Some Touaricks remained, who called on me to-day. One, who had shown himself very friendly, began to enlarge on the dangers of the Soudan route. I immediately observed, "God is greater than all the Touaricks." This stopped his gab, and was applauded by the rest. A Ghadamsee bawled out, "Oh! it requires a great deal--much, much, much money to go to Soudan." "How much?" I asked,--"Oh! much, much, much!" was rejoined. "What is _much_?" "Five hundred dollars!" was shouted out by half a dozen. I coolly observed, "It is not much for an Englishman." Another of the Touaricks said, about twenty years ago he saw some Englishmen come to his country from Fezzan. What struck the Touarick was, the English tourists gave a dollar for a fowl, for a drink of milk, and even, he added with an oath, for an _Es-Slamah âleikom_? ("How do you do?") This story was told to impress me with the necessity of taking plenty of money with me, and I was to keep up the liberal character of my predecessors in Saharan travel. So we see these English tourists, who undoubtedly were Messrs. Denham, Clapperton, and Oudney, have spoiled the roads of travelling between Ghat and Fezzan, as Englishmen have spoiled the routes of the Continent of Europe. This is the propensity of John Bull, to buy up everything and everybody abroad[29]. The Touarick added, "A deal of money is required, because there are many banditti." He meant not exactly robbers, but beggars, who, whilst begging, give you to understand that their appeal to your eleemosynary feelings must not be in vain. All who beg _impudently_ on the routes, or who levy black-mail, are called _Sbandout_ ("banditti.") But I'm more convinced than ever, that the greatest shield of safety for the Desert traveller is his poverty. Saw an aged Moorish lady, who greatly interested me. She told me she was an hundred years old, fasted all day long, and expected soon to go to Paradise. It is undoubtedly a vulgar error to say the Mahometan doctrine teaches that women have no souls. During her hundred years, she had never seen a Christian before. Her faculties were too weak for sectarian spite, and she looked upon me as if I had been a simple Mussulman stranger.