further means, however difficult it might be. I had even a great deal of trouble with Sídi ʿAlí, who put off his promise to accommodate me from day to day. At length, having, on the 10th of November, written an energetic letter to this merchant, it was agreed that the affair between myself and the Ghadámsi merchants, who refused to lend me money, although they had English property in their hands, should be referred to the ghaladíma, who granted me a public interview for the purpose. In this audience, in which a great number of other people were present, the merchants founded their refusal to comply with my request on the old date of the letter in which they were ordered to attend to my wishes; and it was not until the ghaladíma had ordered them to bring into his presence all that they possessed of the British agent’s property that they agreed the following day to lend me a sum of money, at the usual rate of one hundred per cent. Being obliged to agree to this condition, as it had never been my intention to oblige them by force to grant me a loan without allowing them their usual profit, I stipulated to receive from them 500,000 shells, equal in this place to 200 dollars, on the condition that 400 should be repaid in Tripoli, at four months’ date. This loan, which would not have been necessary at all if I had found my supplies, enabled me, on the other hand, to send off my despatches with the greatest ease and security, as it was, of course, the interest of these merchants to have these letters forwarded to Tripoli by the safest and shortest route. A courier was therefore despatched immediately, who being an experienced and well-known person, would be able to make his way through the country of Áír, which in its temporarily disturbed state was closed to any one else. The only thing which caused me some displeasure in this transaction, was the circumstance that these merchants from Ghadámes had the insolence, although half of the money with which they trade is Christian money, to call the Christians, in the presence of the ghaladíma, by the offensive name of “Káfaráwa,” (“the infidels,”) and I made a serious protest against such a term being employed in official transactions.