There was a time when I never wrote to you, without being able to acquaint you either with the termination of some interesting excursion, or with my being just upon the start for another. Instead of which, I have been obliged to content myself now for nearly two years, with comments upon former journeys, or to offer you of future ones, the promise instead of the deed. I cannot yet move from hence as no caravan has yet arrived from the west; it is indeed expected, but so it has been for a length of time, and that very expectation prevents me from undertaking any other journey, and chains me to this town, the air of which presses more heavily upon my lungs than did the pestilential exhalations of the saltmarshes of Medina. Had I any reasonable hope of being able to reach my destination by any other route, than that of Fezzan, believe me, not a moment’s delay should be incurred, to relieve myself from the most painful sensation I have felt since I left England, that of being more or less exposed to the blame of relaxation or want of spirit, in the performance of my duty. Had I less at stake I should perhaps be less prudent, but when I consider that during eight years, I have done my best to acquire the proper qualifications for the undertaking, I am unwilling to risk the prospect of success now in my hands, while if I can finally set out upon my journey in an eligible manner, I have some well founded expectations of bringing it to a happy issue. If I fail, it must cost my successor many years of apprenticeship, to be able to enter the gates of Libya, with as much confidence, as I shall now be able to do. I believe that the non-arrival of the Fezzan caravan is to be ascribed to the encreased demands of black slaves on the coast of Barbary, to replace the white slaves so gloriously delivered by the English fleet, for I have understood that the intercourse between Tripoly and Fezzan has been very brisk for the last twelvemonth. The demand for slaves, however, is no less great in Egypt, where the plague has made for the last four years, great ravages among the black species, which it appears to attack in preference even to the white; and if the Barbary market is glutted, which already must be the case, the Fezzan traders will again drive their human cattle to the slave folds of this town.