very considerable place in former times, but was destroyed in the latter half of the fifteenth century, by Sonni ʿAlí, the great predecessor of the still greater conqueror Háj Mohammed Áskíá. The original name of this place I did not succeed in making out, but it is no doubt that very place which, by El Bekrí[31] and other Arab geographers, after the name of the tribe, has been called Tademékket, and which, till the middle of the seventeenth century, ruled over this region.