The Sheikh Makouran continues very civil: to-day he gave me a supply of onions for making soup, and promises to give me a house to live in, when I get to Ghadames. I have, in turn, to give him some medicine, on my arrival, for one of his two wives. I rode a little the Sheikh's donkey last night, at his request. It is nothing like the camel, it stumbled a great deal over the loose stones, and I am told the horses stumble as much. I felt the immense superiority of the camel, with its slow regular pace and sure foot, in these stony wastes. The Sheikh's ass is the only animal of the beast-of-burden sort in the whole caravan, besides the camels. I noticed, however, a few extra unladen camels, which take turn with others for carrying, as also several foals following lightly and friskily their dams. _En route_, during the nights, the Arab soldiers amused themselves by firing off their matchlocks, the most advanced party answering the farthest behind, and _vice versâ_. The noise of the gun broke through the painful silence of The Desert, and came finely back reverberating from the Saharan hills with double and treble discharges of sound. When their powder began to be exhausted, and they have never more than half-a-dozen charges, they sang their plaintive love ditties, or chatted to the merchants. On the whole, they showed great good temper, and, pennyless and naked, were happier than well-clothed and wealthy merchants. In the afternoon of yesterday a letter was brought to me, written by Gameo, which had been in the ghafalah nearly all the length of the route, but had been forgotten. This stated that Mr. Macauley, the American Consul, had kindly prepared a small package of American rum for my journey, and had forgotten to send it till too late--in fact, like several persons in Tripoli, he really thought, what from the intrigues of the Pasha, and the obstacles of the season, I should never get off. I may observe, the nearer a person is to an object, it often happens he sees it less:-- "'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view." There is infinitely less enthusiasm for African discovery,--nay, more horror of African travelling in Tripoli than in London: in truth, the greater part of the Europeans of Tripoli, and in all Barbary towns, are a degraded unenthusiastic race, wholly occupied with their petty quarrels and intrigues. Of course, a man of my stamp was considered by them either "_un sciocco_" or "_un matto_." It is the misfortune of Africa to be surrounded by a cordon of vitiated races, half-caste and mongrel breeds, propagated from adventurers and convicts from the other continents of the world. So that Africa learns nothing but the vices of civilization from its contact with the rest of the world. It is also certain, that the native tribes of Africa itself are more immoral and barbarous on the coasts than in the interior. We have had the full moon during our last four days. Our route is always more or less south-west.