This morning one of my men, the Zaberma half-caste, Sambo, whom I had taken into my service at the residence of Galaijo, came to request to be dismissed my service. In the afternoon I went to pay my respects to the Sheikh, and was rather astonished to hear him announce my departure more seriously and more firmly than usual: but the reason was, that he had authentic news that his elder brother, Sídi Mohammed, whose arrival he had been expecting so long, and whom he wanted to leave in his stead when obliged to escort me the first part of my journey, was close at hand. The big drum having really announced his arrival at the tents, we mounted on horseback, half an hour before midnight, and arrived at the encampment a little before two o’clock in the morning. Here everything, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, bore a festive character, and a large tent had been pitched for the noble visitor at the foot of the hilly slope, the top of which was occupied by the Sheikh’s own tents. The eldest member of this princely family was a man a little above the middle height and strongly built, with a fine commanding expression of countenance, and manners more stern and warlike than those of El Bakáy, but not wanting in affability and natural cheerfulness. In the position in which I was placed, as a stranger, not only of a foreign country and nationality, but of an opposite creed, and as the cause of so many difficulties to these people in their political affairs, I could not expect that this man would receive me, at our first interview, with remarkable kindness and cordiality. It was therefore not to be wondered at that, in the beginning, he asked me a great many questions which it was not agreeable for me to answer in the presence of strangers. Next day, Hammádi, the son of El Mukhtár, the near relative of El Bakáy, and the latter’s chief adversary, and therefore my enemy, arrived with several followers at the encampment. El Bakáy constrained himself, for his elder brother’s sake, to remain in the same tent with Hammádi; but Sídi Alawáte, the younger and more reckless brother, was not to be persuaded to enter the tent as long as his hated cousin was there. He spent the day in my tent till his enemy was gone. Sídi Mohammed did not seem to be at all unfavourably disposed towards Hammádi, and wanted even to enter the town in his company; but he was obliged to yield to the combined efforts of his two younger brothers, who refused the company of their cousin.